There is a high probability that this is false accusations, just "because we can" from the prosecutors ...
I'm from Sweden and I'm very sad to say that I don't consider Sweden to fulfil all the requirements for rule of law and legal security.
Even if he is acquitted from the crimes in a trial he will have spent a few months arrested and we don't have a bail system here in Sweden.
Both European committee for the prevention of torture and Amnesty International frequently criticize Sweden for the conditions for arrestees ... Yepp, that's where Gotfried is being kept locked up...
Have you even read the indictment? A casual look seems to indicate that the investigation is very thorough. (See another post here for link)
And if anyone is a flight risk who would never be granted bail it is Gottfried, He has already fled a sentence once - that is not to say that being in a 'häkte' is fun or humane, depending on circumstances.
Finally:
>I'm from Sweden and I'm very sad to say that I don't consider Sweden to fulfil all the requirements for rule of law and legal security.
[Citation Neeeded]
I really envy you naive notion on Swedish legal security.
Take a look at our modern history. Confiscation of not yet published newspapers during world war II. The German troop transports, the extradition of Baltic citizens, the IB-matter, forced sterilization. We really have a history of throwing out all legal principles whenever public authorities want to.
In recent times, Thomas Quick, the extradition of two Egyptian citizen without any due process, REVA, perhaps you remember "#gategate" where LEO got acquitted, the "lilac envelopes" our minister of justice wanted to use spread shame to suspects, treatment of acquitted persons in the da Costa case.. I could go on for quite some time with this, there are a lot of examples to choose from.
Just the fact that we have politicians appointing jury members ("nämndemän") is a hint to where Swedish legal security stands. Jury members that in the majority of cases fails to answer basic legal questions correct. The entire chain of courts "förvaltningsrätt" is a very troublesome construction to say the least ...
I think it's often enough for a legal system that strives for perfection rather than one that is always perfect. I do not think the latter has ever existed.
TSA and DHS are true examples how the terrorist actually have won, we now fear them so much we have changed our ways and our open/free society. We, as in the western / developed world.
And no matter how much I try I can't understand how we won over the Soviet block back in the days still keeping an open society. Back then we pointed fingers at them and called them the bad guys for massive surveillance of citizens. And yes, terror was a integral part of the cold war, red army faction etc ...
>> I'm from Sweden and I'm very sad to say that I don't consider Sweden to fulfil all the requirements for rule of law and legal security. [Citation Neeeded]
What kind of "citation" would you expect? The Swedish government to tell you they're dirty?
A quick look suggests that the rule of law in Sweden is among the highest in the world. But if you got any sources on the contrary I would be happy to read them.
>A quick look suggests that the rule of law in Sweden is among the highest in the world. But if you got any sources on the contrary I would be happy to read them.
Those are just for general cases -- a median of government/police behavior. (Not to mention a lot of those are reported or based on data by government bodies themselves).
Doesn't say squat about specific people targeted by some agency (as examples, unwanted agitators, etc).
The "rule of law" is great in the US too in general, but you have people like J.E Hoover break all the rules in the book, or Senator McCarthy make his own rules, etc. Or you have the government maintain a whole prison, with torture, no due process, no trials, etc at all, outside the country (Guantanamo).
The treatment of law in general cases is not at all the same as the treatment of law in "targeted" cases.
Since he was already sentanced there was little need from a security perspective to keep him in 'häkte' for three months. Instead they could have just transfered him to the prison where he was to serve his previous sentence (as they eventually did).
Amnesty has repeatedly criticized Sweden for too harsh conditions in the "häkte", where remand prisoners are kept in isolation for extended periods of time.
For some cases prisoners are kept in isolation well over one year. This is a form of low-intensity torture and causes measurable harm to a person's brain and personality - PTSD being one of the more common residual damages done.
And remember, people kept in "häkte" remand prison are suspects, still to be treated as innocent, and frequently exonerated by the courts. They still suffer the harm from the extended isolation.
Sweden in many ways have a good prison system but the extensive and common use of isolation by prosecutors is really bad and a disgrace.
Swedish authorities are obviously out to get him, if he is kept under arrest he won't be able to subract that time from any prison ruling in another case - even if he is acquitted.
Penalties in the Swedish justice system are humane. Even serious crimes only renders 5-10 years of prison time. Conditions in prisons are far better than the US. Prisoners have private rooms, gym and better food than elderly citizens.
The US system have far too severe penalties. Sentences of 10-100 years are now common. Conditions in prisons are horrible with rampant drug abuse, violence and even murders.
However, the Swedish prosecutors and courts are banana republic quality. Look at the Assange parody for an example. A Swedish prosecutor may invent almost anything as evidence, even a photoshopped screenshot - because ANYTHING can be submitted as evidence in a Swedish court. There is even a recent drug case where the Swedish police illegaly put GPS surveillance on a suspected drug trafficker. The court recognizes the police did this illegaly, but the GPS data is still allowed as evidence. This is called "fri bevisföring" in Swedish. The courts are made up by politically chosen representatives, not a jury, which further contributes to the banana republic sentencing.
So - justice is more blind in Sweden, but she is slapping you on the wrist, instead of decapitating you.
Yes, Sweden has "fri bevisföring". And why not? If evidence proves that someone is a criminal, it is not less true it was retrieved by controversial means. "Fri bevisföring" means that the court makes the decision whether the evidence is valid, based on circumstances in the case in question.
Because it means that restrictions on search and seizure aren't worth the paper they're written on. If you're a police officer, why wouldn't you illegally search or track someone if you think it'll help you get a conviction? There's fuck-all chance you're going to get in trouble for it, your bosses and the prosecutors care just as much about nailing the guy as you do.
Where would you draw the line? Why not simply monitor and track everyone everywhere all the time because hey they if they did something wrong then you'd be good to go with the proof... and we all know if you don't do anything criminal you don't have anything to hide...
My knowledge of how the US systems works in practise is limited, but as draugadrotten says in another comment - the penal system of Sweden is in general preferable to US.
But when it comes to legal security it really is much harder choice but I think I would prefer to face the US justice system in all "normal" criminal cases.
If the word terrorism was anywhere near the case I'm not so sure any more.
"Amnesty International frequently criticize Sweden for the conditions for arrestees ... Yepp, that's where Gotfried is being kept locked up..."
Apropos of anything else, and without discounting the positives of the work they do, this is one of Amnesty's raison d'etre's - there is not a country on Earth that they do not criticize in this regard.
>hacking into several Swedish companies and stealing personal data
Are these allegations true? If so, I don't think this man deserves sympathies. The punishment may be too harsh in my opinion for these type of crimes, but they are crimes nonetheless.
He deserves sympathy for the way this has been handled.
He has been held for something like 7 months without charges under a law that is supposed to allow holding someone while evidence is gathered. The person is not supposed to be held for more than 7 days, 14 at the most. So they've had to keep filing and getting a judge to approve extensions to keep holding him without charging him.
Now, one wonders if they needed 7+ months to gather evidence, if they ever had any evidence to begin with, to justify arresting him.
Who knows, but this is not off to a good start.
The likely answer:
Charges come, they are dropped or dismissed (they were possibly fabricated to begin with), since he is in the country now he is dealt with for Pirate Bay related stuff, credited with time served and is either released or imprisoned for a few more months, and then everyone forgets about it.
The judge giving extensions is key here. It is customary to operate like this in Scandinavian countries. The idea is that the police has to make a case to the judge that it is worthwhile to still hold him and that they are making progress in the case. Otherwise he would have been released long ago.
It is quite different from other countries, I know, but law is not handled the same way all over the world.
> He has been held for something like 7 months without charges under a law that is supposed to allow holding someone while evidence is gathered.
Is this true? It sounds like no difference from totalitarian system such as Chinese government to legally detain a person for while gathering evidence.
A quick read-through seems to suggest that they have quite solid support for it. However, I haven't seen the investigation protocol (FUP) so I cannot say if the actual evidence is any good.
A bunch of documents not actually in the linked PDF.
The prosecutor claims that they have chats logs that show Gottfrid discussing the hacking, logs that connects IP address to those owned/bought by Gottfrid, data on a mobile phone owned by him, and computer + old hard drive.
Sadly, none of that is actually showed in the PDF. Only referenced.
I think I'd remain skeptical until the specific details emerge. Let's not forget weeve is doing federal time for running a script to download email addresses from a public website.
I'm not saying it couldn't be legit, but I think we can all agree that TPB is well into the realm of "find me something that'll stick on these guys"
Well because that's the first time I'd ever heard that and I've followed it off and on since he first issued the press release.
I don't doubt he might have though, as he's a fucking idiot. But if you're actually going to do that you're not exactly issuing press releases about the loss.
Kind of an odd thing to suggest as a heinous crime anyway, since 50x that much data is being passed around about all those people on that list between the fortune 500 under thge guise of privacy policies and partners.
It's bullshit propaganda, and the charges are just as valid as Assange's rape charges, courtesy of the same corrupt government. The US entertainment industry wants to make an example of him.
>> He was also charged with hacking into the computer servers of Logica, a Swedish company that handles tax documents.
"Oh noes! Don't hack our taxes!!"
Logica is a big, bloated IT services company that makes (shitty) custom software for big customers, typically government agencies. They're in Finland too, but originally from England.
Source? Do you have ANY evidence of this whatsoever?
>> "Oh noes! Don't hack our taxes!!" Logica is a big, bloated IT services company that makes (shitty) custom software
Are you suggesting, because Logica is big, bloated, makes "shitty" software, or makes tax software, they should be open game to hackers? You are ridiculous.
> Source? Do you have ANY evidence of this whatsoever?
Sure, let me just dig up that link where the Swedish government says the whole case is a sham!
> Are you suggesting, because Logica is big, bloated, makes "shitty" software, or makes tax software, they should be open game to hackers? You are ridiculous.
I implied that tax records were mentioned because someone seeing everyone's tax records is bound to make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. In other words, mentioning tax records in that context was done to shape the public opinion on the case.
Corrupt government? Are we talking about Sweden or Somalia? Sweden is one of the least corrupt countries in the world so please stop with your ridiculous conspiracy theories.
Every government is corrupt, because the very arrangement of government itself leads to corruption.
In Sweden's case, it's just not your average third-world style corruption like "hand me a bag of money and let's see about that building permit" - it's more about various "constituents" trading in favours/influence/power/positions/money.
Of course, the same kind of corruption applies to the US too. For example, campaign contributions are bribes already.
The sentence itself reveals the fallacy: "leads to corruption", suggesting at some point it is not corrupt -- contradicted by "every government is corrupt". Q.E.D.
Somehow there's always someone complaining about a "generalization", isn't there?
Here's what I said:
>> Every government is corrupt, because the very arrangement of government itself leads to corruption.
In this statement, "every government is corrupt" is a description of the state of affairs that the arrangement of government leads to. This does not contradict the idea of a government possibly not being corrupt at its inception - the point was that a government is a flawed institution right from the start.
Bear in mind, a government is a group of people that:
- Wields power over millions of people, and decides everything for them, even though their one-size-fits-all -solutions are practically guaranteed to not fit all.
- Forcefully extracts money from millions of people, and then uses it as they see fit.
- Is not responsible for their actions to anyone. In other words, no matter what they do, they won't suffer any negative consequences. Sure, someone may not get re-elected, but that doesn't really matter, and they'll still enjoy a fat pension (of other people's money) and so on.
While Sweden (my country btw.) is one of the least corrupt places, there is indeed coruption. In the TPB case, it became very clear that Hollywood basically ordered an illegal razzia. Lots of Swedish laws were broken, secret negotiations happened, and Sweden was thretened wigh trade sanctions.
Logica is indeed shitty (they mostly employ second rate people in my experience; at least in Sweden), but in my mind that only makes it more likely that Gottfrid/anakata was able to hack into their systems.
Well, one has to wonder why they'd want to hack into Logica's systems. I can't see a reason. What would they want from Logica, and why would they risk getting caught hacking companies? Haven't they got enough trouble with TPB already?
It just doesn't make sense. What does make sense, however, is the US entertainment industry (and governments) wanting to make an example out of them: Here's what happens to naughty little copyright-infringers/freedom-fighters.
This thing doesn't surprise me too much. The pirate movement has for a long time said that if you constantly call people criminals, the risk that they later actually will commit crimes goes up. I can understand if a person going through the circus called the pirate bay trial is slightly resentful of the Swedish state, and might not feel too respectful of its law.
"Illegally transferring money" may mean the following, which would not be called "stealing":
* Transferring money between two bank accounts neither of which one owns. For example, I could transfer money from niggler's bank account to Obama's bank account, without personally benefiting from it, "for the lulz," or for trying to see if I actually have access to do that after having hacked into a bank's system.
* Transferring my own money from my bank account to another bank without having permission to do so. Maybe the money has been frozen in some way. In that case, it is my own money, so it isn't stealing.
Not sure what happened here, but the term is broader.
They tried (and succeeded in one case) to transfer money between accounts, without authorization so illegally transferring money seems to be the correct wording?
Stealing does tend to be associated with physical theft?
PCWorld reports he "hacked IBM mainframes". [1] I would be interested in knowing the details of this. I am a sysprog for z/OS for a financial institution by day, and I have never heard of any sort of intrusion like this. Not that these systems are completely bulletproof, but I expect there is some fabrication in these statements. These systems are usually deep in the backend and obscurely buried in archaic and proprietary architectures. Unless Warg had any experience with this platform or some sort of inside help, I highly doubt this allegation.
The prosecutor document describe the "hack" as Gottfrid testing a bunch of default password at an wireless route, and from there, using the internal networks "automated processes" (ie, I assume they mean that the system lacks any security against the internal network).
As someone who works in security, I can tell you that your trust in these is misplaced. Archaic proprietary systems, once examined, are far worse in terms of security, not better. It isn't difficult to learn z/OS if that is your goal.
> Unless Warg had any experience with this platform or some sort of inside help, I highly doubt this allegation.
He has knowledge and experience with z/OS.
And in the general case, I totally agree with lawnchair_larry. Also, if there is a big enough incentive to find security flaws they will be found, even in rather obscure systems.
Though that doesn't make him guilty until proven otherwise.
I'm from Sweden and I'm very sad to say that I don't consider Sweden to fulfil all the requirements for rule of law and legal security.
Even if he is acquitted from the crimes in a trial he will have spent a few months arrested and we don't have a bail system here in Sweden.
Both European committee for the prevention of torture and Amnesty International frequently criticize Sweden for the conditions for arrestees ... Yepp, that's where Gotfried is being kept locked up...