Wikileaks kicked off of Amazon EC2

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 08:27:19PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B05EK20101202

Presumably, this is about as much as DDoS as it was
political pressure.

I wonder how well Tahoe would scale as a leaker
platform.
 
> 
> 
> 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
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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