Amazon Yank WikiLeaks Hosting Amid First-Amendment Furore

The WikiLeaks saga continues, with Amazon pulling the plug on the site's servers only days after the group moved their hosting to avoid ongoing DDoS attacks. According to the NYT, Amazon was forced to remove WikiLeaks' content from its S3 hosting service after the US Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee demanded the retailer explain its connection with the cable-leaking group. It's a move the WikiLeaks team is already claiming violates first amendment rights.

Instead, the group will look to hosting outside of the US for more stable uptime. While Amazon is yet to comment on the move, an indignant Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, chairman of the senate governmental affairs committee, has said that "no responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free — fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe ... If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment they should get out of the business of selling books." WikiLeaks Twitter

Among the leaked cables from the WikiLeaks trove were allegations that the Chinese government had been directly and indirectly responsible for Google hacking attempts earlier in 2010, with a team of internal and freelance computer experts breaking into accounts. A Chinese source told the US embassy in Beijing that the incidents were "part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage."