Amazon has dropped Wikileaks like a hot potato after reports that staffers from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee questioned their relationship. Shortly thereafter, Senator Lieberman issued the following statement:
This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials. 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.
Wikileaks posted the following update on Twitter in response to this chain of events:
WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free–fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.
For Amazon’s part, there are many reason’s why they would want to disentangle themselves from Wikileaks, both technical and political. The terms of service for the Amazon Web Service clearly states that they have the right to refuse service at will. ReadWriteWeb offers the most obvious reasons for Wikileaks getting let go.
A DOS attack on Wikileaks could affect other sites hosted on the same servers, so it’s possible Amazon.com dropped Wikileaks for this reason. But since the site has drawn the ire of the United States government, and congressional Republicans are calling on Wikileaks figurehead Julian Assange to be be prosecuted for espionage, it’s possible that Amazon.com dropped the site out of concern for its content.
via ReadWriteWeb, Talking Points Memo