Monday, January 03, 2011
Bank of America scrambles to limit WikiLeaks damage
From The Hindu
United States banking giant Bank of America scrambled to pre-emptively save itself from possibly becoming the next institution to be exposed by Wikileaks, the whistleblower website that raised a storm of controversy by unveiling private diplomatic cables of the State Department.
Reports suggested that BoA had appointed “a team of 15 to 20 top... officials, led by the chief risk officer, Bruce Thompson,” to oversee a wide-ranging internal investigation covering many thousands of documents and seeking out instances where computer files and security could have been compromised.
The action by BoA came shortly after Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange hinted, in an interview with Forbes magazine over a month ago, that his organisation would be releasing tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to “a big U.S. bank” that would expose an “ecosystem of corruption” within that bank.
In that interview Mr. Assange also said that the upcoming exposé would not only reveal flagrant violations and unethical practices, but it would also supply vast numbers documents describing the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos behind the workings of the bank.
Even as far back as October Mr. Assange had indicated that Wikileaks was “sitting on five gigabytes from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drives,” in an interview with Computer World magazine.
He also noted that the documents in Wikileaks’ possession would show up the regular decision making that turned a blind eye to and supported unethical practices, the oversight that was not done, the priorities of executives, and how they thought they were fulfilling their own self-interest.
The New York Times reported that the internal team at BoA investigating the possible loss of confidential material had been joined by specialists from consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and several top law firms.
Together they would also be looking into “the legal problems that could arise from a disclosure, including the bank’s potential liability if private information was disclosed about clients,” the newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources within BoA.
BoA, along with a few other companies such as MasterCard and PayPal, earlier suspended processing payments to Wikileaks on the grounds that Wikileaks might have been in violation of the law in the context of the State Department cables that it had released.
According to statements made in interviews, Mr. Assange expects to release the trove of documents relating to a U.S. bank “early this year.”
United States banking giant Bank of America scrambled to pre-emptively save itself from possibly becoming the next institution to be exposed by Wikileaks, the whistleblower website that raised a storm of controversy by unveiling private diplomatic cables of the State Department.
Reports suggested that BoA had appointed “a team of 15 to 20 top... officials, led by the chief risk officer, Bruce Thompson,” to oversee a wide-ranging internal investigation covering many thousands of documents and seeking out instances where computer files and security could have been compromised.
The action by BoA came shortly after Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange hinted, in an interview with Forbes magazine over a month ago, that his organisation would be releasing tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to “a big U.S. bank” that would expose an “ecosystem of corruption” within that bank.
In that interview Mr. Assange also said that the upcoming exposé would not only reveal flagrant violations and unethical practices, but it would also supply vast numbers documents describing the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos behind the workings of the bank.
Even as far back as October Mr. Assange had indicated that Wikileaks was “sitting on five gigabytes from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drives,” in an interview with Computer World magazine.
He also noted that the documents in Wikileaks’ possession would show up the regular decision making that turned a blind eye to and supported unethical practices, the oversight that was not done, the priorities of executives, and how they thought they were fulfilling their own self-interest.
The New York Times reported that the internal team at BoA investigating the possible loss of confidential material had been joined by specialists from consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and several top law firms.
Together they would also be looking into “the legal problems that could arise from a disclosure, including the bank’s potential liability if private information was disclosed about clients,” the newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources within BoA.
BoA, along with a few other companies such as MasterCard and PayPal, earlier suspended processing payments to Wikileaks on the grounds that Wikileaks might have been in violation of the law in the context of the State Department cables that it had released.
According to statements made in interviews, Mr. Assange expects to release the trove of documents relating to a U.S. bank “early this year.”
Labels: Bank of America, Wikileaks
# posted by Narayan Lakshman @ 2:35 PM 
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