[governance] WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US homeland security pressure

[Guru गुरु]

It seems that FOE is to be selectively applied / prescribed for the rest 
of the world.

regards,
Guru

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-cables-servers-amazon#cablegate

WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US homeland security pressure

Site hosting leaked US embassy cables is ousted from American servers
as senator calls for boycott of WikiLeaks by companies

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 December 2010 19.59 GMT

WikiLeaks's website cablegate.wikileaks.org, which was hosted by Amazon.

The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks today 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 in a statement. "I
call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to
immediately terminate its relationship with them."

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.

The fury building up among rightwingers in the US, ranging from the
potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to
conservative blog sites such as Red State, contrasts with a measured
response from the Obama administration.

The White House, the state department and the Pentagon continued to
denounce the leaks, describing them as "despicable". But senior
administration officials, with a sense of weary resignation, also
called on people to put the leaks into context and insisted they had
not done serious damage to US relations.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, interviewed on
television, shrugged aside as "ridiculous" a call by Assange,
interviewed by Time magazine, via Skype from an undisclosed location,
for the resignation of the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, over
an order to spy on the United Nations.

"I'm not entirely sure why we care about the opinion of one guy with
one website," Gibbs said. "Our foreign policy and the interests of
this country are far stronger than his one website."

John Kerry, the Democratic head of the Senate foreign relations
committee, on Sunday denounced the leaks but he sounded more sanguine
at an event in Washington on Tuesday night.

He said there was a "silver lining" in that it was now clear where
everyone stood on Iran. "Things that I have heard from the mouths of
King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] and Hosni Mubarak [Egyptian president]
and others are now quite public," Kerry said. He went on to say there
was a "consensus on Iran".

But others, particularly rightwingers, are seeking retribution, with
Assange as the prime target. Legal experts in the US were divided over
whether the US could successfully prosecute Assange under the 1917
Espionage Act. Sceptics said that the US protections for journalists
would make such a prosecution difficult and also cited pragmatic
issues, such as the difficulty of extraditing Assange.

Huckabee, who was among the contenders for the Republican presidential
nomination in 2008 and is likely to stand again in 2012, told the
Politico website: "Whoever in our government leaked that information
is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too
kind a penalty."

His later comments suggest he had in mind Bradley Manning, the US
private in Iraq who is suspected of leaking the information and is
under arrest in Virginia, rather than Assange.

Another potential Republican candidate for the presidency, Sarah
Palin, had earlier called for Assange to be hunted down.

Conservative blogsites and commentators are full of ire directed at
Assange, and criticism of the Obama administration for its seeming
inability to do anything about it.

Typical is a blog by lexington_concord on Red State, a popular
rightwing site, in which the writers says Assange is a spy.

"Under the traditional rules of engagement he is thus subject to
summary execution and my preferred course of action would [be] for
Assange to find a small calibre round in the back of his head."

The attorney general, Eric Holder, earlier this week hinted at legal
action but did not clarify whether his words were aimed at Manning or
Assange. A department of justice spokeswoman failed to clarify this
yesterday: "He [Holder] said the department would pursue those to be
found violating the law." She added she was not commenting on the
scope or direction of the investigation.

The Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, interviewed on Fox,
suggested Holder's reference had been to Assange. Asked why the US was
not mounting a cyberattack on WikiLeaks, Morrell said the disclosures
were awkward and embarrassing but these were not sufficient grounds
for offensive action.

He referred back to comments made the previous day by the defence
secretary, Robert Gates, who attempted to put the leaks in
perspective. Gates said: "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward?
Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy: I think fairly modest."

A former defence secretary under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, echoed
Gates, saying that the information was probably not fatal. Cohen
joined the chorus calling for Assange to be prosecuted, provided he
can be found.

"He may be hiding in a cave with Osama bin Laden. We don't know where
he is but I am confident we will find him in the near future. He will
be arrested and brought to justice," Cohen said.

Ruth Wedgwood, a former federal prosecutor and Johns Hopkins law
professor, said, in an email exchange, that Assange, an Australian,
could prosecuted. "A person who steals or knowingly receives and
transmits protected national security information is not exempt from
US criminal law merely because he is foreigner. The Espionage Act has
been used to prosecute foreign defendants as well as Americans.

"Freedom of the press and the First Amendment would not shelter
someone who deliberately steals tens of thousands of closely-held
communications containing national security and defence information,
and wantonly publishes them to both friends and foes alike, with
heedless disregard for the damage that is caused."

Floyd Abrams, the constitutional expert who has argued before the
supreme court on the First Amendment, which enshrines press freedom,
was more sceptical. He said the government had a plausible case under
the Espionage Act, which is phrased very broadly.

The government had looked in 1971 at prosecution of the New York Times
over the Pentagon Papers leak and decided against. "Here I think it is
a closer call. The documents are much more current and they have the
potential to do more harm, for example the reference to the King of
Saudi Arabia urging the US to bomb Iran," Abrams said in an phone
interview.

"I think for the government it must be a close call. On the one hand,
the leaks are of such magnitude and involve topics of such sensitivity
and currency, it must be tempting to consider prosecution but on the
other hand the government would be forced to address difficult and
sensitive issues of whether a journalist could be accused of violating
the law."

He added that Assange was not a journalist but does some of the things
associated with journalism.

Another legal expert, Scott Silliman, a professor at the Duke
University School of Law, said: "A US prosecution of Assange would be
possible, but it would be fraught with problems for the government.
The applicable statute, section 793(e) of the Espionage Act, is
somewhat ambiguous when dealing with a case of this type where the
accused claims to be part of or allied with the media. Further, there
will probably be difficulties in having Assange extradited to the
United States for trial."
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