WikiLeaks furious over Amazon ousting

WikiLeaks has lashed out at EC2 cloud provider Amazon for booting the organisation from its cloud infrastructure, which WikiLeaks had relied on to keep it up and running in the face of sustained cyber attacks.

"If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books," WikiLeaks said late Wednesday via a post on Twitter.

Amazon's decision to cut WikiLeaks off from its infrastructure reportedly knocked it offline intermittently throughout Wednesday, giving rise to speculation that WikiLeaks had opted not to host its main or Cablegate site with Amazon.

However WikiLeaks confirmed late Wednesday that it been given the boot by Amazon.

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted," it said - again on Twitter. "Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe."

US Senator Joe Lieberman, chair of the US Homeland Security Committee, issued a statement earlier Wednesday flagging that Amazon had terminated its relationship with the group.

"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website," Lieberman said via a statement, expressing his wish that Amazon "had taken this action earlier".

Hours earlier, Interpol officially released its "Wanted" notice for WikiLeaks' Australian founder, Julian Assange, over rape allegations in Sweden.

The brief statement noted that the 39-year-old Australian was wanted by the prosecution office in Swedish city, Goteborg, under the category of "sex crime" -- an allegation that he has persistently refuted.

WikiLeaks this week withstood two separate cyber attacks that have been aimed at taking down its distribution capacity.

The document-leaking organisation had alternated its service between three geographically distinct hosts, two of which relied on Amazon's EC2 cloud. It relied on a similar configuration during its previous warlogs release.