Swedish Pirate Party Offers to Host WikiLeaks

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/90095/swedish-pirate-party-offers-to-host-wikileaks/

After already offering safe haven for BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay on Swedish Parliament servers, now extends the same offer to whistleblower site WikiLeaks, pledging server space and bandwidth if it too is attacked.

Swedish Pirate Party deputy leader Anna Troberg is putting her party at the forefront of the debate over free speech online with news that it’s offering whistleblower site WikiLeaks server space and bandwidth if it too is attacked by American interests like BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay.

“Wikileaks is currently housed at the Swedish hosting company PRQ, which is run by the Pirate Bay profiles Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, but Wikileaks is under constant attack,” she tells DN. “It would not surprise me at all if Sweden was shortly subjected to American pressure to shut down Wikileaks. They have acted similarly in terms of Pirate Bay, and given that Wikileaks activities strikes at the very heart of American power, it’s probably just a matter of time before acting.”

“Now is the moment of truth for our Swedish politicians. Will they have enough backbone to stand up on Wikileaks and democracy, or will they give way for the U.S. and go after the PRQ and Wikileaks?”

WikiLeaks, as I’m sure many are aware, has been in the news lately over the release of 91,000 US military documents containing highly confidential information about the war in Afghanistan from 2004 and 2009.

Critics, aside from arguing the leaks endanger NATO troops and tactics in the war against terrorism, also claim that it will inhibit the sort of data sharing among intelligence agencies that 9/11 commission says could have helped to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

“The reaction to this is going to be push-back against sharing,” says retired Air Force general and former CIA chief Michael Hayden.

Regardless, Troberg says that in a democracy access to information, “sometimes to the information that those in power do not want people to have,” is important if citizens are to be able to make a truly “informed decision before voting.”

She places an emphasis on the fact that WikiLeaks is a new and important way to disseminate information alongside traditional fare like newspapers or broadcast TV, but unlike them WikiLeaks doesn’t require “editors with nerves of steel” to report “major revelations.” “Wikileaks does not operate under the same journalistic responsibilities and limitations as traditional media, but it takes its self-imposed mission to truth-very seriously,” she adds.

Offering WikiLeaks is in keeping with The Pirate Party’s efforts to keep information free of govt censors. Earlier this month it began offering bandwidth to The Pirate Bay and later launched its own ISP – aptly named Pirate ISP – whose main principle is anonymity of user traffic.

“We provide bandwidth to our greatest political opinion leaders, The Pirate Bay,” says Troberg. “If Wikileaks is again attacked, we will immediately offer them both the server space and bandwidth. Pirate Party believes in democracy and we are not afraid to stand up for it.”

Telling the truth is not always easy.