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Wikileaks Now Hosted By the Swedish Pirate Party
oskii writes "During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange has struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect freedom of press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation."
While it's a nice publicity stunt for the Pirate Party (with the Swedish elections coming up in little more than a month), WikiLeaks may also gain from it. Swedish politicians may well be pressured by the US government, or by others depending on what WikiLeaks publishes in the future, to close down those servers like they did with The Pirate Bay. But now that they are hosted by the Pirate Party that would be seen as a direct attack on a political opponent, with the obvious effects on public opinion. That will likely make them think twice before ordering a shutdown, which probably wasn't the case with The Pirate Bay.
And yes, government representatives giving direct orders to police and prosecutors is illegal in Sweden. But in practice it happens all the time due to widespread patronage and cronyism and few legal checks against it.
By "go wrong" do you mean "embarrass the hell out of the US military"?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Well they are not one in the same sure, but The Swedish Pirate Party also hosts The Pirate Bay itself so you can't completely separate them from each other either. The Pirate Party Becomes The Pirate Bay’s New Host
Obviously both sites and the Swedish Pirate Party are betting (pretty hard) on the election next month which a successful outcome would as previously posted put TPB and perhaps now wikileaks inside the Swedish Parliament.
Because he violated operational security which lead to the two charges filed against him.
Misconduct charges were brought against him for "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system" and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source".
Both are violations of the UCMJ.
When he became a soldier in the US Army he performed this oath
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
So he disobeyed the orders of the officers appointed over him and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, why shouldn't his ass be sitting in a cell?
How can you "hide" behind freedom of the press? Do you only consider "press" to be the corporate propaganda mass-media drivel fed to you by Fox and Friends? If anything, Assange is much more of a reporter than anyone in the US media. He takes information, and he disseminates it freely to the public, without modifying it (except for removing names and the like). That's much more in line with what the "press" should be than the constant editorializing you get from Glenn Beck. We live in an open society (or rather, we purport to...), and with that comes danger. We claim to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world, but then cover up our actions by burying them under the cloak of "National Security".
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** what he "leaked" or why, it just matters that he broke the law.
Geeze, get a grip! Of course it matters. I don't mean to Godwin this thread, but I just talked to my father about this sort of thing yesterday, and he brought up the example of people hiding Jews in their basements etc. during the nazi era in Germany. Imagine someone back then said the same thing:
**IT DOES NOT MATTER** why he hid those Jews from the nazis, it just matters that he broke the law.
Seriously, I don't think this needs any further comment.
The Pirate Party believes that websites like The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks are legal and should remain up. Since they have the power to act on those beliefs directly (while also trying to change and/or clarify the laws to ensure their legality) they have chosen to do so by hosting the sites in such a way that it is almost impossible for them to be taken down. They are simply standing up for their beliefs in a very public and open way, it doesn't necessarily mean that they support the actually things these sites do. Imagine a police officer doing his duty to protect a KKK member from a violent mob, it hardly means that the police officer supports the KKK.