Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has announced that the whistleblowing website is suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting a financial blockade and raise new funds. 
 
 Assange, speaking at a press conference in London on Monday, said a banking blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' revenues. 
 
 He added that the blockade posed an existential threat to WikiLeaks and if it was not lifted by the new year the organisation would be "simply not able to continue". 
 
 The website, behind the publication of hundreds of thousands of controversial US embassy cables in late 2010 in partnership with newspapers including the Guardian and New York Times, revealed that it was running on cash reserves after "an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade" by the Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union. 
 
 WikiLeaks said in a statement: "The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency. 
 
 "The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicised US finance companies continues regardless." 
 
 Assange said donations to WikiLeaks were running at €100,000 a month in 2010, but had dropped to a monthly figure of €6,000 to €7,000 this year. 
 
 This had cost the organisation a cumulative €40m to €50m, he claimed, assuming donations had stayed at their 2010 level without the financial blockade. 
 
 Assange said WikiLeaks was facing legal cases in Denmark, Iceland, the UK and Australia, as well as an existing action in the EU. 
 
 He is also fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual misconduct. 
 
 The Guardian, New York Times, El País, Der Spiegel and Le Monde worked with WikiLeaks in publishing carefully selected and redacted US embassy cables in December, but have since criticised the website's decision to publish its full archive of 251,000 unredacted documents in early September. 
 
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 Tor is an encrypted anonymising network that makes it harder to intercept internet communications, or see where communications are coming from or going to. 
 
 In order to use the WikiLeaks public submission system as detailed above you can download the Tor Browser Bundle, which is a Firefox-like browser available for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux and pre-configured to connect using the anonymising system Tor. 
 
 Tails 
 
 If you are at high risk and you have the capacity to do so, you can also access the submission system through a secure operating system called Tails. Tails is an operating system launched from a USB stick or a DVD that aim to leaves no traces when the computer is shut down after use and automatically routes your internet traffic through Tor. Tails will require you to have either a USB stick or a DVD at least 4GB big and a laptop or desktop computer. ||||| The whistleblowing website set up by Julian Assange said that it is temporarily suspending publication of leaks to fight a “blockade” by credit card companies. 
 
 The refusal to accept donations has cost the website “tens of millions of dollars” in lost funding, the website said. 
 
 Mr Assange was due to make the announcement at a press conference in London at 1pm today , and appeal for donations to help flight the blockade. 
 
 WikiLeaks said “in order to fight for its survival” it has decided temporarily to stop publishing secret state documents, while it battles the financial blockade through the courts. 
 
 In a statement, WikiLeaks said: “In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents.” 
 
 The financial problems for WikiLeaks started on 7 December last year when Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union refused to accept donations for WikiLeaks. 
 
 This “unlawful financial blockade”, WikiLeaks said, “destroyed 95 per cent of its revenues”, leaving the website near-broke. 
 
 The website blamed the blockade on a reaction to its decision to start publishing the first of 250,000 leaked US Government cables days earlier. 
 
 The website said: “WikiLeaks has published the biggest leaks in journalistic history. This has triggered aggressive retaliation from powerful groups. 
 
 “Since 7th December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. 
 
 “The blockade came into force within ten days of the launch of Cablegate as part of a concerted US-based, political attack that included vitriol by senior right wing politicians, including assassination calls against WikiLeaks staff. 
 
 “The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency.” 
 
 WikiLeaks continued in its statement: “As a result, WikiLeaks has been running on cash reserves for the past eleven months. 
 
 “The blockade has cost the organization tens of millions of pounds in ost donations at a time of unprecedented operational costs resulting from publishing alliances in over 50 countries, and their inevitable counter-attacks. 
 
 “Our scarce resources now must focus on fighting the unlawful banking blockade.” 
 
 WikiLeaks said that it had “commenced pre- litigation action against the blockade in Iceland, Denmark, the UK, Brussels, the United States and Australia. 
 
 “We have lodged an anti-trust complaint at the European Commission and expect a decision by mid-November as to whether the European Competition Authority will open a full investigation into the wrongdoing of VISA and MasterCard.” 
 
 WikiLeaks is today setting out a number of ways that people can donate to the website.
– WikiLeaks won’t be releasing any more secrets in the near future, Julian Assange announced today; the credit card companies have brought it down. In a statement, WikiLeaks said it was making the move in response to the “blockade” against donations established by banks and credit card companies. “We are forced to temporarily suspend publishing whilst we secure our economic survival,” its website reads today. At a press conference in London today, Assange said the blockade had shrunk its donations from more than $100,000 a month to around $8,000-$9,000, and that if the ban wasn’t lifted the organization would be “simply not able to continue,” according to the Guardian. What money the organization does have will now be devoted to legal action against the banks—it’s already taken “pre-litigation action” in six countries, including the US, the Telegraph reports.