Amazon discontinues WikiLeaks hosting

[kilobits]

"Yes we can"

* sigh *

The more things change, the more they stay the same....

 

[G8crasha]

I'm a journalist by trade, so I'm a firm supporter of WikiLeaks. If information is that classified, they should have put protocols in place far sooner to prevent this leak. WikiLeaks can't publish some information and not other information as their reputation will be damaged, defeating the principles behind the site. I wish WikiLeaks all the best, and Good Luck!

 

[BCR]

The Americans are full of contradictions & hypocracy.

In one breath they're keen to say they live in the ''greatest democracy in the world'', and then do a complete u-turn when they suddenly feel threatened & their failings are revealed (to the world at large).

To Lieberman & Co., your country is slowly being devoured from the inside-out due to national debt / deficit. Hopefully this will become more of a worry for you all in years-to-come than controlling a so-called ''free press''.
I only wonder why the NY Times (which is involved in publishing the leaks made available by WikiL.) aren't being targeted by the politicians ?

 

[nivek]

Damn, oh well, Amazon was just hosting them to boost popularity for the service, it was pretty much free hosting. I am sure they also stole some data they were hosting and have returned it back to the US/Europe.

WikiLeaks needs to get get hosted over in N.Korea or these super independent countries, heck, he might as well try hosting in Zimbabwe!

Yeah, that way a DDoS will take down the entire country heck, you'd probably be able to take it down by yourself from a 10Mb telkom ADSL line

 

[Plaasjapie]

Well done Amazon.

You can't be serious ?!

This is a loss for freedom of speech and most of what the internet stands for. Do yourself a favour and go and read the Forbes interview with Julian Asange, founder of Wikileaks.

The USA is doing the same here of what the SA government want to do with freedom of press bill, or whatever it is called.

 

[Plaasjapie]

Barack Obama, 21 January 2009:

"But the way to make a government responsible is not simply to enlist the services of responsible men and women, or to sign laws that ensure that they never stray. The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they're being made, and whether their interests are being well served.

The directives I am giving my administration today on how to interpret the Freedom of Information Act will do just that. For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press...ior-staff-and-cabinet-secretaries-white-house

++ 1 !!

 

[davemc]

Epic post Rustum.
Applawse!

 

[Knyro]

Bad form Amazon, allowing yourself to be bullied by "the man". Wikileaks is awesome, the whole concept of spying on each other, wars etc. is very silly and a waste of time, money and life. The whole "national security" BS is the same excuse they use for pretty much doing whatever they want. Welcome to the United Police States of America.

I see Julian Assange is now one of Interpol's most wanted for "sex crimes", what an amazing coincidence.

Julian Assange FTW

 

[w1z4rd]

I'm a journalist by trade, so I'm a firm supporter of WikiLeaks. If information is that classified, they should have put protocols in place far sooner to prevent this leak. WikiLeaks can't publish some information and not other information as their reputation will be damaged, defeating the principles behind the site. I wish WikiLeaks all the best, and Good Luck!

Its good to see good people out there. So many people in this forum are dodgy and dont see how important the site is. For some reason almost all of them are conservatives and conservatives are well known for voting against their own best interests.... so I guess thats why they are being so stupid.

 

[magneto]

Damn, oh well, Amazon was just hosting them to boost popularity for the service, it was pretty much free hosting. I am sure they also stole some data they were hosting and have returned it back to the US/Europe.

WikiLeaks needs to get get hosted over in N.Korea or these super independent countries, heck, he might as well try hosting in Zimbabwe!

LOL , i can see it now. it will be moved to a bulletproof hosting provider in asia or russia.
might want to grab a copy of insurance.aes256 file floating around

 

[sutekj]

Hmmm, is it just me or is there something fishy when a hacker all of a sudden decides to do a DDOs attack on a site that hurts the US more than any other country?

Wouldn't it be really easy for American ISPs to DDoS attack a site? Or to fake a DDoS attack?

 

[sutekj]

Amazon - some things are just not supposed to be known to ohers - like your ex girlfriends to your wife...

That analogy is bull****. This is not idle gossip. They are public servants on the job. They can't expect privacy while serving the public and getting paid to serve the public.

 

[Plaasjapie]

Why Wikileaks matters:

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Everyone should stand for the truth.

 

[LazyLion]

WikiLeaks accuses 'cowardly' Amazon of lying

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101203/tc_afp/usdiplomacywikileaksinternetamazon

WASHINGTON (AFP) – WikiLeaks, battling to remain online after sparking an international furor with its release of secret US cables, accused Amazon on Friday of cowardice for booting the website off its servers.

The Seattle-based Amazon, meanwhile, broke days of silence and provided its first public explanation of its decision to withdraw its Web-hosting services from WikiLeaks.org.

Amazon Web Services, in a statement, said it cut off WikiLeaks because it had violated the company's terms of service and not because of any government pressure.

WikiLeaks fired back with a message on its Twitter feed. "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it," it said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said WikiLeaks had deliberately chosen to place servers "in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit in order to separate rhetoric from reality."

"Amazon was one of these cases," Assange said in a question and answer session with readers on The Guardian newspaper's website.

Amazon is best known as an online retailer but it is also a major provider of Web-hosting services, renting out space on its computer servers to customers around the world.

In its statement, Amazon said "there have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate."

"There have also been reports that it was prompted by massive DDoS attacks," the company said in a reference to distributed denial of service attacks on the WikiLeaks website.

"That too is inaccurate," Amazon said. "There were indeed large-scale DDoS attacks, but they were successfully defended against."

DDoS attacks occur when legions of zombie computers, machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, slowing it down or crashing it completely.

EveryDNS.net, the US domain name system service that had been sending traffic to WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug on the website late on Thursday, saying the cyberattacks were threatening its 500,000 other clients.

Another US company, Tableau Software, cut off WikiLeaks on Wednesday citing a violation of its terms of service. Tableau Software was being used by WikiLeaks to create charts of its cache of secret US diplomatic cables.

Tableau Software said the move was in response to a call from US Senator Joe Lieberman, who said "no responsible company -- whether American or foreign -- should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

Amazon Web Services said it does not pre-screen its customers "but it does have terms of service that must be followed.

"WikiLeaks was not following them," it said.

Amazon's terms state that customers must "control all of the rights to the content" stored on its servers and that the content "will not cause injury to any person or entity."

"It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content," Amazon said.

"Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy," the company said.

Some of the data stored by customers on Amazon's servers is controversial "and that's perfectly fine," the company said.

"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," Amazon said.

WikiLeaks was offline for several hours after EveryDNS.net withdrew its services but reappeared on Friday with a Swiss domain name, WikiLeaks.ch.

WikiLeaks.ch only remained online for a few hours, however, forcing WikiLeaks to launch new addresses in the Netherlands, Germany and Finland: wikileaks.nl, wilileaks.de and wikileaks.fi.

Well done Amazon. You took the right stand on this one.

 

[Gatecrasher]

I trust EveryDNS.net will be changing their name to EveryDNSButOne.net to avoid misrepresentation.

 

[Plaasjapie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101203/tc_afp/usdiplomacywikileaksinternetamazon



Well done Amazon. You took the right stand on this one.

Oh please Gary, ! Tell us all how old are you? Stop being so naive ...

 

[HavocXphere]

All the poll options are rubbish.

Amazon removed illegally obtained material from their servers. Their terms clearly state that you need rights/permission to the stuff you host there. They have little reason to risk it. And the brownie points with the politicians don't hurt either.

The entire Amazon story is just noise. Wikileaks has a dozen or so servers and multiple URLs....its not going anywhere. And the website itself is only really necessary for submitting documents. Spreading them can be done via bittorrent & streisand effect.

They should just (if they haven't already) create torrents for the files.. That would be the easiest I think.. What better way to achieve continual distribution of the materials..

They're a step ahead of you...actually two steps. The cables were on torrents from the start. They also have another encrypted torrent with more (different) info that requires a password as an insurance policy.

 

[Vrotappel]

Amazon is a business and took the decision that is the best for the business.

 

[LazyLion]

Oh please Gary, ! Tell us all how old are you? Stop being so naive ...

Not nearly as naive as all the sheep who are swallowing all the crap hook line and sinker.
I have no problem with the existence of an organisation like Wikileaks.
But I have a major problem with the way this was done and that idiot AssAngel and how he behaves like a CockRooster in public.
I wish someone would take the idiot out just so I don't have to see his snarky expression on his gob every day in the papers.

 

[bk.ru]

But I have a major problem with the way this was done and that idiot AssAngel and how he behaves like a CockRooster in public.

Really? When? Could you give us links to watch video to justify such an insane position? The Julian I see is someone intent on doing good, who is soft spoken and generally chooses his words slowly and carefully. Perhaps you can show us some youtube links ( I assume there must be a lot for you to have such an acidic personal reaction that you feel the need to constantly belittle his character)? They wont be recent as he has not being seen in public recently because he is specifically trying to avoid what you are accusing him of.

I wish someone would take the idiot out just so I don't have to see his snarky expression on his gob every day in the papers.

You sound like you have a very personal vendetta against a gentle and soft spoken guy who has more balls and integrity than anyone in this thread.