By Darren Pauli , ZDNet Australia, 25 February, 2011 16:09

NEWS

PayPal has lifted a freeze on the legal defence fund of Bradley Manning, the US Army private who may face treason charges for leaking US national intelligence to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

The payments giant had frozen the accounts owned by the organisations Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network, which had called for public donations to raise funds for the 23-year-old's legal defence. However, PayPal director of communications Anuj Nayar said on the company blog on Thursday that the closure was lifted after it found it had "sufficient information to meet our statutory 'Know Your Customer' obligations". "Let me be clear, this decision had nothing to do with Wikileaks," Nayar said.

In December PayPal cut off the official Wikileaks donations account with the company. It said at the time that the block was due to a "violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity".

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see PayPal thaws Manning fund freeze on ZDNet Australia.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-management/20