The WikiLeaks organization is under siege, with founder Julian Assange held in a UK jail and facing increasing difficulty in raising funds.
Assange was remanded in custody on Swedish rape charges following a hearing in a London court on Tuesday. A deportation hearing is scheduled for next week.
His lawyers say the Swedish charges, which involve alleged sexual assaults on two women in August, are politically-motivated.
WikiLeaks said in a statement that Assange’s arrest would not stop the flow of leaked diplomatic cables.
“The release of the US Embassy Cables – the biggest leak in history – will still continue. This evening, the latest batch of cables were released, and our media partners released their next batch of stories,” spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said.
The organization has released only 900 of around 251,000 US State Department cables so far. It has threatened a “poison pill” release of highly damaging files if Assange is jailed.
But the small group, lacking leadership, is in a state of chaos, according to Kevin Poulsen, a high-profile former US hacker, now a journalist at Wired.
The organization’s “secrecy and compartmentalization are apparently hindering its operations,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Visa Europe has become the latest US corporation to cut off service, suspending support for online donations to the group. Rival MasterCard is planning to follow suit, the BBC reported.
Payment site PayPal cut ties with Wikileaks on December 4, and various sources state the firm’s Swiss bank account has been frozen.
Assange supporters point out that WikiLeaks has not broken any law, yet organizations that advocate racism or violence are still allowed to accept credit cards or other online payments.
“I can use Visa and Mastercard to pay for porn and support anti-abortion fanatics, Prop 8 homophobic bigots, and the Ku Klux Klan. But I can’t use them or PayPal to support Wikileaks, transparency, the First Amendment, and true government reform,” said media blogger Jeff Jarvis.
WikiLeaks began setting up mirror sites around the world to post the State Department cables after its US domain provider EveryDNS shut it down on December 3.
At the latest count Wednesday morning, it was mirrored on 1005 sites.