

Amazon no longer hosts wikileaks - credo
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131730912/wikileaks-leaves-amazon-host-servers

======
RiderOfGiraffes
Choose your news source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959697> \- techdirt.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959655> \- cnn.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959633> \- arstechnica.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959607> \- bgr.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959335> \- npr.org

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959328> \- guardian.co.uk

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959308> \- readwriteweb.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959305> \- reuters.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959257> \- techcrunch.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959142> \- foxnews.com

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drawkbox
This was a bad move on Amazon's part. We expect Joe Lieberman to be a horror.

But doesn't this put fear into cloud service users that their stuff can be
yanked at any time? Kinda of a Godaddy/nodaddy type situation? (I use both
Amazon (EC2) and Godaddy (domains) products)

Granted this was a pretty big case but I think situations like this either
affirm or enhance trust in a third party platform/provider. If Amazon had
relented and kept hosting, it would have spoke volumes on customer dedication.

Of course they probably didn't like the DDoS attacks constantly.

It wasn't wikileaks that did the actions or stole the information. They just
posted it. In this day and age of tepid media for profit and intertwined news
organizations with gov't/business, real news like wikileaks is needed.

This is an attack on the messenger.

~~~
potatolicious
Note: I _generally_ agree with the leaking of relevant government data to
expose abuses.

> _"But doesn't this put fear into cloud service users that their stuff can be
> yanked at any time?"_

Not really. Illegal content _already_ puts you at risk of getting yanked at
any time. If you were hosting pirated material or anything else that is
illegal in the jurisdiction of the host, it _can_ be yanked.

This is not a judgment on whether or not said content ought to be illegal, but
rather a simple statement that nothing has changed.

That being said, I am uncomfortable with this sort of thing having no set
procedure, and being instigated/pressured upon by government officials. We
have a clear process for DMCA takedowns, and likewise a request to remove
illegal information needs to come from law enforcement within their
jurisdiction, and not from self-interested politicians.

~~~
michaelchisari
Do we have a clear declaration that this content is illegal? I wasn't aware we
did.

~~~
stonemetal
They at least have copyright infringement, and could probably get a big enough
fine to shut down wikileaks.

~~~
jackvalentine
US (federal) Government documents are not entitled to copyright protection
within America.

<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105>

~~~
stonemetal
That depends on how much of the data is strictly government property. If any
of it is was written by contractors, etc. it may still have that avenue.

~~~
michaelchisari
Any work derived by government contract is also not covered by copyright.

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ilconsigliere
It's being reported that the US gov (read: Joe Lieberman) pressured Amazon to
stop hosting the site.

Here is a more thorough update on this situation:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-
websit...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-
cables-servers-amazon)

~~~
vaksel
government censorship of dissenters...China would be proud.

this is actually pretty stupid on their part, it's the equivalent of locking
the barn after the animals escaped.

~~~
tptacek
Joe Lieberman can call for whatever he wants. It's his right under the First
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

A Senator calling for a web host to take down a site no more constitutes
"government censorship" than a Senator calling for pickles not to be put on
hamburgers constitutes "food and drug regulation". Down with Wikileaks! Down
with pickles!

The Constitution simply does not give individual Senators the power to censor
websites, or, for that matter, all Senators en masse the power to circumvent
the Constitution without having that action overturned by SCOTUS.

China would be embarrassed --- perhaps murderously --- if its censorship
apparatus was this much of a Rube Goldberg contraption.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
As a simple counter-example, imagine if a sitting US Senator advised the
public not to do business with black people. It can be hard to distinguish the
personal opinions of a government official from the edicts of his office.

~~~
tptacek
I don't see the parallel; calling for people not to do business with black
people is absolutely indefensible; Lieberman would have a civil right to do
so, but might also be impeached as a result.

~~~
Delphiza
What about French people? Remember "Freedom Fries"?

~~~
tptacek
Are you seriously suggesting that "Freedom Fries" is as serious as an open
appeal to racism? You can have the last word; I'm done here.

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darrenkopp
While unfortunate, I don't necessarily fault Amazon here. Amazon is a shopping
website first, cloud computing platform second. I do find Joe Lieberman
calling for a boycott of an American company reprehensible though.

~~~
felixmar
But it does show the Achilles heel of cloud computing. Is it wise to depend on
3 American companies that have other interests to protect? The potential cloud
computing oligopoly could be bad for freedom and openness on the net.

~~~
benatkin
The vagueness of the term "cloud" could help the cloud oligopolists. There
could be hundreds of so-called clouds, with all but a few of them being
brokers for the real cloud service providers. Then it would take a couple
sentences to point out the situation. Not good. :(

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SageRaven
Is there an official way to mirror wikileaks data, just to help in the event
the public internet presence (they're also available on .onion, iirc) is
somehow taken down? I have the cryptic "insurance.aes256" file from earlier
this year, but is there any way normal users can help back up readble parts of
wikileaks?

~~~
AndyKelley
<http://213.251.145.96/mass-mirror.html>

That IP address is just wikileaks - the DNS is down for me currently is all.

------
danhak
This is truly fascinating. I wonder to what extent things would have played
out differently were there not the looming threat of a boycott during the
holiday shopping season.

~~~
dtf
And to think I wrote this less than 14 hours ago, trying to sound all ominous
and dramatic:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957467>

:-)

------
marcamillion
This scenario is where my previously discussed startup idea would do really
well - if someone could pull it off -
[http://marcgayle.com/2010/01/08/a-legal-botnet-billion-
dolla...](http://marcgayle.com/2010/01/08/a-legal-botnet-billion-dollar-
startup-idea)

A completely distributed web host, hosted on people's machines. A lot more
difficult to shut down (although, I guess if enough government pressure was
put on some local chokepoint, it could be a problem). But if it was designed
in such a way, as to mitigate these issues - it could be very powerful....imho
that is :)

~~~
QE2
Freenet is basically what you describe, and it's free.

~~~
marcamillion
That's very interesting. Thanks for that link. Will look into it.

I was more thinking of a commercial product/platform that could be used for a
variety of reasons.

So what is the only anti-dote to a DDOS right now? A bigger pipe...no?

Well imagine having a service that you can 'spin up' any number of
nodes/machines to intercept all those packets. I am not sure how the economics
would work, but in order for it to be a good service with good support it
would have to be commercial - not an open source project.

The only issue with that is that if there is one company, it makes it easier
for major governments to try and get their hands on it. So for WikiLeaks case,
it might not be completely helpful, but imagine the many other cases where
popular/large sites are hit by constant DDOSs. I think there could be
significant use there. Especially as high-speed & fibre connections become
more prevalent and latency (around the world) comes down even further than it
has over the years.

Just my $0.02.

------
c2
The lack of an official response from Amazon is telling. I wonder if DHS just
gave Amazon an ultimatum along the lines of host wikileaks and we'll raid your
servers. (Also the DHS/Amazon communication, if there was any, is probably
classified so Amazon can't even mention it).

Our government has come a long way since 2000.

------
rwhitman
I think the only way wikileaks can stay alive over the long term is probably
through torrents, the combo punch of govn't takedowns and constant DDoS
attacks probably doesn't make hosting a website feasible. It would make more
sense to release it in digest as a torrent, right?

------
tybris
Everyone appears to be assuming it's for political reasons. Quite possible,
but it doesn't seem like there was any serious pressure so far and there could
be lots of other reasons. ("Hey, our shared infrastructure is being DoS-ed
because of you")

------
siglesias
I feel sorry for Amazon lately, thrust into Catch 22s left and right. I'm
guessing that in addition to political concerns hosting Wikileaks would put a
huge target on their backs from cyber attackers. That's probably the
additional justification they needed to make this call.

------
cagenut
so is amazon going to even attempt to frame this as a terms-of-service
violation? not a peep so far.

~~~
celoyd
Like most hosting TOSes, theirs is written so they can boot you if they find
you inconvenient, without a specific violation on your part. They say they can
terminate service when (among other possibly applicable points):

 _we determine, in our sole discretion, that our provision of any of the
Services to you is prohibited by applicable law, or has become impractical or
unfeasible for any legal or regulatory reason_

— <http://aws.amazon.com/agreement/> 3.4.1 (viii)

They would have a fair point that, even if it isn’t illegal, dealing with an
investigation and bad publicity isn’t worth their time.

For what it’s worth, I certainly wish they stood up at least until they were
under specific legal threat. But they never advertised themselves as a data
haven.

