Whistleblower site WikiLeaks has lashed out at its former hosting provider, Amazon, after the site was booted from the company"s servers.
Neowin reported yesterday that WikiLeaks had moved to Amazon"s EC2 cloud computing platform following the second Denial of Service (DDoS) on its Swedish host, Bahnhof. Just hours later, users began reporting problems with accessing WikiLeaks, which has been publishing a steady stream of leaked US diplomatic cables.
The EC2 system is billed as a ""self-serve"" cloud computing solution which allows users to rent as many virtual servers as they require.
At the time, neither Amazon nor WikiLeaks would comment on the hosting issues. But earlier today, WikiLeaks confirmed via Twitter that Amazon had dumped them from its servers.
""WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe,"" the tweet read.
An hour later, WikiLeaks followed that tweet with another questioning Amazon"s commitment to free speech.
""If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books,"" it read.
Amazon have refused to comment on why WikiLeaks was dumped, but according to The Seattle Times, the move was driven by political pressure. A staff member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee reportedly contacted Amazon sometime earlier this week, and questioned the company about reports it was hosting the WikiLeaks site. That conversation apparently prompted Amazon to cease hosting WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has now reportedly moved back to Bahnhof for its hosting and the site was accessible as of 8.45PM EST.