You're reading: WikiLeaks fundraising stunt draws Anonymous ire

LONDON — A fundraising campaign by secret-busting website WikiLeaks drew the ire of many within the Anonymous movement Friday, sparking an online spat which suggests a rift between WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange and some of his most vigorous supporters.

The falling-out is potentially bad
news for WikiLeaks, whose beleaguered founder remains holed up at the
Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he fled in June in an attempt to
avoid being extradited to Sweden over sex crime allegations.

Anonymous
is a loosely-organized, often chaotic movement of cyber rebels whose
profile grew dramatically after the arrest of Bradley Manning, the U.S.
Army analyst who allegedly served as the source of Assange’s most
spectacular disclosures.

Following the furor kicked up by
Assange’s leaks, the amorphous collective of online activists has
routinely stepped in to support him — either by carrying out
cyberattacks on WikiLeaks’ opponents, or allegedly by supplying the
organization with caches of stolen electronic documents.

When
parts of WikiLeaks’ website recently disappeared behind a banner asking
that users make a donation — a tactic similar to the paywalls of some
newspapers online — anger exploded across the Internet, with criticism
coming from many who had backed the organization in the past.

“This,
dear friends will lose you all allies you still had,” said a statement
posted by a heavily-followed, Anonymous-linked Twitter account.

The
scale of the annoyance among Anonymous supporters was difficult to
gauge because the leaderless movement is by its nature hard to get a
handle on. But several closely watched Twitter accounts linked to
Anonymous expressed anger and unhappiness with the move.

One released a full statement saying that the fundraising campaign was the final straw.

“We
have been worried about the direction WikiLeaks is going for a while.
In the recent month the focus moved away from actual leaks and the fight
for freedom of information further and further while it concentrated
more and more on Julian Assange,” the statement said. It also expressed
annoyance with the 41-year-old Australian’s recent meeting with pop diva
Lady Gaga at the embassy.

The Anonymous statement said “we cannot support anymore what Wikileaks has become — the One Man Julian Assange show.”

WikiLeaks
spokesman Kristinn Hrafnnson did not immediately return an email
seeking comment. On its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks appeared to shrug off
what it described as a “kerfuffle.”

“Thank you for drawing
attention to our donation campaign while we have high costs in military
courts,” the organization said — a possible reference to Assange’s fear
that American officials are preparing to indict him, or have possibly
already indicted him, in the U.S.