Keir Thomas – Thu Dec 2, 1:31 pm ET
When the Wikileaks "cablegate" scandal broke last week, those behind the whistle-blowing Website found their servers under heavy load. No surprise there, of course, but an additional DDoS hack attack didn't help.
To remedy the situation, Wikileaks did what anybody else would do by renting some elastic space in the cloud to take up the strain. They chose
Amazon Web Services, which, although initially unperturbed by the move, yesterday removed Wikileaks' material without an explanation or apology. It appears Amazon came under political pressure to do so.
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It boils down to what cloud providers consider to be objectionable material. Most service agreements are a little vague on this point, perhaps deliberately so. Amazon's Web Services Customer Agreement says the following, which is wildly open to interpretation and could theoretically let them remove just about anything:
11.2. Applications and Content. You represent and warrant: [...] (iii) that Your Content (a) does not violate, misappropriates or infringes any rights of us or any third party, (b) does not constitutes defamation, invasion of privacy or publicity, or otherwise violates any rights of any third party, or (c) is not designed for use in any illegal activity or to promote illegal activities, including, without limitation, use in a manner that might be libelous or defamatory or otherwise malicious, illegal or harmful to any person or entity, or discriminatory based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age;
Even if the service agreements were crystal clear about what is and isn't acceptable content, there will be many borderline cases that could fall either way.
Anybody using cloud services could potentially be at the mercy of unaccountable
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