[Infowarrior] - Amazon: USG one of its biggest cloud customers

[Richard Forno]

Just Weeks After Cutting Off Wikileaks, Amazon Brags About How US Federal Gov't Is One Of Its Biggest AWS Customers?

from the must-be-a-coincidence,-huh? dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101229/11182612453/just-weeks-after-cutting-off-wikileaks-amazon-brags-about-how-us-federal-govt-is-one-its-biggest-aws-customers.shtml

While Senator Joe Lieberman took credit for pressuring Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks content via its Amazon Web Services infrastructure, Amazon insisted that government pressure had nothing to do with it. Still, it seems rather odd that just weeks after booting Wikileaks, Amazon sent out a press release bragging about how the US federal government is one of its biggest customers (found via Slashdot). Now, obviously, lots of tech companies do plenty of business with the federal government, but the timing of the two events at least creates an impression that Amazon will kick you off its service if the federal government disapproves of what you've done (even if no legal charges have been filed against you). Again, no one is saying that Amazon has no right to deny service to whomever it wishes, but it does seem a bit odd from a PR standpoint, and raises questions about how much anyone should trust working with Amazon web services. I know it's making me reconsider my own use of the platform for various projects.