But don’t count Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, among the fans of this idea. From a purely practical standpoint, he said, shutting down the Internet would likely cause as much collateral damage to the United States as any Internet-based attack because of the difficulty in recovering from such a shut-down.

Moreover, he said, giving a president that kind of authority would be “troubling, at least for me personally.”

Mr. Chertoff left the DHS in January 2009, and is now the chairman of the Chertoff Group consulting firm.

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WikiLeaks portrayed PayPal as bowing to government pressure. Another company, DataCell, which describes itself as under Swiss and Icelandic control, says it is accepting donations on behalf of WikiLeaks. And the organization says there are other options for supporting the organization financially.

Like Amazon and EveryDNS before it, PayPal said that WikiLeaks had violated its Acceptable Use policy, which says the service “cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”

In response to Amazon’s move, Daniel Ellsberg, the man known for leaking the Pentagon Papers and whose story has recently been retold in a 2009 documentary film “The Most Dangerous Man In America,” has called for a boycott of Amazon, saying he wants “no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.” He further asks Amazon insiders who may have documentation of what political pressures were brought to bear to send what files they have to WikiLeaks.

Amazon maintains its decision was motivated by nothing more than a Terms of Service issue, and it’s “inaccurate” to consider its move a response to a government inquiry.

First, the site Wikileaks.org was dropped by its domain name services provider last night and so has been forced to relocate to another domain name, within Switzerland’s top-level domain. The site can now be found at Wikileaks.ch, which forwards directly to an IP address. WikiLeaks’ former provider, EveryDNS, said in a statement that it took the action because of the numerous denial-of-service attacks that had been carried out against the original domain. More from the Guardian here.

Meanwhile, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman has introduced legislation that would criminalize the publication of the name of any U.S. intelligence source. (Wait, that’s not already illegal?) “Our foreign representatives, allies, and intelligence sources must have the clear assurance that their lives will not be endangered by those with opposing agendas, whether they are Americans or not, and our government must make it clear that revealing the identities of these individuals will not be tolerated,” Lieberman said in a statement. It’s called the Shield Act, and you can read it here.

Then France is getting into the act. Le Point reports that Eric Besson–minister of industry, energy and the digital economy–has asked a government regulator to look into ways to block French Internet companies from hosting the files in that country. A Google translation of Le Point’s story is here.

Finally, Amazon issued a statement giving its side of the story on how it came to terminate its relationship with WikiLeaks, which had briefly been a customer of its Amazon Web Services. It wasn’t the DDOS attacks, it says, nor government pressure, but that WikiLeaks was violating several requirements of its Terms of Service agreement. For one thing, WikiLeaks was required to represent that it had rights to the content it was hosting. “It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content,” Amazon says. For its part, WikiLeaks says Amazon is lying.

WikiLeaks, the site infamous for exposing America’s diplomatic dirty laundry, has confirmed via its Twitter feed that it is no longer hosting its files on Amazon’s servers.

No comment from Amazon on this, although I have a call in to the company.

The move comes as Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut–who was a onetime vice-presidential nominee and who is also chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee–had called for Amazon to cut its ties to WikiLeaks.

Lieberman issued a brief statement calling on other companies not to work with WikiLeaks, and pledged to “ask Amazon about the extent of its relationship with WikiLeaks.”

That could mean he intends to hold hearings, and given the intensity of the vitriol about WikiLeaks coming out of official Washington in the last few days, that would only be a start.

But the answers aren’t going to be all that satisfying, as Talking Points Memo explains, since anyone can upload something to Amazon’s Web Services without any prescreening, which is pretty much the case on any Web service these days. The ostensible reason for the eviction was some violation of Amazon’s terms of service.

This all looks to have been a useless exercise on Lieberman’s part. As Ryan Tate of Valleywag points out, other Amazon customers and partners include some of the news organizations that have been participating with WikiLeaks in the release of the cables. Its news stories, including its own series on the leaks, have been published on the Kindle. Did Lieberman bust Kindle’s chops over that? No.

What’s interesting is that WikiLeaks moved its files to Amazon in the wake of what it said was a distributed denial of service attack on November 28. WikiLeaks claims it came under another more intense attack yesterday. No word on who carried it out.

And something tells me it won’t be the last time.

But, in the end, does it make a difference? Because once something is released on so massive a scale, you might as well order an errant glob of toothpaste back into the tube as try to intimidate or legislate it out of existence.

If these cables detailing the unvarnished opinions of American diplomats around the world were to be such closely guarded secrets, then the more apt question for the inevitable hearings that Lieberman’s Committee will no doubt call concern why they were so readily accessible to a young Army soldier with a computer and a Flash drive, as has been alleged against Bradley Manning.

The site cablegate.wikileaks.org, which WikiLeaks is using for the diplomatic documents, is linked to servers run by Amazon Web Services in Seattle, as well as to French company Octopuce. Wikileaks.org, the site’s front page, links back to Amazon servers in the U.S. and in Ireland. Several Internet watchers, including technologist Alex Norcliffe, reported earlier on WikiLeaks’ use of Amazon services.

Amazon and WikiLeaks did not return requests for comment.

The choice of Amazon, a U.S. company, seems strange given the amount of criticism WikiLeaks has received from the U.S. government. Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Sunday saying he supported charging WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange under the Espionage Act.

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The Homeland Security Department branch that monitors cyber attacks can’t force other agencies to protect their systems, is woefully understaffed and its ability to manage responses to cyber attacks has been hindered by constant turnover, said the department’s inspector general.

The department’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, known as US-CERT, also withheld data from other federal agencies that could have helped them address security breaches, the report found.

The team “is still hindered in its ability to provide an effective analysis and warning program for the federal government in a number of ways,” according to congressional testimony outlining the report from Inspector General Richard Skinner. The remarks, prepared for a hearing Wednesday, were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

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Last week, the U.S. senator sent a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt decrying YouTube as a clearinghouse for terrorist propaganda videos and calling upon Google to remove them. “… Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers and provide weapons training–activities that are all essential to terrorist activity,” Lieberman, Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote. “According to testimony received by our committee, the online content produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations can play a significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack. YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.”

Lieberman would like Google (GOOG) to smoke these YouTube terrorists out of their holes. To that end, he provided Schmidt with a list of offensive videos. Some featured gratuitous violence or hate speech and were removed. But many more featured legal non-violent, non-hate speech. These YouTube refused to remove because they don’t violate its Community Guidelines.

“While we respect and understand [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” YouTube said in a post to its company blog. “We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds. Of course, users are always free to express their disagreement with a particular video on the site, by leaving comments or their own response video. That debate is healthy.”

Last week, the U.S. senator sent a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt decrying YouTube as a clearinghouse for terrorist propaganda videos and calling upon Google to remove them. “… Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers and provide weapons training–activities that are all essential to terrorist activity,” Lieberman, Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote. “According to testimony received by our committee, the online content produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations can play a significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack. YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.”

Lieberman would like Google (GOOG) to smoke these YouTube terrorists out of their holes. To that end, he provided Schmidt with a list of offensive videos. Some featured gratuitous violence or hate speech and were removed. But many more featured legal non-violent, non-hate speech. These YouTube refused to remove because they don’t violate its Community Guidelines.

“While we respect and understand [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” YouTube said in a post to its company blog. “We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds. Of course, users are always free to express their disagreement with a particular video on the site, by leaving comments or their own response video. That debate is healthy.”

Citing an Institute for Policy Innovation study that estimates that copyright-industry piracy costs the U.S. economy $58 billion per year (Holy cow! That’s like Mitch Bainwol’s and Dan Glickman’s salaries combined!), Zucker called upon Congress to create dedicated intellectual-property enforcement bureaus in the Justice and Homeland Security Departments and to offer federal grants for state and local governments to escalate their own policing efforts. “The unfortunate truth is that today we are losing the battle,” Zucker said. “We need, across the board, to move IP enforcement up the agenda of the federal government. … [This issue is] absolutely critical to our economic prosperity.”

Lawmakers, especially those with musical aspirations, were predictably roused by Zucker’s spiel, though it conveniently obscured the fact that the entertainment industry’s business models are clearly in need of serious work. Said Sen. Orrin “I Write the Songs” Hatch (R., Utah, pictured with Barry Manilow, right), “Our challenge is to come up with viable economic solutions that will not only protect existing intellectual-property rights, but encourage the free flow of information and ideas necessary for creativity and innovation to thrive.”

Citing an Institute for Policy Innovation study that estimates that copyright-industry piracy costs the U.S. economy $58 billion per year (Holy cow! That’s like Mitch Bainwol’s and Dan Glickman’s salaries combined!), Zucker called upon Congress to create dedicated intellectual-property enforcement bureaus in the Justice and Homeland Security Departments and to offer federal grants for state and local governments to escalate their own policing efforts. “The unfortunate truth is that today we are losing the battle,” Zucker said. “We need, across the board, to move IP enforcement up the agenda of the federal government. … [This issue is] absolutely critical to our economic prosperity.”

Lawmakers, especially those with musical aspirations, were predictably roused by Zucker’s spiel, though it conveniently obscured the fact that the entertainment industry’s business models are clearly in need of serious work. Said Sen. Orrin “I Write the Songs” Hatch (R., Utah, pictured with Barry Manilow, right), “Our challenge is to come up with viable economic solutions that will not only protect existing intellectual-property rights, but encourage the free flow of information and ideas necessary for creativity and innovation to thrive.”

How is it that the federal government loses so many computers? Seriously, in the past few years it has lost enough laptops to start its own “One Laptop Per Child” program. From 2002 to 2005, the FBI lost 160 laptop computers, including 10 that contain highly sensitive classified information, according to an inspector general’s report, which notes that between three and four FBI laptops are lost or stolen each month.

Now comes word that the Transportation Security Administration has misplaced a hard drive containing Social Security numbers and bank account information for 100,000 TSA employees. Worse, the drive went missing from a so-called controlled area at TSA headquarters in Washington, D.C. No wonder the Department of Homeland Security (of which the TSA is a unit) scored a D on its latest Federal Computer Security Report Card.

“TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity,” TSA Administrator Kip Hawley wrote in a letter to employees. “We apologize that your information may be subject to unauthorized access, and I deeply regret this incident.” To make amends, the TSA offered affected employees a year of credit-monitoring protection (as well as months of untold embarrassment and low morale).

But it’s going to have a much harder time making amends with the American public. “This is getting ridiculous,” the Washington Post said in an editorial today. “When it comes to safeguarding private information from the growing identity-theft industry, Uncle Sam’s track record is horrendous.”