Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has successfully waited out rape charges, after Sweden decided to drop its investigation.

Assange was accused with rape in the lesser degree in 2012, living in the Ecuador embassy to avoid extradition to face the charges, arguing Sweden could send him on to the US for his leaks of military files.

The Swedish prosecutor said the chargers were dropped because the investigation could not continue without Assange's prescence in court, and that the investigation could be reopened if he visits Sweden before the statute of limitations is up in 2020. Assange has always denied the charges.

Whether this means Assange will leave the embassy remains to be seen, as noted by the Wikileaks Twitter account - which is assumed to be run by Assange. "UK refuses to confirm or deny whether it has already received a US extradition warrant for Julian Assange. Focus now moves to UK," it said. However, Assange's own Twitter account simply posted an image of him smiling.

The Metroplitan Police has issued a statement saying that the warrent for his arrest for failing to surrender to the court in June 2012 still stands. "The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy," the statement said.

However, the Met added: "Whilst Mr Assange was wanted on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for an extremely serious offence, the MPS response reflected the serious nature of that crime. Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence. The MPS will provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence."

The US attorney general Jeff Sessions said last month that he considered arresting Assange a priority.

The announcement follows Assange's lawyer filing for the court to drop a detention order against the Wikileaks founder, with today the deadline for prosecutors to respond with a request to arrest him.

Assange's charges being dropped come the same week as the release from prison of Chelsea Manning, the US army private who leaked military records to Wikileaks. She served seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted to time served by Barack Obama before his term as US president ended.

Hundreds of people's personal information has been published online by WikiLeaks, including those of rape victims, according to theAssociated Press.

Their exposure is a byproduct of WikiLeaks' stated commitment to revealing government secrets across the globe, the newswire found while investigating files published by the organisation in the last year.

The transparency group has published people's medical files, while others have had "sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web", AP claimed.

AP said it has verified 23 people's leaked details by contacting them, mostly in Saudi Arabia.

One man, whose paternity dispute with a former partner allegedly appeared in WikiLeaks' trove of documents, told the newswire: "They published everything: my phone, address, name, details. If the family of my wife saw this ... Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people."

WikiLeaks did not comment on the article, but IT Pro has approached it to ask how it vets the documents it publishes, and whether AP's claims are accurate. No reply was received at the time of publication.

The group's documents are all publically available, with its homepage offering a search bar and categories such as Intelligence', Global Economy', Government', and War & Military'.

People can also search within recently published documents such as the Democratic National Committee's 19,252 leaked emails, or Hillary Clinton's archive of emails that were stored on her own private server.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is quoted on the organisation's website as saying: "WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more."

The organisation claims to have published more than 10 million documents "and associated analyses" so far.

But the leaked DNC emails included dozens of social security numbers and credit card numbers, according to the AP, while a Saudi Foreign Ministry data dump included more than 500 passport details and academic and employment files.

There were also two instances in which teenage rape victims were named, according to the AP.

WikiLeaks is yet to respond to a request for comment.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange plans to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London "soon", after taking refuge there two years ago.

Assange was granted diplomatic asylum by the embassy in June 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning over sexual misconduct allegations.

He announced his intention to leave the embassy during a press conference earlier today, where he hit out at the fact he's not been charged with any offences in the UK or Sweden since seeking refuge.

"I am leaving the embassy soon, but perhaps not for the reasons [the press] are saying at the moment," he said.

In the lead up to the announcement, press speculation had suggested Assange was planning to hand himself over to the authorities and leave the embassy on health grounds.

When pressed for more information on what he meant by "soon", Asssange declined to give any further details.

During the conference, Assange acknowledged his health may have suffered as a result of being holed up in the embassy for two years, but stopped short of stating this as his sole motivation for leaving.

"As you can imagine, being detained for various ways in this country for four years and in this embassy for two years, which has no outside area and therefore no direct sunlight... it is an environment in which any healthy person would find themselves soon enough with certain difficulties," he explained.

Speaking alongside Assange, Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said justice hasn't been done for anyone over the past two years.

"It is time to respect human rights... it is time to free Julian Assange," he said.

"We continue to offer Assange our protection," he added.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has come under pressure from a slew of human rights groups to drop its four-year investigation into Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.

The DoJ began its investigation into the website in November 2010 after more than 200 confidential American diplomatic cables were posted on Wikileaks, which is famed for providing sources with a means of leaking information anonymously.

Shortly afterwards, cloud giant Amazon stopped hosting the site on its web servers, while PayPal seized processing payments used to support the site's operations.

Four years on, 52 press freedom and human rights organisations have called on the US Attorney General Eric Holder to close the investigation into Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.

The latter has spent the past two years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and faces the risk of extradition to Sweden should he leave, where he is wanted over allegations of sexual misconduct.

The letter calls on the DoJ to stop the "harassment" and "persecution" of Wikileaks, given that Holder is reportedly to have vowed in a recent media briefing that "as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail."

The group claim this statement is at odds with the DoJ's decision to pursue the criminal investigation into Wikileaks and its editor-in-chief Assange.

"Well-respected legal scholars across the political spectrum have stated that a prosecution of WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange for publishing classified material or interacting with sources could criminalise the news-gathering process and put all editors and journalists at risk of prosecution," the letter states.

It then closes by claiming that taking action against Wikileaks would "undermine the commitment of the US Government to freedom of speech."

Time will tell if the group's missive has any impact on the DoJ's ongoing investigation into Wikileaks and Assange.

Meanwhile, in a news conference yesterday to mark the second anniversary of the start of his stay in the embassy, Assange claimed to have a stash of documents primed for release on Wikileaks pertaining to 50 countries and their "international negotiations."

He also said his legal team will contest the Swedish extradition case against him next week, in the light of new, undisclosed evidence, coming to light.

The US Justice Department is unlikely to charge Julian Assange with any offence despite his WikiLeaks website publishing classified documents.

If the decision to prosecute Assange is taken, authorities will also have to take legal action against news organisations that have published top secret data.

"The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists," former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told The Washington Post.

"And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange."

A formal decision on whether to bring charges has not been made, but there is little possibility of Assange having a case to answer unless he is implicated in other criminal activity.

Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The Supreme Court in the UK ruled he should be extradited to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning in relation to sexual offences.

The plight of Assange is different from former US government employees including Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning from a legal standpoint. The intelligence analysts have both been charged under the Espionage Act - and sentenced in the case of Manning - because they provided confidential information to news outlets.

However, until the US confirms it will not pursue charges against Assange, it is likely he will remain in the Ecuadorian embassy.

The logins, passwords and email addresses belonging to dozens of Hertfordshire Police officers appear to have been published online by a computer hacker.

The details were posted on text sharing site, Pastebin, yesterday by a hacker called 0x00x00, in an apparent show of support for Julian Assange.

The Wikileaks founder is currently seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning about a series of sexual misconduct allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.

The hacker also claims to have obtained information belonging to Nottinghamshire Police.

This is nothing big, but this tells how insecure the web is.

In a statement, Hertfordshire Police denied that any personal information belonging to officers and members of the public had been compromised.

"Hertfordshire Constabulary is currently investigating following the publication on the internet of information stored on a database linked to the public Safer Neighbourhoods pages of the external Constabulary website," said the statement.

"As a precaution these pages have been temporarily disabled whilst the circumstances as to how this information was obtained is investigated."

In recent weeks, computer hackers, including members of the renowned Anonymous group, have staged a number of attacks against high profile sites in protest at the handling of the Assange case.

However, 0x00x00 used the Pastebin entry to distance themselves from Anonymous.

"I am not a member of Anonymous...This is nothing big, but this tells how insecure the web is," 0x00x00 wrote.

The hacker also appears to have targeted Slough-based firm, Hand2Hand Recruitment, having posted a document on Pastebin this morning that allegedly contains information about the firm's customers.

At the time of writing, the company's website also featured two pictures of Julian Assange on its homepage, adding weight to the hacker's claims.

IT Pro has alerted Hand2Hand Recruitment to the situation and was awaiting a response from the firm's management team as this story went to press.

Anonymous has launched an attack to bring down a number of UK Government websites in protest at the handling of the Julian Assange case.

The loose collective of hackers and internet activists claimed responsibility for bringing down the Ministry of Justice website via a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and said it is also targeting Number 10. The website had reportedly been experiencing disruption since the evening of 20 August.

Investigation by IT Pro found service to be intermittent at justice.gov.uk but number10.gov.uk to be currently unaffected.

Anonymous has long supported Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who is currently taking refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies.

In a statement issued to IT Pro, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson sought to allay fears as to the nature of the attack.

"This is a public information website and no sensitive data is held on it. No other Ministry of Justice systems have been affected," the spokesperson said.

"Measures put in place to keep the website running mean that some visitors may be unable to access the site intermittently.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and will take measures accordingly."

A DDoS attack involved overloading servers with requests, making it inaccessible. Such attacks are illegal in most countries, but have become a favourite method of protest for groups such as Anonymous, Team Poison and AntiLeaks over the past two years.

Wikileaks founder Julian Asssange has had his appeal against extradition unanimously dismissed by the justices at the Supreme Court in the UK, making it look increasingly likely he will be extradited to Sweden.

The Supreme Court originally ruled that Assange should be extradited on 30 May 2012, but gave him 14 days to appeal.

Having considered the arguments put forward by his legal counsel, Dinah Rose QC, the justices have rejected the appeal and ruled the extradition can go ahead.

"[The] Court has ordered that, with the agreement of the respondent and pursuant to section 36(3)(b) of the Extradition Act 2003, the required period for extradition shall not commence until the 14th day after today."

It remains to be seen whether Assange will lodge an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Swedish authorities want to question Assange after allegations of rape and sexual molestation were brought against him by two women.

The original judgment had suggested Assange had been charged, but this will be amended to read "offences in respect of which his extradition is sought".

Assange has always maintained his innocence, claiming the allegations are politically motivated and there are no charges to answer to in Sweden.

He founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and since then it has became a notorious whistle-blowing website leaking confidential diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given permission to petition the UK Supreme Court as he bids to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange is wanted for questioning in his home country, after two female former WikiLeaks volunteers accused him of sexual assault during their time with the organisation in August 2010.

The WikiLeaks chief could have been sent home within 10 days if he had not been granted some leeway after his hearing today. Although judges denied Assange permission to have an appeal heard at the Supreme Court, he can ask the court to look at the case.

The long struggle for justice for me and others continues.

Judges concluded his case raised "a question of general public importance."

"I think that is the correct decision and I am thankful. The long struggle for justice for me and others continues," the BBC quoted Assange as saying.

Assange denies the accusations, claiming the allegations are politically motivated. WikiLeaks upset various Governments after releasing classified communications documents in 2010.

If the Supreme Court denies Assange a hearing, he could take his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

He is currently residing at the country house of a supporter in eastern England, having been released on bail late last year.

MPs are currently looking into extradition legislation in the UK, following high-profile cases such as the one surrounding Gary McKinnon.

The insider threat

The man accused of handing over documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, is due in court this month.

Manning, a 23-year-old US army analyst, has been in military custody in the US since May 2010, but reports of mistreatment have received negative attention across the globe.

It was alleged Manning had been held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day during his time in prison at Wuantico, Virginia, without clothing or bedding.

Last week, over 60 members of the European Parliament sent an open letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to allow Manning to meet the UN's special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez.

"We have questions about why Mr Manning has been imprisoned for 17 months without yet having had his day in court. We are troubled by reports that Mr Manning has been subjected to prolonged solitary confinement and other abusive treatment tantamount to torture," the letter read.

"And we are disappointed that the US government has denied the request of the United Nations special rapporteur on torture to meet privately with Mr Manning in order to conduct an investigation of his treatment by US military authorities."

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, lost his appeal today against extradition to Sweden.

In December 2010, Assange was accused of raping one woman and molesting and coercing another. Two Swedish women made accusations after his visit to Stockholm in August.

In preparation for an appeal, Assange's legal team needs to seek permission from the High Court. They will have 14 days to do so and bring the case to the Supreme Court, on the grounds his case raises issues of public importance.

I have not been charged with any crime in any country.

Assange sat silently through the judgment and gave no sign of emotion as the judges gave reasons for their decision, according to reports.

"It is clear that the allegation is that he had sexual intercourse with her when she was not in a position to consent and so he could not have had any reasonable belief that she did," the judges said.

Although the President of the Queen's Bench Division Sir John Thomas said the issuing of the European arrest warrant (EAW) was "lawful" and "proportionate", 40-year-old Assange denies allegations, claiming they are politically motivated.

"I have not been charged with any crime in any country," said Assange in his speech outside the High Court after the hearing.

He also urged people to go to swedenversusassange.com to "know what is really going on in this case."

Supporters outside the court held banners reading "Free Assange! End the wars" and vented their outrage at the judges' decision.

Last month, WikiLeaks pleaded for funding so it could continue to publish Government diplomatic cables after major financial institutions cut off support for the organisation.

Donations to WikiLeaks can now go through Visa and MasterCard, a partner of Julian Assange's enterprise has revealed.

On 7 December, DataCell's payment gateway, provided by a company called Teller A/S, blocked Visa and MasterCard payments on the request of the credit card companies.

Last month, DataCell, a WikiLeaks partner, announced it was planning to file a complaint with the EU Commission on the decision to block payments to WikiLeaks. It also planned to commence a lawsuit in Denmark to claim damages.

Without contacting DataCell, it appears Visa and MasterCard have allowed payments to WikiLeaks, albeit through a gateway provided by a different company, not Teller A/S.

"We have observed that an alternative payment processor that we have contracted with, has in fact opened the gateway for payments with Visa and Mastercard, and now also for American Express Card payments, which is an option we did not had before," explained DataCell chief executive (CEO), Andreas Fink.

"We choose to interpret this, as that Visa and Mastercard has in fact given in to our demand that the payment services was reinstated. In other words DataCell is happy to report that we are now able again to process donations to Wikileaks."

Despite the developments, DataCell said it would go ahead with the lawsuit in Denmark and most likely still lodge a complaint with the European Commission.

When Visa and MasterCard started blocking payments to WikiLeaks, hacking group Anonymous responded by targeting the two firms, taking down the latter's website.

A WikiLeaks app for iPhone has been pulled less than a week after it was made available for iOS users.

The app, which was placed on the App Store on 17 December, provided users with access to leaked cables and charged $1.99 (1.28) for access.

Of course, the communications have been accessible for free across the web and the app itself appears not to have been particularly popular with some.

A number of negative reviews were seen in a Google cached version of the app info, with one saying they would "rather go on wikileaks.com."

"This app is just a wrapper for the mobile web site," another poster called Murdock1450 said.

"There is no access to the actual released documents. Twitter feed doesn't count as up to date information."

There are a range of Android WikiLeaks apps where users can view leaked cables, a number of which are free.

At the time of publication, Apple had not responded to a request for comment.

The Cupertino company may have risked the wrath of pro-WikiLeaks web denizens such as the Anonymous hacking group, if Apple did take down the app.

Anonymous have launched various attacks on companies that have pulled support from Julian Assange's site, including MasterCard.

Last week, the Bank of America said it would no longer process payments for WikiLeaks.

Assange has reportedly claimed to have information related to Bank of America activity and threatened to release some damaging documents on senior members of staff at the financial institution.

The WikiLeaks founder remains at a mansion in Norfolk, where he has to stay under his bail conditions.

This week IT PRO, in association with Microsoft, launched launched Cloud Power a brand new resource for all your cloud needs.

The site has been launched at a time when it is impossible to deny the rise of cloud computing.

But it is still a topic for hot discussion, as highlighted by Gartner's claim that the cloud has been somewhat over-hyped, whilst Google's use of the cloud for Chrome OS user data was criticised due to security concerns.

In less contentious news, Gartner said the software-as-a-service sector would be worth $9.2 billion (5.8 billion) by the end of the year.

Twitter time

Twitter was under the spotlight once again this week. In good news for the micro-blogging service, it raised $200 million of financing, which meant the company is now valued at $3.7 billion.

Elsewhere, there were calls for a review into whether tweeting should be allowed from court an issue that came about due to use of Twitter during WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bail hearing.

Meanwhile, the Office of Fair Trading ruled it needs to be made clear when tweets or blogs are sponsored, so as not to mislead consumers.

The biggest social network in the world had a double dose of good news, as Facebook was named the best place to work in the US and Mark Zuckerberg was named Time's Person of the Year.

An outright ban on using Twitter in court would not be "feasible or reasonable," a lawyer has said.

Stewart Room, partner in Field Fisher Waterhouse's Privacy and Information Law Group, told IT PRO that the issue needs serious consideration but it is vital journalists be able to report on court proceedings.

"Twitter is a tool for journalism as well as for social networking," Room said. "So if tweeting by journalists in court is banned, what is the difference if they step outside the courtroom to post their messages?"

Room also questioned whether restrictions on the use of Twitter should be evidence-based or not.

Proceedings surrounding WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's appeal for bail, which has now been granted, were kept fully secret today after Twitter usage was banned inside the courtroom. Journalists had been permitted to tweet from court before Thursday.

The Lord Chief Justice, meanwhile, has called for a debate on tweeting from the courtroom, according to reports.

Whilst journalists should be allowed to tweet from court, albeit within a set of rules, other parties involved in cases may need different rules, Room said.

"Banning the use of Twitter in court by the parties to the proceedings, by witnesses and jury members is much easier to reconcile with public policy," he said.

"Mature thought is required to create workable and justifiable rules for everyone else. But, of course, some evidence will always need to be kept strictly confidential, but journalists know the rules and the courtroom is usually cleared of lay persons when such materials are being discussed."

Twitter was at the centre of another court battle earlier this year, when a user was handed a 1,000 fine and a criminal conviction for threatening to blow up an airport on the micro-blogging service.

Chambers then lost an appeal, much to the vexation of supporters who voiced their dismay on Twitter at the court's decision.

Wikileaks defectors have set up their own alternative whistle-blowing service, which will offer the technology to download files rather than publish any material.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who was one of the top players at WikiLeaks, has set up the OpenLeaks site in a bid to be more "open," allowing the source to decide how long organisations can use documents.

Domscheit-Berg told the BBC he felt WikiLeaks had started to go in the "wrong direction."

"There's too much concentration of power in one organisation; too much responsibility; too many bottlenecks; too many resource constraints."

At the current time there is nothing on OpenLeaks except a logo and a Coming soon' notification.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said the emergence of OpenLeaks has offered proof the issue goes beyond just Julian Assange's site.

"This shows that the idea of online whistleblowing sites will not live or die with Wikileaks," Killock told IT PRO.

"Which is all the more reason for governments to apply due process and respect the law, rather than trying to remove sites like Wikileaks through private phone calls."

WikiLeaks has seemingly spawned other similar services, including Brussels Leaks.

"We thought for a while it'd be a good idea to set up a website to allow people to anonymously upload files or send tip-offs on issues which we could use to either publish ourselves or send on to relevant people," the Brussels Leaks founders said on their website last week.

"Wikileaks something we have no connection with other than ideals - showed the power of this."

Currently, Julian Assange remains in custody after a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden. Assange faces allegations of sexual crimes, which he has denies.

The 39-year-old Australian had been staying the UK in an attempt to keep out of the public eye whilst his website published leaked cables from US embassies.

The founder of controversial website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police in London today, accused of sexual assault.

The 39-year-old, originally from Australia, has been staying the UK in an attempt to keep out of the public eye whilst his website published leaked cables from US embassies, revealing confidential, and often embarrassing, Government communications.

However, a European arrest warrant was granted to bring in Assange, who stands accused of one count of rape, one count of unlawful coercion and two counts of sexual molestation, which are alleged to have occurred back in August this year in Sweden.

He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court later today.

However, Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesperson WikiLeaks, told Reuters: "Wikileaks is operational. We are continuing on the same track as laid out before."

"Any development with regards to Julian Assange will not change the plans we have with regards to the releases today and in the coming days."

Take a look at our Week in Review to find out how the week of the WikiLeaks played out.