WikiLeaks’ Hosting Company Raided By Swedish Authorities

October 3, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Some of WikiLeaks’ servers are hosted by PeRiQuito AB (also known as PRQ), a company which also offered its hosting services to The Pirate Bay. Two days ago the company had a rather unwanted guest, the Swedish police.

On Monday, police officers from Stockholm paid a visit to PRQ and seized four of its servers, Mikael Viborg – the man behind PRQ – told Nyheter24.

Strangely enough, Monday was also the day when PRQ’s own website and Pirate Bay’s portal were down, but, according to Mr. Viborg, these events had nothing to do with the raid; the power shortages were caused by some technical issues. It is yet unclear whose servers were confiscated. Among others, PRQ services WikiLeaks, the North America Man-Boy Love Association, Pedophile.se, Kavkaz Central (a Chechen rebel website), and the Italian blog Preugia Shock.

“Even though I loathe what they say, I defend them,” Viborg told Andy Greenbergwhen of the Forbes last August, referring to some controversial clients such as Pedophile.se and NAMBLA.
“We don’t cooperate with the authorities unless we absolutely have to.”

The company’s president confirmed that PRQ is still hosting WikiLeaks, but instead ceased to work with The Pirate Bay. Interestingly enough is that two of the three founders of TPB also helped with the creation of PRQ back in 2004, one of them being none other than Gottfrid Svartholm – who is now being kept in detention by Swedish authorities (read more about it here).

Viborg’s company has been the target of authorities twice – first in 2006 in an event related to The Pirate Bay, and then in 2010 when authorities were after a file-sharing network called “The Scene”.

However, details about 2012′s raid on PRQ were not released, but given its clients everything is possible. Moreover, the company has a “no-questions-asked” policy when it comes to its customers.

“Generally we don’t know who our customers are,” Viborg said.

“By Swedish law, we’re not required to.”

Tags: , , ,