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Without Registration, Swedish Law Does Not Protect Wikileaks Sources
An anonymous reader writes with word that Wikileaks, which currently stores a lot of their material on servers in Sweden, may not be as safe there as once believed. From the above linked article (from April): "Wikileaks is benefiting form Sweden's basic law 'Grundlag' on the freedom of print information, because it also guarantees the anonymity of sources in digital media, say sources at the European Parliament. In Sweden, if a website registers with the public authorities and can prove it has an editor-in-chief, then it can also be protected under the law, argues the parliamentary source." Says the anonymous submtter, "However, it seems Wikileaks never registered with the public authorities (article in Swedish; here it is auto-translated to English), and thus is not protected by the freedom of print information basic law even if they do have an editor-in-chief."
Sweden's stringent whistleblower laws are protecting the anonymity of sources that have been feeding the controversial Wikileaks website with sensitive government and corporate information, according to Swedish political sources.
I thought their process of submitting leaks to Wikileaks provided the source with anonymity anyway, so that even if they were forced to give up their sources they would not have the information at all.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Well, it's not really that simple. The editor in chief is directly responsible for what is published. A typical situation would be if a news paper commits copyright infringement, then the editor in chief is directly responsible and may be personally fined for that. Registering does not allow you to break the law.
The legislation does actually give some protection, and that includes things like not having to reveal your sources. Not even the police can force a registered news media to reveal their sources. That's were the protection is targeted, not at the media itself.