Amazon has removed WikiLeaks’ website and related files from its servers, a move that appears to be a result of pressure from the U.S. government not to support the document-leaking organization. According to several news reports, Senator Joseph Lieberman — the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee — had asked the web company to remove its support for WikiLeaks, which moved some or all of its website and related files to Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service after it suffered a “distributed denial of service” attack by unknown parties.
It’s not clear whether Senator Lieberman’s remarks were solely responsible for Amazon’s decision, but the senator said in a statement the company had informed his staff Wednesday morning it was no longer hosting the website, and that he wished Amazon “had taken this action earlier.” The senator added that the release of classified diplomatic cables was illegal and outrageous, and that this had “compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world.” Lieberman said he was going to ask Amazon about “the extent of its relationship with WikiLeaks,” and what the company planned to do in the future to prevent being used in a similar way to host illegal material.
On Wednesday afternoon, WikiLeaks posted a comment on Twitter saying that its servers at Amazon had been “ousted,” and that its money would now be spent “to employ people in Europe,” suggesting that its website had been moved back to a hosting service outside the U.S. The organization, which has come under fire for hosting classified documents belonging to the American government — including videotapes related to attacks on civilians in Iraq — later posted a message saying that “If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”
WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told Reuters that he was unaware of the latest situation on servers, but that the organization had “ways and means to bypass any closure of our services.” A number of prominent members of the technology industry criticized the move by Amazon, including SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha — who called the decision “disappointing” in a Twitter message — and Dan Gillmor of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, who said the decision showed a “lack of spine.”
It’s worth noting that the U.S. State Department reached out to Twitter during the Iran protests last year, and asked the micro-blogging network to postpone some work that would have taken the network down, since it was such an important way of getting information out about the military action in that country. But when it comes to information about political matters involving the U.S. itself, the government seems more than happy to do whatever it takes to take certain things offline.
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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user New Media Days
