Senator Joe Lieberman, who was instrumental in persuading Amazon.com to kick WikiLeaks off its webhosting service, came to the defense Thursday of companies denying services to the secret-spilling site, saying they are "doing the right thing as good corporate citizens."
The list of companies that have suspended services to WikiLeaks in the wake of its publication of secret, and politically embarrassing, U.S. diplomatic cables includes Visa, MasterCard, Paypal and Amazon. The cables were allegedly leaked to the organization by a disgruntled military intelligence analyst.
Lieberman said these companies "deserve the support of the American people." He issued the statement as the companies are facing vigilante online retaliation from WikiLeaks supporters who are staging virtual sit-ins by flooding and sometimes overwhelming Visa.com, Mastercard.com and PayPal.com's servers with traffic. However, the attacks have had little effect on the company's payment operations.
"The WikiLeaks data dump has jeopardized U.S. national interests and the lives of intelligence sources around the world," Lieberman said, though there is no proof or even detailed allegations that the release has endangered any intelligence source.
"This is no time for business as usual," continued the Senator (I-Connecticut), who currently heads the Senate Homeland Security committee. "While corporate entities make decisions based on their obligations to their shareholders, sometimes full consideration of those obligations requires them to act as responsible citizens. We offer our admiration and support to those companies exhibiting courage and patriotism as they face down intimidation from hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks’ philosophy of irresponsible information dumps for the sake of damaging global relationships."
Lieberman has also called for the Justice Department to look into whether the New York Times should be charged with a crime for its reporting and re-publishing of some of the cables.
Separately, the incoming head of the House Homeland Security Committee Pete King (R-New York) introduced Thursday an anti-WikiLeaks measure that would make it illegal to publish the names of military or intelligence community informants.
"WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States, and Julian Assange, an enemy of the U.S, should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act," Shields said in a press release. "This legislation will give the Attorney General additional tools to do just that."
There's already a similar bill in the Senate, but even if passed, it would only apply to any cables or information published after its passage, as the Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws.
The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would expand the little used Espionage Act, which dates to World War I.
The bill (H.R. 6506) would likely face a constitutional challenge on First Amendment grounds, and could criminalize news reporting, such as the New York Times report from last year that the CIA regularly pays Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president who is suspected of being deeply involved in corruption and the opium drug trade.
