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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

I think Amazon trying to sell a mission critical service like DNS right after rolling over at the first prod from some politician (and a pretty lousy one at that) serves as a good reminder that if you want to use services from them you'd better make sure that you are not going to do anything at all that challenges the powers that be or you'll be out faster than a warrant can be served.

Service providers of all sorts should stand by their customers until a court order to the contrary is served, especially when institutions like the EFF are solidly on the side of those customers.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/amazon-and-wikileaks-fi...

Amazon releasing more critical infrastructure that can be shut-down at someone's whim is bad timing to put it very mildly.

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Amazon trying to sell a mission critical service like DNS right after rolling over at the first prod from some politician

I think it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't roll over because of Lieberman's remarks. Rather, Amazon did what they did because they thought it was the right to do: "it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy".

I understand you're passionate about this, but let's not conflate what actually happened.

They actually were pretty careful about that from what I gather, with the 5 news agencies they worked with telling them how to redact them and what to release:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/12/03/general-eu-wikilea...

You're attempting to make the argument that newspapers (most of which are not even American) can make accurate judgements about the effects of releasing US intelligence. That's a poor argument. What is it about news agencies that qualifies them to make such judgments? Compare this to the Pentagon Papers where someone with intimate knowledge of the situation decided what to leak.

Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that your original claim that Amazon rolled over because of Lieberman is false and unsubstantiated.

The American Government was given an opportunity to redact the data themselves, they refused.

> Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that your original claim that Amazon rolled over because of Lieberman is false and unsubstantiated.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/amazon/

If that's the best "proof" you have, it's not even worth discussing. Amazon explicitly denied that they booted Wikileaks because of Lieberman. Lieberman isn't even saying that either. He's claiming that his staffers, were informed by Amazon, which probably is an exaggeration.

Do you think Amazon is habitually informing staffers of any particular Senator that they booted a client off their servers ?

Sorry, but until you show me more proof than the verbal statements of one of the most corrupt US Senators, I'm not convinced it actually even happened.

If a US Senator is not good enough then I don't think I'll be able to meet your exacting standards of proof.

If the conversation was about anything else, using only the word of Joe Lieberman as proof would be a joke. I'm honestly shocked that you think my standards are exacting.

This is why Wikileaks is needed. You're so brainwashed by the current political system you're willing to take a politician's words at face value. The only way we'd know what actually happened is if someone leaked Lieberman's communications with Amazon, and Amazon's internal communications about the issue.

Where did the US gain the moral ground here, such that only US papers would be best judges? Almost everything the US does has large effects in the rest of the world. I think it's a very good thing that US media isn't in control of the story.

Did you even bother to read the post I wrote? The thrust of the argument is that no paper is the best judge. In fact, newspapers are categorically unqualified to make judgments in this case.

I agree with you that newspapers are unqualified to make judgements; that's why it's very important that the raw unedited stuff comes out eventually.

The risk with newspapers is that they publish too little, not too much, as they rely on their closeness to elites to do their job.

Are the 250,000 leaks available on their site?

The number of leaks available on the site jives nicely with the figure of 837 reddit says: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/egmiu/just_a_remi....

News agencies have had access to more cables, but that has nothing to do with the point.

Could it be that you are the one conflating what is happening? :)

Rather, Amazon did what they did because they thought it was the right to do...

Which is far worse than if they would've had succumbed to the political pressure. ISP that is also a jury to content that is not a clear case is evil.

>ISP that is also a jury to content that is not a clear case is evil.

User: Amazon, I found child pornography on one of your hosted pages. Amazon: Sorry we're not legal experts we'll keep the content until a court case delivers a verdict.

Yeah, right.

You're living in cloud cuckoo land if you believe that an ISP has to forgo all moral judgement on content and only remove or deny hosting if something is proven to be illegal.

Joe Lieberman called Amazon and said [something] to them.

Late that evening, Wikileaks was cut off.

The next day, Lieberman put out a press release: "This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’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. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."

Lieberman's spokesperson added: "Senator Lieberman hopes that what has transpired with Amazon will send a message to other companies."

The next day, Lieberman introduced a bill in Congress that would make it a Federal crime to do what Amazon was doing, hosting the Wikileaks material.

You could characterize that as "pretty clear that Amazon didn't roll over because of Lieberman", but that characterization would be utterly mendacious.

men·da·cious/menˈdāSHəs/ Adjective: Not telling the truth; lying

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