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Swedish Government: WikiLeaks sources may not be protected after all
Wikileaks has been a hot news topic for several months now, largely due to Bradley Manning and his 260,000 page contribution. There are plenty of people in corporate and government positions who want the site shut down (and prosecuted), but most all, they want their leaked data and they want the sources for those leaks.
WikiLeaks' legitimate ability to protect those sources and the data they've divulged has perhaps been the most heated topic of debate, but until now, Julian Assange and the rest of the WikiLeaks team have been able to back up their claims (and stave off the raids). That could all change, however, if what a representative of the Swedish Chancellor of Justice's office says turns out to be true.
Håkan Rustand, a deputy to the Chancellor of Justice, told the Sydsvenskan, a major Swedish newspaper, that WikiLeaks and its sources may not actually be protected by Swedish laws. Apparently, while the laws do indeed protect journalists' sources, the publications in question must be properly registered and licensed to publish content in Sweden, and WikiLeaks is not. Unfortunately, it looks like simply planting its servers on Swedish soil isn't enough to automatically gain constitutional protections.
"If the constitutional laws are non-applicable, ordinary liability laws take effect," said Rustand. He then went on to say that "the question is what WikiLeaks is," and that this very question is quickly becoming a case for the Chancellor herself to decide. That decision would likely decide the outcome of the site, its sources, and the data.
WikiLeaks responded tersely to the article, via Twitter: "The article currently being spun about WikiLeaks source protection legalities is false." I hope they're right.
[the Sydsvenskan via Slashdot]
Comments
9
Subscribe to commentsAemonyAug 8th 2010 1:34PM
I find it funny how WikiLeaks just blatantly can proclaim that the article is false. The only way it could be false is if they are properly registered and licensed, which they aren't, or if the case has already been tried in court, which it hasn't.
WikiLeaks most definitely have misunderstood the law somewhere and the risk of the Swedish law not covering their asses is high. The only thing located in Sweden is the servers, and that shouldn't be enough to reap the benefits of our laws.
robertAug 8th 2010 4:43PM
@Matthew:
It is no problem that they are not protected by the Swedish law because the structure of the Wikileaks submission process does not allow them to know the source. Wikileaks does not know who submits or contributes materials.
@Aemony:
The Servers of Wikileaks are not only located in Sweden, there are into TOR and many other locations all over the world. If any Government would try to bust them, there are hundreds of copy's and they will be back online into minutes.
laeroAug 8th 2010 5:35PM
https://lagen.nu/1949:105#K7P3S1
The paragraph of interest, I am not completely sure how to translate it properly, but it goes something like this:
§ 3 If someone discloses a document, referred to in Chapter 1. § a third paragraph, or, without answering in accordance with Chapter 8., Contributing to the production, which is intended to be published in a printed matter, such as author or creator or as editor and is thus guilty of:
1. treason, espionage, gross espionage, gross unauthorized involvement with secret information, rebellion,
2. improper disclosure of a public document that is not accessible to everyone or the provision of such an act in violation of its authority subject to the disclosure, when the act is intentional, or (google translation, I have no idea how to word this one properly)
3, deliberate breach of confidentiality in the cases set forth in the special law,
Chapter 8 (referred to in the law) is the one I believe the deputy if referring to, it basically states that without proper licensing, your could possibly be convicted on the grounds of treason or worse.
Ted DansonAug 8th 2010 6:08PM
Wikileaks is a honeypot for the CIA anyway - they're as compromised as can be and all this is just mis/disinformation to distract from that fact.
DeanXeLAug 9th 2010 6:26AM
well well well, is that the newest tactic to try and destabilize Wikileaks? If you can't find out their sources, make sure they look unreliable? That's actually pretty clever.
Wikileaks being a honeypot for the C.I.A. on the other hand... too clever for the C.I.A.
@ Robert : the problem would not be that the site would be down, or the data destroyed. If the government gets their hands on the sources or claims that they can, it will scare of whistleblowers to go to Wikileaks, see what I said to Teddy Danson here
ronmosesAug 9th 2010 9:33AM
The only one Assange is interested in protecting is himself. Everyone else is expendable, be it their reputation or their life. What a scumbag.
2late2dieAug 9th 2010 4:28PM
This is actually interesting. The very nature of content on the internet, i.e. that it doesn't really belong to any specific country, the thing that makes it often so powerful, is what now actually giving Wikileaks trouble. Since they haven't "made themselves part of Sweden", by, in this case, registering as a publication, they're not protected by their laws.
I think whatever decision is made may turn out to be very important for not just Wikileaks but any website (well, at least as much as other countries may use this as a precedent).
jenniferAug 26th 2010 4:58AM
This is controlled leak. When The Afghan War Diary is simultaneously given to reporters from The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, and the US government only "strongly condemns" it means that they're willingly letting you read something that would never have gone public if it was important, secret or in the nature of harming the agenda of the US foreign policy.
technologiezAug 26th 2010 4:59AM
CSV is comma separated values, an extremely rudimentary table/spreadsheet layout thing. Also an extremely useless MySQL table engine that uses said format.
KML is a XML deriative for Google Earth objects. It's exported by SketchUp.
http://technologiez.net/2010/08/25/wikileaks-to-release-cia-paper/