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Visa's slogan used to be "Everywhere you want to be," but apparently one place it did not want to be was on Wikileaks. We've already covered how both Visa and MasterCard cut off Wikileaks quite quickly, with MasterCard even going so far as to claim that it did so because of illegal activity by Wikileaks -- despite no charges or convictions for any actual illegal activity. Just a day later, it seems, we may have some new insight into why this is. Chris Rhodes was the first of a bunch of you to send over the news that the latest cable leak shows that US diplomats worked hard on Visa and MasterCard's behalf in Russia, where the Russian government was working on a new national payment card system, that would likely deprive Visa and MasterCard of transaction fees in Russia. Convenient timing.

The vigilante-style statement of dissent called Operation Payback is coming to an end. Loosely organized by anonymous supporters of Wikileaks, the aim of Operation Payback was to target companies and organizations that dropped support for Wikileaks - or even opposed the group's actions - by attacking their public-facing Web infrastructure. Using a software program called LOIC, which automates DDoS attacks (a type of Web-based attack that can take sites offline), the supporters targeted high-profile websites like Visa and MasterCard, taking them offline briefly during the first stages of what later became a full-on cyberwar. More recently, and with less success, the attackers went after PayPal and Amazon, too.