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Wikileaks Booted From Amazon

dakameleon writes "Wikileaks has been booted from its Amazon hosting, and has now shifted to being hosted in Europe. Senator Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement, 'This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website,' which raises the question whether this was requested by the government. Senator Lieberman said Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks 'is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.'"

19 of 528 comments (clear)

  1. Right then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice that amazon have shown their colours... I shall no longer trade with them. Vote with your wallet, it's the only way they'll learn.

    1. Re:Right then by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think it's substantially more likely that they booted Wikileaks because:
      1) Wikileaks made Amazon servers a target for DDOS
      2) They aren't gaining a lot from providing the hosting, versus massive costs
      3) They lose a lot of goodwill with people who don't agree with Wikileak (especially government folks)

      I don't think it's fair to expect Amazon to keep them on even in the face of potentially high losses. Businesses are in the business of making money, after all, and this is just a financial no brainer.

      --
      My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
    2. Re:Right then by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm fairly sure businesses are entitled to change their minds when they realize they've made a mistake that might cost them more than they bargained for. Requiring all businesses to charge full on ahead even in the face of losses doesn't make much sense.

      --
      My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
    3. Re:Right then by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It was a headline story in this morning's Metro (a freesheet read by approximately everyone in London going to work on the tube): people boycotting Amazon for kicking Wikileaks off.

      Possibly not the best meme to have propagating when people are attempting to one-click their Christmas shopping.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
  2. There's no need to fear Joe Lieberman by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't object to us searching you car, or home, or spying on your internet."

    You've been telling us that for years Mr. Senator. Are you now saying you no longer believe that? Hmmm. First you spied on us, and performed unconstitutional/illegal searches ... and now WE are spying on you. The wheel turns does it not Mr. Politician?

    Fucking asshole.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    1. Re:There's no need to fear Joe Lieberman by rastos1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Presumably, you want your government to have strong diplomacy and the ability to influence its region of the world.

      Care to specify where are the boundaries of this region in case of USA government?

      Ah don't bother. The answer is right here:

      To be a real power, Patten said, a country must be ready and able to adopt and implement a policy, even if the rest of the world considers it unwise. Europeans may agree or disagree with US policy, but they admire that the US is ready to carry out the policies it thinks best, no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Under this yardstick, the EU will never be a "real power" because there is always someone in the room who is overly cautious, and will insist on looking at matters "sensibly."

    2. Re:There's no need to fear Joe Lieberman by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Interesting

      >>>Presumably, you want your government (whatever government that might be) to have strong diplomacy and the ability to influence its region of the world.

      You presume wrong.

      I don't give a fuck about what happens outside US territory. What I want is a government that is weak w/ most of the power belonging to the people ("every man a king of his own domain"). Secrecy of things like COICA (copyright/three-strike law) and ACTA (more copyright protection but on the global scale) that affect citizens is bullshit. It should be out in the open, not hidden, otherwise representative government Can Not work.

      What you are supporting is basically a return to the European Dark Ages, where the leaders operated in the dark without the people's knowledge, and the citizens were just pawns in their leader's games.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    3. Re:There's no need to fear Joe Lieberman by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't give a fuck about what happens outside US territory.

      Makes sense, so long as you're A-OK with the US:

      *Having no exports

      *Having no imports

      *Being completely prone to a Pearl Harbor type surprise attack at any time

      Also, this stance requires that the rest of the world respect your decision and leave you completely alone.

      You're proposing that the US be the crazy hermit who moves into the woods and doesn't talk to anybody. Unfortunately, isolationism as you describe never works, because the real world always intrudes. We tried it a few times, if you recall from history class.

      The fact is, we need treaties, for trade and defense. Those treaties require confidentiality, at a minimum so we can respect the confidences of others with respect to other countries they don't like. While I certainly don't approve negotiations designed to keep the people in the dark (ACTA), it's a false dichotomy to suggest that *all* secrets are bad.

  3. Re:Site moved, data had not by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The data wasn't hosted on Amazon, only the front page.. Which makes this even weirder, they weren't even hosting the leaked material on Amazon.

  4. Gitmo still needed? by rastos1 · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are people that do not follow the current events around wikileaks because they consider it un-interesting. They should:

    "We are also investigating whether the prosecutor's application to have Mr Assange held incommunicado without access to lawyers, visitors or other prisoners - again a unique request - is in any way linked to this matter and the recent, rather bellicose US statements of an intention to prosecute Mr Assange."

    Emphasis mine.

    1. Re:Gitmo still needed? by CxDoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The fact that you (& many others) consider this not unique (i.e. normal) is even worse than the request itself.

      --
      "Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
  5. Wikileaks really needs to change its focus by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The majority of the classified information they've dump has been the sort of shit that the federal government produces in reams and forgets about. It's not "whistle-blower grade" materials like the Pentagon Papers. All it's likely to do is make the politicians more paranoid and to impose security theater on federal agencies. There's already enough of that within the federal government itself. The last thing we need is more.

    What Wikileaks needs to do is focus on stuff like exposing Bank of America which it says it plans to do. What the big banks have done to this country and world is actually worse than what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their behavior has quite literally crippled the ability of the housing market in the US to function, ever, without radical political intervention to clean up the title disputes, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. It's more likely than not that their manipulations have us on the precipice of a depression that is far worse than the Great Depression. Sure, we found out that an extra 15k Iraqis died than we were officially told; the big banks have laid the foundation for an economic environment in which a lot of people in our own country may very well starve to death before it's all said and done.

    If Assange's goal really is to clean house, then there are many targets that are softer, more inviting and more damning when exposed than most of what Wikileaks has accomplished with the DoD. If I had his ear, I'd tell him to go after Goldman Sachs. Go for the mother load of information from them. Get someone to hand over all of the server logs of communications between them and federal officials. Or better yet...

    Target the Federal Reserve.

  6. Hypocrites by chrb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the MI6 operatives list was being mirrored by American citizens, MI6 said that it would "endanger the lives of agents", and yet the U.S. government did not take down any web sites, and American citizens were not threatened with prosecution for publishing the list. Now an Australian citizen releases data that the U.S. government would rather didn't see the light of day, and U.S. politicians are calling for censorship, internet kill switches, and executions and assassinations of everybody involved. If China or Russia did the same, these politicians would be crying crocodile tears for the death of freedom. Hypocrites.

    1. Re:Hypocrites by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 5, Informative

      Roll back pre 9-11 and they were quite happy for Noraid to raise funds in the US Irish community to help fund the bombing campaigns of the IRA. Hypocrisy has never been a problem in the US of A. Only have to look at the one eyed Israeli policy to see that.

  7. More probably... by denzacar · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... they were taken down for violating Amazon's "Acceptable Use Policy":

    http://aws.amazon.com/aup/

    No Illegal, Harmful, or Offensive Use or Content

    You may not use the Services or AWS Site for any illegal, harmful or offensive use, or to transmit, store, display, distribute or otherwise make available content that is illegal, harmful, or offensive. Prohibited activities or content include:

            * Illegal Activities. Any illegal activities, including advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available gambling sites or services or disseminating, promoting or facilitating child pornography.
            * Harmful or Fraudulent Activities. Activities that may be harmful to our users, operations, or reputation, including offering or disseminating fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions (e.g., make-money-fast schemes, ponzi and pyramid schemes, phishing, or pharming), or engaging in other deceptive practices.
            * Infringing Content. Content that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others.
            * Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts.
            * Harmful Content. Content or other computer technology that may damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept, or expropriate any system, program, or data, including viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, or cancelbots.

    All attributes marked above could be argued by any of the parties affected by the leaks.

    My favorite is "being offensive".
    Fuck. I could demand 90% of the Internet to be turned off permanently on account of that alone.
    You see, I'm very easily offended by a wide variety of things.

    And don't you get me started on otherwise objectionable. Cause... Oh boy...

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    1. Re:More probably... by AigariusDebian · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, Amazon! You front page is offensive to me and all other people in the world who hate Christmass shopping season. Take it down, now!

  8. "an extra 15k Iraqis died than we were officially by SomethingOrOther · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, we found out that an extra 15k Iraqis died than we were officially told

    Just read that line back to yourself a few times........ THAT is why this is important.
    Thank you wikileaks.

    --
    Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
    Don't believe what you read is the truth.
  9. What a load of shit by copponex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What the big banks have done to this country and world is actually worse than what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan

    No, a hundred thousand people killed by a country with no right to even be in their hemisphere is a million times worse than the loss of economic productivity. Not one single Iraqi ever physically harmed an American outside of their sovereign border. The same goes for the Afghani people.

    And you wonder why no one has respect for the American culture anymore? Go fuck yourself.

  10. Re:they lost a goodwill with me. by FredFredrickson · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... or Visual Basic developer.

    Oh god, there are children on this site, watch your language!

    --
    Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex