Police raid on web host in Sweden sparks confusion

Swedish police raided PeRiQuito AB (PRQ), seizing servers that belonged to the internet freedom-focused web host late Monday night in Stokholm.

When the Swedish authorities confiscated the servers, they also brought down several file sharing sites in the process, including Torrenthound.com and Linkomanija.net.

“Yes, they’re looking for four servers,” PRQ owner Mikael Viborg told a Swedish new outlet. “It is the first time since 2010 they have done this.”

Police arrived on Monday looking for servers hosting a specific IP address.

“PRQ is known to host the things that no one else wants to host, and not ask any questions,” he added.

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PRQ’s customers have included Wikileaks, Chechen rebels, pedophiles and racists. 

“Even though I loathe what they say, I defend them,” Viborg told Forbes last August, regarding his most controversial clients like Pedophile.se and NAMBLA.
“We don’t cooperate with the authorities unless we absolutely have to.”

Virborg has said that PRQ no longer hosted the Pirate Bay and that the bittorrent site jumped from host to host in an attempt to elude law enforcement. However, shortly after the raid on PRQ, the Pirate Bay went down. The site remains down as of Tuesday afternoon. 

The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak, a bittorrent friendly news outlet, that the downtime was attributed to a power outage. The Pirate Bay informed TorrentFreak Tuesday morning that the site would be back “soon.”

Still speculating that the Pirate Bay had been brought down in the PRQ raid, YouTube video was posted calling for Anonymous to target the Swedish government. 

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Swedish authorities have raided PRQ before. In 2006, police seized 180 servers in an attempt to bring down The Pirate Bay. In 2010, they were raided again in an operation targeting a file sharing network known as the “Scene.”