Pirate Bay Co-Founder Indicted For Hacking, Fraud

An anonymous reader writes "Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a.k.a. 'anakata,' co-founder of The Pirate Bay, has been indicted by a Swedish court on charges of computer hacking and fraud. The prosecuting attorney said, 'A large amount of data from companies and agencies was taken during the hack, including a large amount of personal data, such as personal identity numbers of people with protected identities.' According to Ars, 'The first count of hacking involves allegedly unlawfully using another person's username and password to search Infotorg, a well-known massive privately held commercial database of "private individuals, companies, properties and vehicles." The second count, as previously reported, involves an alleged hack dating back to 2010 of Logica, a Swedish IT firm that contracts with the Swedish tax authority. In March 2012, Logica was hit by an online attack that resulted in around 9,000 Swedes (Google Translate) having their personal identity numbers and names released to the public. ... The third count of hacking, allegedly taking place between July and August 2012, accuses Svartholm Warg of unauthorized access of major Nordic region bank Nordea's computers. The fraud charges accuse Svartholm Warg of allegedly transferring and attempting to transfer money from Nordea to other unauthorized bank accounts.'"

Comments

Did he really do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or are they just trying to take down the pirate bay, again.

Re:Did he really do it?

[DougOtto]

As opposed to a really excellent rapist? You know, the kind that brings flowers.

Re:Did he really do it?

[IamTheRealMike]

Let's apply Occam's Razor. We have two competing explanations.

One is that the Swedish prosecution is hopelessly corrupt and has decided to level very, very specific yet trumped up charges against him, despite having successfully prosecuted him before for running the Pirate Bay (so there isn't much more to be had by doing it again).

The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers. Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say the right answer is probably two. But let's wait and see what comes out at the trial.

Re:Did he really do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

They never say no after the first drink that *I* buy them.

Re:Did he really do it?

[fredprado]

Your assumptions are false. There is a lot to be had by persecuting and searing the reputation of a person who is still seen positively by those you want to intimidate. And Assange's case and the Piratebay judgement already proved that the Swedish judicial system is hopeless corrupt a easily maneuvered by external pressures.

Re:Did he really do it?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers.

That's like saying that if you've shoplifted, you're also a rapist and murderer in the making for sure. Am I the only one who has a problem with extrapolating like this?

Re:Did he really do it?

[girlintraining]

One is that the Swedish prosecution is hopelessly corrupt

Okay, I'mma let you finish, but I just wanted to know... how's Julian Assange doing? I heard something about... something happening in Sweden... something about... being hopelessly corrupt, something about the United States and backroom deals. Oh, sorry for interrupting you. Please, continue...

and has decided to level very, very specific yet trumped up charges against him,

Rule #1 about lying? Be specific. And Rule #1 about prosecuting? Trump it up -- it gives you something to negotiate with. Also, it may scare the defendant into cutting a deal. So both of these are things routinely done by any prosecutor. Routinely.

The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers. Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.

Okay, let me fix this for you: The other is that a guy who knows the government is looking for a reason to bring him down. Any reason. And this guy's obviously intelligent and literate; He built one of the largest websites on the internet. So we're left to ponder... just why would someone who's intelligent, and well-known, and the government is watching his every move, do something so heineously stupid? Ah well, we can always fall back on Well he must have been doing something!(tm) Because you know, the police would never stoop so low as to come up with bogus charges just to shut someone up they find irritating. So, wanna come with me to the protest later this afternoon?

Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.

Right. Not talking to the police is a sure sign of guilt. Because the interrogator doesn't have 25 years of experience in getting confessions out of people, and turning even the most innocent and and exculpatory statement into something that can be used to crucify the guy. He's just a totally nice guy who I'm sure really just wants to help out the accomplice here. And I'm George Washington.

Your argument is a house of cards. It's stacked with bullshit emotive reasoning and not a lick of actual evidence. Which is not unlike the government's case! But hey, when there's a society full of people like you willing to crucify someone based only on mere appearances of impropriety, who needs evidence?

Which is actually rather my point here -- not to blast you out of the water (though, incidentally, I did), but to point out that such errors in reasoning are so common that they contribute massively to our prison overpopulation and the convictions of innocent people. Because people are mostly emotional, not logical -- and they're swayed easily by appearances, not facts. See also: The Innocence Project. Such problems are so commonplace that there's an entire organization dedicated simply to picking out people they can prove beyond any doubt are totally and completely innocent, and then fighting (hard, I might add!) to get the justice system to, I don't know... be just? Releasing the wrongly convicted, even in the case of overwhelming evidence of innocence, is actually really, really hard. And all of this, this entire issue -- is because of logic just like yours. Emotional reasoning.

Re:Did he really do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not Occam's Razor. That is simply two straw-man arguments.

Re:Did he really do it?

[Catbeller]

He has accused of absolutely nothing. There are no accusations, and no charges. What there is, is a really concerted effort to get him into a snatch zone. "Rape" was a pretext, always was.

Re:Did he really do it?

[gmhowell]

Everyone agrees he was in a snatch zone. The only question is whether it was rape.

Re:Did he really do it?

[nbauman]

My recollection from reading the news articles was that Assange's lawyers offered to comply with the Swedish prosecutors' request, including depositions and blood tests, if he could do it from the UK, but the prosecutors refused.

It didn't make any sense for Ms. Revenge to demand a blood test after a week had passed, because if Assange did have AIDS, and had transmitted it to her, she could have detected it with her own blood test. Same with any other STDs.

Re:Did he really do it?

[girlintraining]

That's like saying that if you've shoplifted, you're also a rapist and murderer in the making for sure. Am I the only one who has a problem with extrapolating like this?

Yes. The average person believes in the Just World Hypothesis (google it), which is more or less that they believe in a higher moral authority that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. So, whenever someone is accused of something, there's the presumption that they must have done something, otherwise why would they be persecuted? It's the same reason you hear people who are wealthy spouting off about how they deserved it, or got there with "hard work", and everyone else is just lazy freeloaders. These people, on a very basic emotional level, reject the idea of random chance. That you can't just be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's the same logic that leads to "She was asking to be raped with that outfit". All of this is based on the fundamental idea that the universe gives a damn whether you're a good person, or a bad one.

But in truth, the universe doesn't care. Most people are wealthy because of a fortunate string of events, which all together are improbable, but happen just often enough. It's like winning the lottery -- there's a 100% chance that someone will win, and for them, it's going to be a life altering event. But there's about a 99.999--% chance that it won't be you, which makes playing the lottery an incredible waste of money.

Bottom line? People are superstitious. Even well-educated and literate ones like people who work with information technology all day. I mean, just look at this thread... despite all of their education and intelligence, they're still ever-willing to believe, even subconsciously, that the universe is fair.

It's mankind's oldest delusion.

Re:Did he really do it?

[b4dc0d3r]

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say the right answer is probably two. But let's wait and see what comes out at the trial.

Either you take a wild guess, or you wait. You took the guess and told everyone else to wait, almost like you thought you were imparting some digging sarcasm.

I don't know anything about the Swedish prosecution. Oh wait, actually I do remember accusations of Sweden acting like a lapdog for either the USA or its Copyright Cartel.

Oh shit, there's a cable, Stockholm 09-141, which explicitly says to prosecute TPB owners, and implicitly has a quid pro quo on the special 301 list, which is to say, do what we ask and you wont be on it.

Sweden has been accused of external influence in Assange's trials. It has been accused of meddling in RIAA affairs, despite the Swedish Prosecution Authority explicitly being separate from both courts and police, and implicitly from other governments.

Given your conditions, I'm going with option 1. Just a wild guess - but you're right, let's wait for the results.

Re:Did he really do it?

[schnell]

Jebus, people. Is it really so impossible that a nerdy hacker person who made a website that you like did some cracking that was against the law? Even leaving the Assange stuff aside, I remember how Slashdotters were continuing to argue that Hans Reiser was innocent, even after it was pretty incontrovertibly established that it was obvious he had killed his wife. If OJ Simpson had written Emacs instead of playing football, Slashdotters would still be defending him.

For a group of people that espouses to value critical thinking so highly, Slashdotters as a group seem to be rife with confirmation bias and a predilection for conspiracy theories. Sometimes, people you want to like do things that are wrong - even criminal. And there doesn't always have to be some big conspiracy behind it.

Re:Did he really do it?

[fredprado]

It is not impossible. It is just far more likely that he is being persecuted, though. He was judged guilty for things that accordingly to Swedish law, shouldn't ever grant the ridiculous fines he got and much less prison time by the Swedish law. The judge who judged the case was a member of the pro-copyright lobby as was the judge who judged the in second instance, but neither felt that there was any conflict of interests in their judging the case. And now, after he was hunted and extradited for his heinous copyright crimes some new "evidence" appears against him, after they held him 6 months in prison looking for such evidence, without further explanations or charges.

Next time you try to accuse someone of lack of critical thinking, try to look yourself at the mirror first.

A reflection on Sweden

[turkeyfeathers]

Remember when the only famous Swedes were sex symbols like Anita Ekberg and Ann Margret, instead of alleged criminals like the current bunch? I miss the good old days.

Re:Not the only fraud he's been involved in

[HappyHead]

Do a web search on the site name and "extortion".