Piratpartiet takes responsibility for Wikileaks

Publicerad 17 augusti 2010 - 20:42 Uppdaterad 17 augusti 2010 - 20:45

After days of speculation, Swedish news bulletin Rapport can now reveal that the political party Piratpartiet takes over the responsibility for security and management of the data servers of the website Wikileaks. In this way, they want to protect Wikileaks from possible future police raids or confiscations.

-Our technicians are currently working on it. I don?t have an exact timetable for when everything will be running from our servers, but it will be within a few days, says Anna Troberg (PP), deputy party leader.

Thus Piratpartiet takes charge of security and management of the controversial website Wikileaks. The agreement was signed during a dinner last Sunday, and will be valid for the foreseeable future.

Wikileaks has been under heavy fire since publishing 91,000 secret documents on the war in Afghanistan in July. Soon, they plan to release a large number of additional documents.

The current data servers of Wikileaks are also placed in Sweden. According to Piratpartiet, Swedish authorities have been subject to hard pressure from U.S. authorities to take some kind of measures against Wikileaks. By taking over management of Wikileaks? new data servers, they want to make it more difficult to seize the severs.

-If the servers are placed at an ordinary web hotel the threshold is of course already high when it comes to making a raid and removing them. But the political price for touching the servers of a political party is even higher. So we can offer them some added protection, of which they are in great need, says Anna Troberg (PP), deputy party leader, and continues:

-We already know that the U.S. has previously subjected Swedish politicians to pressure to carry out raids against server centres, and it may well happen again.

-The current environment for us is very adversarial in relation to certain demands made by the Pentagon of this organisation. So I think it would be, and is, a wise step to increase the diversity of our server support in Sweden, says Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.

Today, nobody wants to say exactly where Wikileaks servers will be put, but it will be somewhere here in the Stockholm area. But this will not only strengthen Wikileaks? links to Sweden, but also its links to the file sharing site Pirate Bay - part of their servers are also managed by the Pirate Party. In for example the U.S., The Pirate Bay is considered to be illegal, so the question is how the link will affect the credibility of Wikileaks.

How does it affect your credibility?

-Not at all. We have supporters from many regions of the world, from different types of groups. As far as I understand, the Pirate Party in Sweden is a more diverse group. This is about the free exchange of information, says Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.

Should a political party really be doing this?

-Yes, absolutely. It is something that concerns the whole world, and that of course includes Sweden, said Anna Troberg (PP), Deputy party leader.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been in Sweden for a while, and has applied for a Swedish publishing licence, which would strengthen the protection for its sources.

Does this mean that Wikileaks is becoming more and more Swedish?

-I hope so! Here there is an understanding for and interest in privacy issues, says Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.

Andreas Öbrink

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