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Wikileaks hounded by U.S. politicians
Calcutta News.Net
Thursday 2nd December, 2010
The United States has stepped up pressure on Wikileaks in a move that may backfire.
Whistleblowers in the past have been lauded by high profile politicians but the grand-daddy of them all, Wikileaks, is being subjected to a scourge.
At one stage Wednesday U.S. officials indicated they were considering having the Wikileaks organization classified as a terrorist organisation.
Embarrassing leaks from the disclosure of diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world have Washington fuming. The FBI is investigating whether it can bring charges, and if they can't its likely laws will be changed to allow it to happen.
In an astonishing move Wednesday Amazon pulled the plug on its hosting servers being used by Wikileaks. Amazon has a substantial hosting business used by customers around the world and its caving-in to politial pressure is hardly likely to advance its image not only as an Internet service provider, but as the world's largest online book seller. The fact that Amazon also pulled its services without notice has not gone unnoticed by other customers, some of whom on Wednesday were calling for a boycott of the company.
Amazon in effect attempted to sabotage Wikileaks either because of its political persuasion or political pressure, and which may have legal implications. Amazon took the step it did after being requested to do so by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.
WikiLeaks was severely impacted by the move causing considerable downtime. Users often were unable to access the site at all, while at other times it was painfully slow due not only to its loss of key servers in its network but also because of the extraordinary demand due to the publicity surrounding the release of the cables, which commeced on Sunday.
Wikileaks posted a tweet on its Twitter page saying if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books."
The U.S. has been caught offguard by the backlash which sees it being compared with China which imposed censorship on Google earlier this year.
Lieberman however applauded Amazon saying the company did the right thing, and that other companies doing business with Wikileaks should follow suit.
"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. I call on any other company or organisation that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them," he said Wednesday.
While the politicians and governments may be putting the pressure on Wikileaks, the public appears to be siding with the beleagured Web site. "This certainly implicates first amendment rights to the extent that Web hosts may, based on direct or informal pressure, limit the materials the American public has a first amendment right to access," Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports internet freedom, said Wednesday.
Some Republicans were being lambasted at suggestions being made that the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, should be executed as a spy.
While many are saying the leaked cables are damaging America's national security and are putting lives at risk, there was little evidence from the cables themselves that the real damage is more in terms of embarrassment than anything else. Even administration officials on Wednesday were playing down the impact of the releases insisting they had not done serious damage to U.S. foreign relations.
That however may be more of a political ploy as the White House's disdain came through loud and clear in a press briefing by White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who in referring to a call from Wikileaks for Hillary Clinton to resign said, "I'm not entirely sure why we care about the opinion of one guy with one Web site. Our foreign policy and the interests of this country are far stronger than his one Web site."
Mike Huckabee, who was a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, and is likely to be again in 2012, was among the extremists. "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty," he told the Politico Web site.
Another potential Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012, Sarah Palin, said earlier in the week Assange should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden. As one blogster said Thuesday that should give him at least another decade of freedom.
"For goodness sake America, in Hollywood America saves the world single handed, stops bombs with its teeth and fights aliens. Surely you aren't scared of an Australian with white(ish) hair?" wrote another blogster.
Other comments included:
"That's a damn shame when a foreigner has more guts to expose corruption than our own citizens do. I'm an American and I support Wikileaks."
"I wonder how long it will be before our own government takes a page out of Chinese oppression and simply orders all ISPs to block their subscriber's access to that domain...."
"This is getting silly now. School yard tactics courtesy of the land of the free."
"I hope Wikileaks finds a new home. It's a new era and it's brilliant."
"Great! Another example offered to China, Myanmar, Pakistan, Gulf States and the likes on a silver platter of western governments in regards to free speech. The next time a third world country gets lectured on allowing free speech, guess what they will retaliate wit?"
"History will show this to be a benign event. Julian is not exposing sensitive material, he's simply letting light shine on the crap that all governments engage in."
In a country ruled by power and greed, strategic leaks are a dime-a-dozen....now someone that's not playing ball with the "power-mongers" gets penalized for doing exactly what the media and government does....does the word, "double-standards" come to mind? DC is so crooked is scary.
"It does look like boycott Amazon time, much as it breaks my heart to say so, especially with Xmas so near..."
"Clearly the First Amendment isn't all that important."
The U.S. government is fighting the truth! Apparently they are afraid of the revelations. Has the U.S.A. now become the new "Evil Empire"?
"Amazon lose nerve, will lose (if not haemorrhage) customers over this."
"Let's hope Jobs takes time off from his deal with, er, Murdoch to support this humanitarian movement. Or Google? Or the Chinese government?"
"Enlightenment - a breeding ground for terrorism, obviously. Let's fight it."
"Julian Assange must be protected at all costs.
Sites like Wikileaks are the reason why the Internet and technology must be embraced."
"meanwhile, Chinese State Officials in Beijing are shaking their heads and whispering, "hypocrites""
"Once again, The United States of America show that the world they can't play fair."
"THE TRUTH WILL OUT. OH AND THAT AMAZONS CHRISTMAS BUSINESS FROM ME SHOVED UP THEIR ARSE."
"Not 100% convinced by the Wikileaks philosophy (broadly, that all secrets are bad). But I don't see how this is a principled response from a democratic government."
"that's crazy. Are they going to censor all the other media outlets that are publishing this material?"
"time to buy my books elsewhere then... bye bye amazon."
"censorship in the name of freedom!"
"What a tremendous overreaction to this whole thing. Fess up. Admit guilt. And move on to a bigger and brighter world, realizing that it is simply not possible in modern culture to keep thousands of secrets secret forever. In the days of Atilla the Hun maybe. In the days of instant communication and ever-shrinking digital technology, never. Openness and honesty are our only option. The more we keep fighting the release of information that is true, the more it makes us look like we're hiding something. If it's false, explain way. If it's true, it's true. So far I don't hear anybody saying Wikileaks has disseminated false information. That's the irony in all this. By saying the latest rounds of leaks is endangering lives and a threat to national security, they're essentially saying that TRUTH is a danger to national security. The U.S. needs to respond by arguing the merits of the evidence, not on whether or not the evidence should have been released. If Wikileaks hadn't done it, sooner or later someone else would have."
"No surprise there. This is how liberal societies operate. When push comes to shove, they are sometimes worse than dictatorships."
"This is getting silly now. School yard tactics courtesy of the land of the free."
"Disregarding my comment at the top of the page, I want to point out that the US is in NO WAY the Land of the Free - what it is is the "Land of the Corporation influencing laws and military industrial complex" - free speech in the US may part of the constitution but it is not effective and it is also prone to revision by the right wing Republicans to control society."
"This is hardly going to be an issue for Wikileaks. If recent history is anything to go by, I would imagine that the database will be mirrored on a number of sites within 24 hours."
"Not surprised. Amazon must have been under immense pressure, though it may influence those seeking to use a cloud hosting provider in the future as they might like their Web presence not to be subject to the US government's opinion on their right to operate."
"More concerning is the right wing vitriol, particularly those calling for execution of either Assange or Manning. I can't see the Obama administration indulging these calls but it really does weaken any attempts to reason with states that use execution more routinely."
(Comments were taken from Digg.com and The Guardian newspaper (UK) - in full, and unedited).
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