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Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks 2010-12-02 09:29:05 Let me first say I don't know the impact of Julian Assange's constant publishing of secret documents. Of course, I don't know the impact of the New York Times or the Guardian reporting on the materials he releases. Maybe he's put people in danger, maybe he's making the world a better place. But I do know he hasn't been charged with a crime yet (other than the unrelated questioning about his sexual activities with two Swedish women). WikiLeaks, in case you missed it, publishes these secret documents on the web for anyone to read -- not just the established media or the For Your Eyes Only government officials the documents were intended for. They've been hosted on Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) servers, just like lots of other companies, big and small. Amazon decided to cut off WikiLeaks account yesterday without comment. Apparently they were getting phone calls from Senator Joe Lieberman (yeah, that Joe Lieberman) who happens to be the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Now, I wouldn't want to be in Amazon's shoes, but, my basic opinion is that if WikiLeaks hasn't been charged with a crime, then Amazon shouldn't turn off the account. Granted, the entire cloud has come under Denial of Service attacks, and there could be other, legitimate reasons for Amazon to shut off the site, but they should give that good reason. The Internet isn't the Wild West -- it's a big infrastructure that a few very large corporations control. It's built on trust that, so long as we aren't breaking any laws, that everything is left up to technology and not politics. As more of our businesses rely on the few, large cloud companies like Amazon, Google and Rackspace, the more important it is to know that my website won't be at risk of being shut down because a senator gets a bee up his butt and makes a threatening phone call. Use due process -- issue warrants and injunctions. But intimidation and arbitrary corporate decisions sounds like a threat to our national security, and therefore democracy in this country, even if that's what you say you're trying to protect. 
David Jacobs: Re: Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks 2010-12-02 09:40:13 I'll agree with you on threatening phone calls from senator's and Lieberman is a real piece of work but businesses like Amazon have aright to do business with whom they wish. WikiLeaks founder is now wanted by Interpol. I don't think Amazon wants to be anywhere near this firestorm, Lieberman or not. Michael Bissell: Re: David Jacobs 2010-12-02 09:44:47 Of course you can choose who you do business with -- before you engage with them. This is why we have contracts. Cloud environments are becoming more important, and there really aren't a lot of options. If my website can be dropped simply because they "don't like it" then we're in a dangerous area of censorship. If, however, I clearly violate the terms of service for my contract with my provider, then they can, and should, cut me off. Part of my problem is that, from what I can tell, they haven't given any reason for shutting off WikiLeaks -- nothing to the organization itself and no comment to the press. Makes it harder to judge what's really going on. David Jacobs: Re: Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks 2010-12-02 11:10:10 We could go back and forth for awhile on the political aspects of this, so I'll skip it and move on to the really interesting and more important part of your comments which is the dependent situation cloud services puts companies in . When you're outsourcing a major part of your inner workings out you certainly have to be pretty careful. But WikiLeaks has always been questionable businesses that, no doubt, Amazon probably should have strayed away from but also WikiLeaks should have known if the temperature got too hot, Amazon, being a very mainstream business, was going to have to bail. Russell Gilman-Hunt: Re: Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks 2010-12-02 13:48:33 I agree. From a technical and a business viewpoint, it makes me less likely to consider AWS services for a webserver. |
About the Author:
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Past Postings:
Using Dissent To Enhance Your Social Influence Online
Industry Profile - Author
Industry Profiles – Full Time Employees - Professional Writer
Some Thoughts On Freelancing
Building Your Online Brand
Marissa Mayer and the Change in Yahoo's Remote Workforce
LinkedIn for Professional Writers
Fake Republican Twitter Accounts
"Did you mean?" -- Google's chiding nanny of search results
Branded Technology
Sharingspree.com -- Stealing more than GroupOn's Idea
The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
Violated by Madison Avenue
Google+ Scares Me
"We need to..." Internet Marketing Myths
Facebook's deal with the Devil
My cool new phone is a little too cool.
You are never alone
Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
Publishing Industry Watch
Content for Social Media
Social Media Slot Machine
Anonymous vs Me
News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
The Demand For The Loss of Creativity
Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
Time for a New Reality
The Death of Email
Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
The Superpowers of the Hive Mind
Time for New Ideas
Comcast, Netflix and the Mystery of the Modem
The Great Technical Disconnect
New for the Sake of New
A Retail Store Built Like the Web
Disposable Personas
When did Google Start Policing the Internet?
Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
Inspecting my Navel Base
A shoebox vs. an online backup
Is Your "Resume" Website Recruiter-friendly?
iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
The Failure of Success
The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
Time lost on Twitter
Client Vendor Relationships
Twitter's back alleys and dark places
Social Media is NOT Advertising
Microsoft Courier
Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
The volume of screens
Logorama
Google Adds Biking Directions to Maps
Transmedia
That magical little tablet
How your website can be in two places at once
Masterpieces created by sheer volume
Suing over lack of originality
A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
Checking my messages
Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
So many accounts, so few passwords
Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
The Twit Cleaner
Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
The Emotions of Text
The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
The Internet is the New 60's
Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
Social Media and the Destruction of the World
Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
You can't buy social media
A book unopened is but a block of paper
Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
Archiving Twitter
Too Many Toolbars
Random Censorship with Google Adwords
Accessibility and Shopping Online
Twisted path to customer service
Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
Twollow and other gold rush scripts
GPS in a Laptop computer
Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
It's not the corporations, damnit
Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
Socializing is more than Social Media
Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
The Internet is Gooder than Books
Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
Best Twitter Branding Campaign
Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
iPhone SMS Security Hole
How Flipmytweet works
Cell Phones as Microscopes
Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
Automatic Social [un]Awareness
New York, New York
First splash for United Against Malaria
New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
Understanding Google To Get Your Resume Noticed
Made it to SXSW in Austin
The trouble with Wordpress and other templates
Wayward Words with Baggage
Speaking at SXSW March 17th
The fleeting Memory of the Internet
It's okay to say 'I don't know'
Good Morning America, now Go Fight Traffic
More surreality in Portland
Nike Takes Over Conquent
Facebook owns this title
Excuses, excuses
A little on Social Media
Feeding on Content
Attack of the Bots
Irish Music in Oregon City
Landing on an Aircraft Carrier
Got Curry? And some bizarre art?
Web 1.0
Random Music and Random Life in Portland
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump
Flight Simulator
Cold night, hot fire, happy cat
Net Neutrality
Walking to work in the snow
A window into Moreland of the Past
Getting clever with data feeds
Big and Little Beirut
The Other Credit Crisis
The Broadband Inauguration
T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
Reflections on my DC Trip
Born Again American
30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
The wall of pissing
National Treasure/National Archives
My trip to DC so far
Everyone is insane
Getting ready for DC
The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
The Very Model of a Modern Major General
Browser Bigotry
The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
Race to Witch Mountain
The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
Is PayPal Tacky?
Old School Web Design Still Works
Domain Squatting
Christmas Fire
Green Chri$tma$
QA 101
Portland Snow
Get some return on that web traffic
I think they have a backup...
I'd love to have that problem
The [un]importance of statistics
Don't be a tool of viral marketing
CAT Scan!
Follow up to the shoulder injury
Emails, discussions, blogs, wiki and web content
Ironic Injury
On the Santa Monica Pier
You Designed for Print First
You let someone else register your domain name
You figured .biz, .info, .us would work fine
What's after the Integrated Circuit?
Intelligent life is out there (but it's bugger all down here on earth)
Subject Matter Experts Talking Other Subject Matter
The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
Oversimplifying how people work
crowdSPRING
Creative Services for the New World
Reverse Anthropomorphism
The End of Time
Oil prices and birdsong
Watching Starship Troopers AGAIN!
Better Living Through Twitter
Lessons Learned From Apple
It's the Brand, Baby
Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
On Truth
You can't build life
Accidentally Drunk in Portland
Al Gore the Winner
Intelligent life is out there (but it’s bugger all down here on earth)
Aussie Rules Football
Trip to Nostalgia Land
I am such an idiot
Long day of travel
Miami -- as far from Portland as you can go in the US
Inverse Peter Principle
Random Knowledge
I'm fascinated with modern plumbing
Leaving Seattle (or why you should keep your ticket close)
On the Rails
The Hive
RSS for this blog
With a career that has spanned advertising, production, technical services, and project management, Michael is able to articulate the wide range skills and professions that make the Internet work. This eclectic understanding and his desire to shine the light on those hiding behind techno babble has brought success to a wide range of projects.
Twitter @bissellLinked In
Past Postings:
Using Dissent To Enhance Your Social Influence Online
Industry Profile - Author
Industry Profiles – Full Time Employees - Professional Writer
Some Thoughts On Freelancing
Building Your Online Brand
Marissa Mayer and the Change in Yahoo's Remote Workforce
LinkedIn for Professional Writers
Fake Republican Twitter Accounts
"Did you mean?" -- Google's chiding nanny of search results
Branded Technology
Sharingspree.com -- Stealing more than GroupOn's Idea
The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
Violated by Madison Avenue
Google+ Scares Me
"We need to..." Internet Marketing Myths
Facebook's deal with the Devil
My cool new phone is a little too cool.
You are never alone
Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
Publishing Industry Watch
Content for Social Media
Social Media Slot Machine
Anonymous vs Me
News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
The Demand For The Loss of Creativity
Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
Time for a New Reality
The Death of Email
Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
The Superpowers of the Hive Mind
Time for New Ideas
Comcast, Netflix and the Mystery of the Modem
The Great Technical Disconnect
New for the Sake of New
A Retail Store Built Like the Web
Disposable Personas
When did Google Start Policing the Internet?
Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
Inspecting my Navel Base
A shoebox vs. an online backup
Is Your "Resume" Website Recruiter-friendly?
iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
The Failure of Success
The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
Time lost on Twitter
Client Vendor Relationships
Twitter's back alleys and dark places
Social Media is NOT Advertising
Microsoft Courier
Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
The volume of screens
Logorama
Google Adds Biking Directions to Maps
Transmedia
That magical little tablet
How your website can be in two places at once
Masterpieces created by sheer volume
Suing over lack of originality
A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
Checking my messages
Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
So many accounts, so few passwords
Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
The Twit Cleaner
Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
The Emotions of Text
The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
The Internet is the New 60's
Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
Social Media and the Destruction of the World
Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
You can't buy social media
A book unopened is but a block of paper
Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
Archiving Twitter
Too Many Toolbars
Random Censorship with Google Adwords
Accessibility and Shopping Online
Twisted path to customer service
Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
Twollow and other gold rush scripts
GPS in a Laptop computer
Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
It's not the corporations, damnit
Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
Socializing is more than Social Media
Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
The Internet is Gooder than Books
Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
Best Twitter Branding Campaign
Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
iPhone SMS Security Hole
How Flipmytweet works
Cell Phones as Microscopes
Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
Automatic Social [un]Awareness
New York, New York
First splash for United Against Malaria
New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
Understanding Google To Get Your Resume Noticed
Made it to SXSW in Austin
The trouble with Wordpress and other templates
Wayward Words with Baggage
Speaking at SXSW March 17th
The fleeting Memory of the Internet
It's okay to say 'I don't know'
Good Morning America, now Go Fight Traffic
More surreality in Portland
Nike Takes Over Conquent
Facebook owns this title
Excuses, excuses
A little on Social Media
Feeding on Content
Attack of the Bots
Irish Music in Oregon City
Landing on an Aircraft Carrier
Got Curry? And some bizarre art?
Web 1.0
Random Music and Random Life in Portland
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump
Flight Simulator
Cold night, hot fire, happy cat
Net Neutrality
Walking to work in the snow
A window into Moreland of the Past
Getting clever with data feeds
Big and Little Beirut
The Other Credit Crisis
The Broadband Inauguration
T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
Reflections on my DC Trip
Born Again American
30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
The wall of pissing
National Treasure/National Archives
My trip to DC so far
Everyone is insane
Getting ready for DC
The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
The Very Model of a Modern Major General
Browser Bigotry
The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
Race to Witch Mountain
The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
Is PayPal Tacky?
Old School Web Design Still Works
Domain Squatting
Christmas Fire
Green Chri$tma$
QA 101
Portland Snow
Get some return on that web traffic
I think they have a backup...
I'd love to have that problem
The [un]importance of statistics
Don't be a tool of viral marketing
CAT Scan!
Follow up to the shoulder injury
Emails, discussions, blogs, wiki and web content
Ironic Injury
On the Santa Monica Pier
You Designed for Print First
You let someone else register your domain name
You figured .biz, .info, .us would work fine
What's after the Integrated Circuit?
Intelligent life is out there (but it's bugger all down here on earth)
Subject Matter Experts Talking Other Subject Matter
The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
Oversimplifying how people work
crowdSPRING
Creative Services for the New World
Reverse Anthropomorphism
The End of Time
Oil prices and birdsong
Watching Starship Troopers AGAIN!
Better Living Through Twitter
Lessons Learned From Apple
It's the Brand, Baby
Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
On Truth
You can't build life
Accidentally Drunk in Portland
Al Gore the Winner
Intelligent life is out there (but it’s bugger all down here on earth)
Aussie Rules Football
Trip to Nostalgia Land
I am such an idiot
Long day of travel
Miami -- as far from Portland as you can go in the US
Inverse Peter Principle
Random Knowledge
I'm fascinated with modern plumbing
Leaving Seattle (or why you should keep your ticket close)
On the Rails
The Hive
RSS for this blog