Prosecution and prison documents for Pirate-Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (alias Anakata)

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg's trial begins on Monday 20 May 2013 in Stockholm. This material includes inter alia the interrogations with GSW and his co-accused, internal correspondence from the Swedish Foreign Minister and the Swedish embassy in Cambodia, damage assessment reports by the companies and the authorities concerned, and correspondence between GSW and Kristina Svartholm and the Swedish prison authorities. The material is formally public, but the Swedish prosecution authority has refused to provide the documents in digital format. Photocopying this volume of paper costs around £350.

These documents have been obtained by FOIA except for the correspondence with the prison relating to GSW's requests to access distance education and to use a graphing calculator. The letters are translated into English.

Background:

Svartholm Warg is a Swedish computer expert who founded the Pirate Bay. He has been a WikiLeaks volunteer and collaborated in the Collateral Murder release. All those who feature on the Collateral Murder video credits have been subsequently harassed in one way or another, including by having their personal information subpoenad by the US Department of Justice, and through harassment and intimidation by the FBI, who have attempted to turn WikiLeaks associates into informers. This includes, but is not limited to, Jeremie Zimmermann, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Rop Gonggrip, Birgitta Jonsdottir, and Smari McCarthy.

Upon the request of Swedish authorities, GSW was arrested in Cambodia on 30 August 2012. He was placed into custody by Cambodian authorities in an 'anti-terrorist' facility.1 He was ostensively arrested because his Cambodian visa and Swedish passport had expired. His visa had expired on 13 August 2012 and could not be renewed. GSW's passport only expired on 13 January 2013, three and a half months after his arrest. He was expected to be returned to Sweden with the purpose of serving the sentence for the Pirate Bay trial.

In reality, a new investigation had been opened against him for a data breach into Bisnode Information AB, Logica AB, Nordea Bank (Case 0201-K81864-12). The Swedish police was also investigating attempted serious fraud, and serious fraud (Case 0201-K29108-12). The description of the Swedish investigation to the Cambodian authorities (pages 164-170 of the document 3_fup.pdf) states:

"Intrusions have been made against, inter alia, a mainframe computer by a private company, hosting large amounts of personal data/census data from the Swedish Tax Agency including protected personal data, as well as data of a financial nature. Large amounts of data from the Enforcement Authority [Kronofogdomyndigheten] and the Police [through the private contractor Applicate, now Bisnode] have been accessed as well. Data have not only been accessed, but also extensively copied. The accessed data may cause considerable damage to authorities, companies and individuals. The intrusion handled by the on-going criminal investigation is probably the most serious suffered by Swedish IT-systems linked to public authorities."

However, the documents released themselves indicate that for some of the companies concerned, the negative publicity arising from their security breach may be more harmful than the data breach itself. 2

The Enforcement Authority's damage Assessment (2_bilaga_b) p 41 for example, states:

"In Conclusion, the Enforcement Authority considers that the harm of the data breach is mainly the damage to the public's trust and the clients' trust in the Enforcement Authority. Even though certain data would be made acessible to the public if requested, the authority's brand is damaged by this information being accessible on the internet. There have been no reports regarding feedback or damage from any client, other than the cases of persons with protected personal identities."

Damage assessments are contained in he documents:

1_bilaga_a.pdf (Logica's report on the IT security incident of 2012 (ENGLISH) - strictly confidential

2_bilaga_b.pdf (Includes Swdish Enforcement Authority, Kronofogdomyndigheten, the Tax Authority, Skatteverket, Applicate and Bisnode's reports, as well as additional Logica reports)

The documents also contain internal correspondence relating to inquiries from Kristina Svartholm, Niklas (qnrq) and the press to the Swedish embassy in Phnom Penh and the Swedish Foreign Ministry (16_ForeignMinistryDocs.pdf). Highlights from these documents include:

p. 20: An email relating to Cambodian Interior Minister, Sar Kheng's travel to Stockholm only one week after he signed GSW's deportation order. The correspondence from the Swedish Foreign Ministry says that officials should be prepared to answer questions regarding the timing of the visit. The same document states that the Foreign Ministry would only inform Kristina Svartholm that Swedish 'personnel' were visiting GSW in prison, rather than Swedish police, which was the case. See also Kristina Svartholm's comments on http://qnrq.se/2013/02/

p. 28-30: Foreign Ministry correspondence complaining about the attention the qnrq.se blog has attracted relating to GSW's arrest in Cambodia. The Swedish officials also complained about calls, critical emails and critical press covering unlawful aspects of GSW's deportation (p. 28 mentions especially the DN article which cites Kristina Svartholm as specially damaging).

p. 29: Foreign Ministry press relations director Anders Jörle writes: "There is no logic and no understanding for what a society is and how things work under the rule of law. We are getting a lot of questions from all four corners of the earth regarding GSW. Many journalists are personally involved is my impression. I think the pressure on the embassy will diminish now that he's coming to Sweden."

p. 30: An email from the ambassador to Cambodia Anne Höglund says: "Cambodia Daily called last night and asked if I had any comments in relation to the accusations against the embassy/authorities from GSW's mother and his friend Niklas [qnrq.se]. I replied only that I had no comments and that the embassy had handled its responsibilities correctly. [...] I suppose it best now if we do not answer any questions at all. I have a feeling that whatever is said will be spun. Here in Cambodia people are used to human rights not being respected and everyone expects the authorities to commit violations. That's why no one is writing anything about GSW and the crimes he has committed, instead all the focus is on how he has been treated and to try to find problems with the way the authorities have acted. In the embassy we are worried that this will be a problem for us. I don't know how much spread such blogs have and whether they can affect the Foreign Ministry in any manner."

See also http://qnrq.se/2013/02/

1. For more on this, See Niklas Femerstrand's account of attempting to locate GSW and provide him with Cambodian legal counsel, which he was entitled to under Cambodian law http://qnrq.se/sweden-kidnapped-anakata/).

2. See also, for example, p. 3 of document 4_fup_arkiv_akl_ex_tillaggsprotokoll_20130409.pdf.