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> Remember when Amazon pulled the plug on Wikileaks? The classified documents being hosted on AWS were in fact illegal to do so, and thus against the AUP of AW

> Remember when Amazon pulled the plug on Wikileaks? The classified documents being hosted on AWS were in fact illegal to do so, and thus against the AUP of AWS so it was perfectly reasonable and appropriate to pull the plug. The wikileaks data dump is in no way comparable to Watergate and singular reporting and investigation of specfic illegal acts.

mathetic 13y ago
Yes it is not comparable because Wikileaks documents showed people died without any apparent reason but the States being the States is immune to crimes against humanity. If you get bombed/terrorised that's policy changing, nation wide traumatic event and a good reason to bomb the shit out of the one attacked you. If you do the same thing to another country (read plethora of countries) then you first tag the journalist who has the balls to expose you, denounce him as a criminal and then call it incomparable to your little presidential problems. I don't care much about many traits you have just displayed arrogance, ignorance and indifference being the leading ones but such ugly patriotism is perhaps the worst of all and is the leading cause of where we are now as a world. I know this is the kind of comment that will get downvoted and considering the general climate of HN it should be downvoted but some people really deserve such harsh comments because their claims written in nice and harmless language is plain offensive to all the people US decided to fuck up in their history (and that's lots and lots of people all around the world).
- bpodgursky 13y ago
  What the hell are you talking about?
  - falk 13y ago
    Wikileaks exposed that the U.S. was bombing Yemen in secret. http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/ http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/
- skrebbel 13y ago
  > I know this is the kind of comment that will get downvoted Try interpunction, you'll get significantly fewer downvotes.
- falk 13y ago
  Wikileaks really should have slowly leaked out information like the Guardian has with the Snowden documents. Even today people haven't absorbed the important information that Manning shined a light on. For example, from the Manning leaks we learned that the U.S. railed against a proposed increase in the minimum wage in Hati. It would have raised wages from 24¢ to 61¢ an hour. American corporations that take advantage of Hati for cheap labor couldn't have that. I'm looking at you Hanes and Levi Strauss. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/us-haiti-wikileaks-minimum-wage-petrocaribe/38579/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/us-haiti-wik...
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  There is a lot of rhetoric in this comment, but leaking hundreds of thousands of unveiled classified documents has nothing to do with bombing the shit out of anyone. The comment I made states it is illegal to host classified material if you aren't authorized to do so. That's it.
doctorpangloss 13y ago
The whole notion of controlling significant parts of the internet is a little ridiculous. There are plenty of legitimate AWS competitors. 99% of the software (which is all that really matters) running on those instances is open source. It's not like you have to use the PEM they generate. In fact, you could pay them to store a whole virtual machine of zeroes. They don't care. He lost me at the AWS conspiracies. Being the world's largest online retailer, and especially the largest retailer of books, is a much bigger deal.
mcv 13y ago
Exposing crimes by the government is good, no matter how illegal it is. I agree entirely with the article that Bezos' claim that he'll resist threats of being put through the wringer sound a bit hollow considering he caved to a simple request. Yes, it was perfectly legal for him to pull Wikileaks. However, that fact that he pulled Wikileaks when he didn't have to (there was no court order or anything like it), showed that he isn't the big defender of free press that he claims to be.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
btilly 13y ago
The classified documents being hosted on AWS were in fact illegal to do so, and thus against the AUP of AWS so it was perfectly reasonable and appropriate to pull the plug. If they were illegal, then what law was broken in hosting them? Remember, newspapers are in the business of getting information sent to them by people who broke rules in doing so, and then hosting/publishing/otherwise distributing said information to the public. Despite the fact that there are powerful people who do not want that to happen. And said powerful people are quick to claim that the law is on their side, whether or not it is. Examples include Watergate, The Pentagon Papers, Snowden's revelations, and (of course) Wikileaks. In every case newspapers were threatened. The wikileaks data dump is in no way comparable to Watergate and singular reporting and investigation of specfic illegal acts. So exposing one crime is OK, but exposing 1000 is not? With EVERY case there are people telling us that this case is different, and not like famous cases of the past. They are wrong. We have amnesia about how similar they, in fact, are. Take Watergate since you brought it up. The burglars were arrested June 17, 1972. Bob Woodward reported that they had connections to Howard Hunt on June 20, 1972. This began a continuous series of reporting that the country as a whole did not care about. Were you alive back then, I would be willing to bet that, like the majority that re-elected Nixon in a landslide on November 7, 1972, you would have thought that this was not an important story, and would have objected to the witchhunt. Public opinion did not begin its slide until January, 1973. (http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/wait-about-two-months-then-check-the-president-s-approval-rating-20130522 http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/wait-about-two-month... has a graph showing the shifts in approval.)
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  Yes Mannings document release was in no way at all comparable to Ellsberg. If Manning had released specific note: specific documents relating to crimes this would be a totally different story. IE: Just leaking the collateral murder video, or other specific crimes, and going through a reporter who properly vets the content is totally different that a site wide document dump. Just because you don't like one thing the government is doing does not mean you can release everything the government is doing. It is illegal to disseminate, store, transmit, etc, classified material if you aren't allowed to do so. That is the crime, and it also against the AUP and is laid out right near the beginning of the document here: http://aws.amazon.com/aup/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/

mathetic 13y ago

Yes it is not comparable because Wikileaks documents showed people died without any apparent reason but the States being the States is immune to crimes against humanity. If you get bombed/terrorised that's policy changing, nation wide traumatic event and a good reason to bomb the shit out of the one attacked you. If you do the same thing to another country (read plethora of countries) then you first tag the journalist who has the balls to expose you, denounce him as a criminal and then call it incomparable to your little presidential problems. I don't care much about many traits you have just displayed arrogance, ignorance and indifference being the leading ones but such ugly patriotism is perhaps the worst of all and is the leading cause of where we are now as a world. I know this is the kind of comment that will get downvoted and considering the general climate of HN it should be downvoted but some people really deserve such harsh comments because their claims written in nice and harmless language is plain offensive to all the people US decided to fuck up in their history (and that's lots and lots of people all around the world).

bpodgursky 13y ago
What the hell are you talking about?
- falk 13y ago
  Wikileaks exposed that the U.S. was bombing Yemen in secret. http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/ http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/
skrebbel 13y ago
> I know this is the kind of comment that will get downvoted Try interpunction, you'll get significantly fewer downvotes.
falk 13y ago
Wikileaks really should have slowly leaked out information like the Guardian has with the Snowden documents. Even today people haven't absorbed the important information that Manning shined a light on. For example, from the Manning leaks we learned that the U.S. railed against a proposed increase in the minimum wage in Hati. It would have raised wages from 24¢ to 61¢ an hour. American corporations that take advantage of Hati for cheap labor couldn't have that. I'm looking at you Hanes and Levi Strauss. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/us-haiti-wikileaks-minimum-wage-petrocaribe/38579/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/us-haiti-wik...
res0nat0r 13y ago
There is a lot of rhetoric in this comment, but leaking hundreds of thousands of unveiled classified documents has nothing to do with bombing the shit out of anyone. The comment I made states it is illegal to host classified material if you aren't authorized to do so. That's it.

doctorpangloss 13y ago

The whole notion of controlling significant parts of the internet is a little ridiculous. There are plenty of legitimate AWS competitors. 99% of the software (which is all that really matters) running on those instances is open source. It's not like you have to use the PEM they generate. In fact, you could pay them to store a whole virtual machine of zeroes. They don't care. He lost me at the AWS conspiracies. Being the world's largest online retailer, and especially the largest retailer of books, is a much bigger deal.

mcv 13y ago

Exposing crimes by the government is good, no matter how illegal it is. I agree entirely with the article that Bezos' claim that he'll resist threats of being put through the wringer sound a bit hollow considering he caved to a simple request. Yes, it was perfectly legal for him to pull Wikileaks. However, that fact that he pulled Wikileaks when he didn't have to (there was no court order or anything like it), showed that he isn't the big defender of free press that he claims to be.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

btilly 13y ago

The classified documents being hosted on AWS were in fact illegal to do so, and thus against the AUP of AWS so it was perfectly reasonable and appropriate to pull the plug. If they were illegal, then what law was broken in hosting them? Remember, newspapers are in the business of getting information sent to them by people who broke rules in doing so, and then hosting/publishing/otherwise distributing said information to the public. Despite the fact that there are powerful people who do not want that to happen. And said powerful people are quick to claim that the law is on their side, whether or not it is. Examples include Watergate, The Pentagon Papers, Snowden's revelations, and (of course) Wikileaks. In every case newspapers were threatened. The wikileaks data dump is in no way comparable to Watergate and singular reporting and investigation of specfic illegal acts. So exposing one crime is OK, but exposing 1000 is not? With EVERY case there are people telling us that this case is different, and not like famous cases of the past. They are wrong. We have amnesia about how similar they, in fact, are. Take Watergate since you brought it up. The burglars were arrested June 17, 1972. Bob Woodward reported that they had connections to Howard Hunt on June 20, 1972. This began a continuous series of reporting that the country as a whole did not care about. Were you alive back then, I would be willing to bet that, like the majority that re-elected Nixon in a landslide on November 7, 1972, you would have thought that this was not an important story, and would have objected to the witchhunt. Public opinion did not begin its slide until January, 1973. (http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/wait-about-two-months-then-check-the-president-s-approval-rating-20130522 http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/wait-about-two-month... has a graph showing the shifts in approval.)

res0nat0r 13y ago
Yes Mannings document release was in no way at all comparable to Ellsberg. If Manning had released specific note: specific documents relating to crimes this would be a totally different story. IE: Just leaking the collateral murder video, or other specific crimes, and going through a reporter who properly vets the content is totally different that a site wide document dump. Just because you don't like one thing the government is doing does not mean you can release everything the government is doing. It is illegal to disseminate, store, transmit, etc, classified material if you aren't allowed to do so. That is the crime, and it also against the AUP and is laid out right near the beginning of the document here: http://aws.amazon.com/aup/ http://aws.amazon.com/aup/