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The Police Bay

'It was a declaration of war.'


Stockholm (Rixstep) -- The Pirate Bay are back up and running. Their servers are now hosted in another three or four countries. Swedish hackers are now planning to take down the Swedish government websites. Demonstrations are at this moment underway in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

'At the behest of attorney general Thomas Bodstöm, the Swedish police last week carried out raids at ten locations in Sweden. Raids that according to Swedish law were criminal acts inasmuch as government cabinet members are formally not allowed to dictate in such matters ('ministerstyre'). The raids were carried out at the request of the White House', said the state-owned Swedish national television (SVT) news bureau.

'Justice ombudsman Mats Melin is currently investigating the action. Thomas Bodstöm is accused of ministerstyre', say both conservative Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) and SVT.

According to sources at both SvD and SVT, it was the US government who pressured Bodstöm to act. Bodstöm in turn pressured Swedish chief of police Stefan Strömberg.

Bodstöm denies the accusations.

'I have never and I will never involved myself the work of the police and prosecutors.'

SvD have also reported how many businesses have been hurt by the raids. Their online presence was managed by the service provider previously hosting The Pirate Bay.

Their computers were confiscated as well.

At the core of the raids was Håak Roswall, a prosecutor infamous for his lack of IT skills. In an earlier case he lost his footing when he couldn't explain what the error code 401 on an HTTP request meant. Roswall was the one who formally made the petition to the courts to be able to confiscate all servers - and not just those associated with The Pirate Bay.

Demonstrations

Massive demonstrations are underway at time of writing in both Gothenburg and the capital Stockholm. The new website piratdemonstration.se has information about the demonstrations but bandwidth has come to a screeching halt with all the traffic it generated.

The demonstrations are being sponsored and coordinated by the Pirate Bureau, the Pirate Party, a new political party in Sweden, and by the Green Youth Movement, the Young Leftists, and the Liberal Youth Federation.

'Join us on Saturday and demonstrate to show your disgust that politicians, instead of seeking compromises as regards file sharing instead choose mass criminalisation. File sharing is a fantastic opportunity and because it doesn't cost a penny to let everyone take part in the digital culture we shall not limit access to it', says the PDF flyer available at the new site.

The demonstrations started from Mynttorget in Stockholm at 15:00 local time and Gustav Adolfs Torg in Gothenburg at 16:30 local time.

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