Wikileaks server for sale on eBay

The famous server that hosted Wikileaks during its controversial release of secret U.S. State Department cables is now on eBay. It was going for $25,200 as of Monday morning.

The Wikileaks server belongs to the Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof. The company rented it out to the nonprofit Wikileaks in 2010, when the organization began disclosing highly-guarded U.S. government records.

Wikileaks used that hardware to serve the so-called "Collateral Murder" video, 2007 footage of U.S. helicopter crew gunning down a group of men in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists. The server also housed The Guantánamo Files, which noted how 150 Afghans and Pakistanis were wrongly imprisoned at the U.S. military base in Cuba for years -- without charges -- and later released when assessed by officials as innocent.

To honor the role the server played, Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung said all funds raised from its sale will be donated to organizations in support of widening transparency, including Reporters Without Borders and the 5th of July Foundation.

"This is a historical machine which will be remembered forever," Karlung told CNNMoney. "It's more than a machine. It's a symbol for the freedom of Internet."

But buyers shouldn't expect anything more than 35 pounds of hardware. All data on the Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) PowerEdge R410 server will have been thoroughly wiped using something called the "Gutmann data sanitation method," a painstaking process that prevents any software recovery by overwriting the hard drive 35 times.

:story: CNN