Wikileaks now hosted from an underground nuclear bunker

One of the world’s most controversial websites now has one of the world’s coolest datacenters.

Andy Greenberg at Forbes has picked up on a Norwegian report that Wikileaks‘ servers are now hosted in Sweden’s Pionen datacentre, housed inside a Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker. 30 metres below Stockholm, it reportedly has a single entrance with half-metre thick metal doors.

The move has been initiated by the Swedish Pirate Party, who began looking after Wikileaks’ hosting this month. “We have long admired Wikileaks”, the Pirate Party’s Rick Falkvinge told Norway’s VG, claiming that as his party is hosting Wikileaks, an attack on Wikileaks is also regarded as an attack on a political party.

Moving to a nuclear bunker is probably little more than a symbolic move. The company repsonsible for the bunker told Forbes that its location was “A kind of metaphor” for its commitment to resist any sort of intrusion, physical or legal.

Wikileaks has gone from being a little-known website to headline news over the past few weeks. Its high profile Afghanistan leak made an impact around the world and has resulted in calls for its closure, while founder Julian Assange has claimed to be the victim of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign after allegations were made about his private life recently.

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All this attention isn’t likely to die down any time soon. Gossip blog Gawker has today launched WikileaksLeaks.org in an attempt to rake up stories about the little-discussed internal operations at the organisation. Among the stories its looking for are “Documents relating to Julian Assange’s Swedish sexual molestation case: police reports, affidavits, etc.” and “Financial information: Who supports Wikileaks? How much money do they receive in donations and grants? What does Wikileaks do with this money? How is the money managed?”