by Karl Ritter
Associated Press Writer
August 19, 2010
from
HuffingtonPost Website
(MALIN RISING, AP) STOCKHOLM
WikiLeaks moved its servers from the U.S.
to Sweden in 2007 to take advantage of laws protecting whistleblowers and a
culture supportive of online mavericks.
Sweden's support for Internet freedom has made it a base for cyberactivists
ranging from a Chechen rebel site to the file-sharing hub
The
Pirate Bay.
But even here, WikiLeaks may not be home free.
The self-styled whistleblower, which has angered Washington by
publishing leaked documents about U.S.
military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, could present a strong test of
how far Sweden is prepared to go to defend its freedom of expression.
Swedish laws allow prosecutors to intervene against publication of material
deemed harmful to national security. It's unclear whether that could also
include the security of a friendly nation. The U.S. argues the secret
documents risks the lives of coalition forces and Afghans helping
them.
Another question is whether there is political will in Sweden to go after
WikiLeaks.
The site's founder, Julian Assange, is
confident there isn't.
"The will of the Swedish people is with us,"
Assange told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the U.S.
has not contacted Sweden about WikiLeaks.
Any complaint against the site would be a matter
for Swedish judicial authorities - not the government, Bildt said, but added
he doesn't primarily see WikiLeaks as a legal problem.
"Is it responsible to publish information
that leads to people being killed? I think that is more of an ethical
question than a legal one," he said.
Swedish ministers typically refrain from getting
involved when foreign governments complain about material published by the
country's media.
Last year, Bildt dismissed demands by Israel for the government to condemn a
Swedish newspaper article that claimed Israeli soldiers harvested organs
from dead Palestinians.
Asked whether Sweden would react differently if it were the U.S. that had
issues with material published in Sweden, he said:
"It makes absolutely no difference."
Still, not everyone is confident that Swedish
authorities will let WikiLeaks be.
The Pirate Party, a small Swedish political group that holds a seat in the
European Parliament, on Tuesday offered Wikileaks to use its servers. Their
reasoning was that it would be even more difficult for authorities to seize
servers owned by a political group.
Assange has said WikiLeaks routes its material through Sweden and Belgium
because of the whistleblower protection offered by laws in those countries.
He was in Sweden this week in part to prepare an application for a
publishing certificate that would make sure the site is fully protected by
the Swedish laws.
However, Oscar Swartz, the founder of Banhof, Sweden's first Internet
provider, said it's not so much the wording of the laws that have attracted
online rebels to Sweden, but how they are applied.
"Lawyers in the U.S... use the law in an
adamant way and try to find any opportunity they can to throw spanners
into the works of people," he said. "We don't use the law in that way in
Sweden."
Swedish law enforcement cannot issue an
injunction to close a website before a court has convicted the publishers of
a crime, but can seize a server as part of a criminal investigation, said
Johan Lundmark, deputy director at the Justice Ministry.
He questioned whether it could be considered a
crime in Sweden to leak classified U.S. documents.
The Swedish prosecutor handling media issues has previously rejected Russian
calls for an investigation into a Swedish-based Chechen rebel website,
saying the country's laws are aimed at protecting public order in Sweden,
not in "Russia or elsewhere in the world."
That indicates U.S. officials may only be able to target WikiLeaks' servers
by demanding legal assistance from Swedish police for their own criminal
investigation.
"At the end of the day, it will all boil
down to some kind of interpretation by some authority, which will
consider... if there is a possibility to assist the American police with
the support of existing rules," Lundmark said.
"This is a complicated issue and there are
loads of questions that could pop up."
Still, in the case of file-sharing website The
Pirate Bay, extensive communication took place between lobby groups for the
U.S. entertainment industry and the Swedish government before the prosecutor
pressed charges against the operators.
The four men behind The Pirate Bay last year were sentenced to one year in
prison each and ordered to pay combined damages of 30 million kronor ($4.1
million). They have appealed and the website is still running while they
await a retrial.
WikiLeaks' servers are hosted by the same company as The Pirate Bay.
And that's not the only link between the two.
In the list of credits at the end of a military video of an attack on
unarmed men in Iraq, Wikileaks thanked The Pirate Bay's reclusive technical
mastermind, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, for his assistance.