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WikiLeaks describes itself as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. WikiLeaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services.” PRQ is said to have “almost no information about its clientele and maintains few if any of its own logs.” The servers are spread around the world with the central server located in Sweden.[54] Julian Assange has said that the servers are located in Sweden (and the other countries) "specifically because those nations offer legal protection to the disclosures made on the site". He talks about the Swedish constitution, which gives the information providers total legal protection.[54] It is forbidden according to Swedish law for any administrative authority to make inquiries about the sources of any type of newspaper.[55] These laws, and the hosting by PRQ, make it difficult to take WikiLeaks offline. Furthermore, "Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information." Such arrangements have been called "bulletproof hosting."[56][57]
On 17 August 2010, it was announced that the Swedish Pirate Party will be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers are maintained and working.[58][59] Some servers are hosted in underground cold war era nuclear shelters. The physical security layer is 30m White Mountains solid bedrock.[60]
WikiLeaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.[61] WikiLeaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor due to the strong privacy needs of its users.[62]
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