Amazon removes Wikileaks from server

[Pankaj]

Under pressure from federal lawmakers, Amazon.com on Wednesday booted WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing Web site, from its computer servers, three days after the group released a trove of embarrassing State Department cables and documents.
The move to drop WikiLeaks came shortly after members of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pressed the company to explain its relationship with WikiLeaks. The site WikiLeaks had previously been using went down for several hours after an Internet attack over the weekend, prompting the group to switch over to an Amazon host site, which rents out bandwidth and other services.

Then, on Sunday, WikiLeaks released thousands of classified government documents and sensitive diplomatic cables that humiliated the State Department and revealed sensitive U.S. assessments of foreign leaders. The Obama administration responded with outrage and set up a special committee to tighten security and evaluate the damage from the documents’ release.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that it had been dropped from its host site.

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