Amazon Web Services, WikiLeaks and the Elephant in the Room

Yesterday Amazon Web Services sent out a promotional email titled “Amazon Web Services Year in Review.” Understandably, the email didn’t mention one of the biggest AWS stories of the year: the company’s decision to remove the WikiLeaks website from its servers.

Dave Winer noticed something else of note in the email: a paragraph about how the U.S. Federal Government is one of AWS’s customers, with over 20 federal agencies taking advantage of the company’s services. And, according to the announcement, that number is growing. Winer suggests this is the reason that Amazon.com closed WikiLeaks’ account. “It makes perfect sense that the US government is a big customer of Amazon’s web services. It also makes perfect sense that Amazon wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that business,” Winer wrote. “There might not have even been a phone call, it might not have been necessary.”

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