Julian Assange answers questions from Guardian readers

guardian.co.uk

29 pointskaiwen14 comments

this was one of his most interesting responses:

"Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases."

I thought that was interesting too. I'm not sure I believe it though. It seems more likely to me that they made up this story after they were kicked off.

Distinctly possible. But this kind of testing would be consistent with his overall philosophy. And it worked out great for them to be kicked off: they were able to rehost quickly, got a lot of publicity, and a lot of people who care more about free speech than the specifics of cables are now more energized.

EDIT: I was surprised to see the parent downvoted (although it's since recovered). Maybe he's right, maybe not, but it's certainly worth discussing -- so the comment adds value to the discussion.

Considering how only part of the total WikiLeaks web presence was moved to AWS it seems likely that at least suspected Amazon would take them down.

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