Joe Lieberman vs. our First Amendment rights.

Senator Joe Lieberman claims a powerful role is persuading Amazon’s servers to dump Wikileaks.

Commentary:

Ryan Calo, a lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society told Reuters that “It would set a dangerous precedent were companies like Amazon to take down things merely because the senator or another government entity started to ask question about them.”

The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson writes: “Lieberman may be exaggerating his own role, and Amazon can make choices about what business to be in. Still, is Amazon reporting to a senator now? Is the company going to tell him about “the extent of its relationship” with WikiLeaks—with any customer? He’s free to ask, of course, but in terms of an obligation to answer: Does somebody have a warrant or a subpoena for that? One wonders if Lieberman feels that he, or any Senator, can call in the company running The New Yorker’s printing presses when we are preparing a story that includes leaked classified material, and tell them to stop it. The circumstances are different, but not so different as to be really reassuring.”

“This certainly implicates First Amendment rights to the extent that web hosts may, based on direct or informal pressure, limit the materials the American public has a First Amendment right to access,” EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston told Talking Points Memo.

It does not appear that Amazon was served with a legal order to take WikiLeaks down, but rather that the decision was based on verbal criticism from Lieberman and other establishment members. The fact that a website can be taken down without any due process in a country which once had a vaunted tradition of free speech should be an alarm call to anyone who understands the importance of a free media.