I've been trying to avoid Amazon since they censored Wikileaks with a single phone call from a politician. I'll never forgive them for that. The fact that they're working with the CIA now just adds to the pile of reasons to dislike them.
Will history make a difference between IBM selling mainframes to Nazis to help their holocaust and Amazon selling servers to the CIA to help them assassinate people around the world and plan state coups? Maybe not quite on the same level, but pretty damn close.
This isn't the UK; it is not a violation of US law to publish classified information; the violation is when a person with legitimate access to classified information disseminates it to an unauthorized person (see, e.g., 18 USC § 798).
To date, the closest the US government has come to prosecuting a publisher was the attempt in the Pentagon Papers case to enjoin publication; SCOTUS struck down the effort, calling prior restraint "the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." USG has not been anxious to go after publishers since then.
For example, State counsel Harold Koh, in a letter to Wikileaks demanding the removal of unredacted classified information, noted that the materials "were provided in violation of U.S. law ... As long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing." (Emph original.)
Koh did not state that WikiLeaks was violating US law, but that the person who provided the documents (Manning) had done so, and that the offense was a continuing one. He did not charge Wikileaks, or any of its members, with having broken the law, only that their source was continuing to do so.
There is no case law regarding whether USG can convict a publisher for obtaining classified material, but similar cases (e.g., Bartnicki v. Vopper) suggest that this would be difficult.
Having said that, the Obama administration has been historically aggressive in prosecuting leakers, including naming a journalist (FOX News reporter James Rosen) as an unindicted co-conspirator for receiving classified information from a State source.
If AMZN was talked into dropping Wikileaks, it wasn't because of criminal activity by the publisher; it was because of political pressure from the administration. Not the same thing.
Publishing classified information is legal. Otherwise the editorial team of NYTimes would have gone to jail lots of times. It is the leaking of the information that is illegal IIRC
There have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate.
There have also been reports that it was prompted by massive DDOS attacks. That too is inaccurate. There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, 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. Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.
We’ve been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. Some of this data is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.
We look forward to continuing to serve our AWS customers and are excited about several new things we have coming your way in the next few months.
Will history make a difference between IBM selling mainframes to Nazis to help their holocaust and Amazon selling servers to the CIA to help them assassinate people around the world and plan state coups? Maybe not quite on the same level, but pretty damn close.