Amazon.com Bows To Lieberman’s unter Druck setzen

Wikileaks, the popular website that is under a relentless assault from the Obama administration for publishing leaked State department documents on the internet, appears too hot to handle for Amazon.com. As the company has bowed to strong-arm pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman and took down access to Wikileaks from its servers.

From Sen. Lieberman’s office:

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.

Ironically Julian Assange – Wikileaks founder – picked Amazon.com because of their reputation as a defender of the First Amendment. From the Guardian:

“Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases,”

Of course, Amazon.com is denying they bowed to Lieberman’s unter Druck setzen (pressure).

ONLINE BOOK SELLER Amazon has denied that it told the whistleblowing website Wikileaks to get out of its cloud because of government pressure.

In a statement, Amazon said that Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. While AWS does not pre-screen its customers, it does have terms of service that must be followed.

Amazon said that by distributing documents that it could not prove it had legally under copyright law, Wikileaks was violating its service agreement.

The outfit’s terms of service state, “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… [and] that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.”

However Amazon denied that it was trying to censor anything because it was too controversial. It said that some of the data on its cloud is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine.

“But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

Robert Gibbs – press secretary for the Obama administration – claimed they weren’t threatened by one man and a laptop, but the fury which has followed the “wikileak” indicates otherwise! Is one man and a laptop really a threat to America’s foreign policy and national security?

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