Investigation of the Pirate Bay Raid

The web hotel PRQ and The Pirate Bay was the target of one of the most talked-about raids of the 21st century in Sweden. During the raid the police didn't just confiscate Pirate Bay's servers but also a load of other unrelated servers; a total of 186 servers were confiscated from PRQ's server rooms. This led to that a big number of companies and a lot of small and large websites lost their servers and in many cases their primary livelihood. Both the police and the prosecutor were charged for official misconduct, but none of the charges led to an investigation. The judge came to the conclusion that during the circumstances it was justified to confiscate all of the servers.

Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has since then been investigating if there have been any irregularities. There were quite a lot of rumors going around that MPA, IFPI and other lobby organizations, but also the American embassy, was trying to steer ministers and other high officials to pressure the police and prosecutors to act against The Pirate Bay.

The report that have been published clearly states that IFPI, MPA and the American embassy had contacted the current Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and the Secretary of State Dan Eliasson in an attempt to make them force the police into action. Although, JO has come to the conclusion that none of the two have done anything to wrong nor have they tried to influence the police or prosecutor. Eliasson wrote the following in his reply to the American authorities;

"(a)ccording to the Swedish constitution, it is not possible for the Government or the Ministry to intervene in a specific case. I can however assure you that I follow closely the actions taken by the police and the prosecutors in respect of copyrights infringements on the Internet and I will not, if necessary, hesitate to initiate further measures to improve their effectiveness"

JO also says that the police could've acted a lot faster when it comes to the confiscated servers. It took them over a week before they decided to give back some of the servers that was not related to Pirate Bay (from May 31 to 2-8 June). JO adds though that the decision to remove the servers was correct as it, according to the police, would take a lot longer to investigate them in place than at the station.

JO did not buy the explanation that they had to remove the servers because otherwise someone could've come in from the outside and delete material. JO though that they could just as well have unplugged the TP cable, but the time argument was enough to not charge anyone for misconduct.



http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6020.html

In these things there are several tests which have to be applied. Is the action lawful - did they receive any warrants they required and were they applied for properly. Was the action proportionate to what they sought to achieve - you don't breach someone's right to privacy if the matter is trivial. Did the matter impinge upon the rights of others, not related to the offense (collateral intrusion).

I think the first two are probably a given. They would have obtained the warrants and by the fact of a judge granting them he/she must have agreed the actions were proportionate to the offences concerned.

The intrusion however is a bit of a problem, depending on what the warrant says. One would have thought that the warrants would be limited to those computers which could be seen to be owned or operated by the suspects, (however it may have been more open than that). If they lifted other ones then that could present problems. Their argument would almost certainly be that they couldn't be sure so they lifted everything. Further, that returning them in around a week was a reasonable timescale.

I suspect they just went in and "hoovered everything up", not knowing what it was. Took it back and had their experts look at it. Then returned those which they couldn't show were related to the offences. Their bosses probably told them to do it that way, so it's unlikely anyone will actually get prosecuted about it. There will be a bit of sabre rattling, but that's probably it.

I suspect that anyone subject to this would have a good claim for loss of earnings, damage to reputation and compensation for stress caused.