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. |