Amazon crushes free speech and we’re watching

This is a disgrace and shows the utterly spinelessness of some in corporate America. We will not forget:

The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure.

The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the US and Europe on Wednesday, as Amazon servers refused to acknowledge requests for data.

The plug was pulled as the influential senator and chairman of the homeland security committee, Joe Lieberman, called for a boycott of the site by US companies.

“[Amazon’s] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material,” he said.

“I call on any other company or organisation that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.”

The department of homeland security confirmed Amazon’s move, referring journalists to Lieberman’s statement.

WikiLeaks tweeted in response: “WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free – fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.”

The development came amid increasingly angry and polarised political opinion in America over WikiLeaks, with some conservatives calling for the organisation’s founder, Julian Assange, to be executed as a spy. Availability of his website has been patchy since Sunday, when it started to come under a series of internet-based attacks by unknown hackers. WikiLeaks dealt with the attacks in part by moving to servers run by Amazon Web Services, which is self-service.

Amazon.com would not comment on its relationship with WikiLeaks or whether it forced the site to leave. Messages seeking comment from WikiLeaks were not immediately returned.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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