Wikileaks kicked off of Amazon EC2

[J.A. Terranson]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B05EK20101202



By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 1, 2010 7:28pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has stopped hosting WikiLeaks' 
website after an inquiry by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee 
amid anger about the release of classified U.S. government documents on 
the site.

WikiLeaks turned to Amazon to keep its site available after hackers tried 
to flood it and thus prevent users from accessing the classified 
information posted. WikiLeaks said Wednesday it was now being hosted by 
servers in Europe.

Staff for Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman had 
questioned Amazon about its relationship with WikiLeaks Tuesday and called 
on other companies that provide web-hosting services to boycott WikiLeaks.

"I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' 
previous publication of classified material," Lieberman, an independent, 
said in a statement. "I call on any other company or organization that is 
hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."

WikiLeaks has said since Sunday, when the first of its latest cache of 
U.S. government documents were published by media outlets, that its site 
was the target of a "distributed denial of service" attack, which is a 
computer attack meant to overwhelm a website and render it unavailable.

A representative for Amazon, which is widely known for its Internet retail 
business but also offers smaller Internet-hosting services, did not 
respond to requests for comment.

WikiLeaks slammed Amazon for dropping it, saying via the social media 
network Twitter that if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the First 
Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution), they should get out of the business 
of selling books."

WikiLeaks obtained scores of internal U.S. State Department 
communications, some of which were classified and included candid and 
embarrassing assessments of world leaders, and released them via media 
outlets and its own website.

Earlier this year, the website also released thousands of U.S. classified 
documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing 
condemnations that the information could endanger U.S. forces and those 
helping the war efforts there.

The U.S. Justice Department and Defense Department are investigating how 
the treasure trove of documents wound up in WikiLeaks hands. The prime 
suspect has been a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning.

Even though Amazon has stopped providing the web-hosting services to 
WikiLeaks, Lieberman suggested that his problem with the company was not 
fully resolved.

"I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with 
Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the 
future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, 
classified information," Lieberman said.

Ryan Calo, a lecturer at Stanford University's Center for Internet and 
Society, said that under U.S. law, Amazon would likely have been shielded 
from any possible prosecution by the government over the WikiLeaks 
document dump.

"It would set a dangerous precedent were companies like Amazon to take 
down things merely because the senator or another government entity 
started to ask question about them," Calo said.

(Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco, Alex 
Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Tim Castle in London; Editing by Doina 
Chiacu and Cynthia Osterman)


//Alif

-- 
"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech