Slashdot Mirror
Data Haven To Open For Business - Today
pq writes: "The real world catches up with Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' on Monday, June 5th, when a data haven opens on a WWII military fortress six miles off England's coast. Read the (nologin) NYT article here about the strange case of
HavenCo and the independent principality of Sealand: yes, they'll host DeCSS, Metallica songs, even pictures of Natalie, all for a price." (More below.)
And reader JazFresh writes: " ... I went to Monkeybagel.com to find out what was new, and the site owner said he's stopped work on Monkeybagel to work on this new site instead. From the Web page:
'HavenCo will soon be offering the world's most secure managed colocation facility based in the world's smallest sovereign territory, the Principality of Sealand. As the security of sensitive data over public networks grows in importance, businesses, governments and organizations worldwide are realizing the need for a suitable facility from which to host their financial transaction, B2B and e-mail servers as well as sensitive data backups. A large part of a server's physical security is dependent upon the political system of the country in which the server is located. We will be providing the business structure in the world's first free-market location.'"
These were just some of the many submissions about this company. The story of Sealand is almost too bizarre for comprehension; read this April 3rd Sunday Telegraph piece for an eyebrow-wrinkling summary. All I know is, I'd like one of these passports, too, please.
Update: 06/05 13:53 by michael : Thought I'd update this with some pictures and diagrams. Nifty.
No, their domain would be siezed since the .com's are controlled by US Courts/Government.
Linux O Muerte!
Perhaps why the UK isn't interested in taking sealand out, is that the datahaven is really going to be a MI6 secret operation??? hmmmm - now that would be an interesting twist.
ITBWTCL has been available online for awhile. Great read, but I was surprised to see it being hawked for 10 bucks a pop at $BOOKSTORE.
. html
Here is a little more Stephenson that applies to the topic at hand: Laying underwater cable. You need fat fiber going to that data haven don't you?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass
Its 56 pages long but well worth the read.
-BW
If only out of respect for the people whose works are going to be ripped off by this venture, they must be stopped.
http://www.principality-sealand.net/en 00.htm
http://www.fruitsofthes ea.demon.co.uk/sealand/factfile.html
Sealand exists because it was "captured" in 1967, before the UK extended the range of its offshore authority. As a result, a British judge ruled that the UK govt. had no authority on the "island". The previous business deals which have involved the prinicipality (it's a principality due to an odd regulation stating that no one may be convicted of treason for aiding a prince in gaining his land, much like the Hutt River Province in Australia) have been a little shady, and the platform was once attacked by helicoptors sent by a business associate of "Prince" Roy.
Sealand exists in a bizarre position: I don't think the UK considers it independent, but they cannot legally do a damn thing about it.
SEAL team my @$$. SBS would get first dibs. Look where they're located, for crissakes. Who do you suppose gets to play in the North Sea more -- NAVSPECWARDEVGRU or SBS and SAS?
Once upon a time, Team Six used to play with oil rigs out there, but the Brits are a lot handier when it comes to actual response time.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Hi. I'm Ryan Lackey, CTO of HavenCo.
We're all very busy dealing with actually running
our business, as well as interacting with the
press, but I figured I'd respond to some of the
questions raised here, as I'm a frequent reader
of slashdot (check out my profile)
1) How do we know it's not a hoax?
Well, look at the people involved. Within the
cypherpunks, data networking, and security industries, we're all very well known.
2) Can't you just be destroyed by an Iraqi chemical attack, wayward 747, etc, or have your
links cut?
Defense against denial of service can never be
fully accomplished, but we try very hard. HavenCo
intends to have multiple sites (do you have a
small country which wants free high-speed networking for all your citizens, in trade for
autonomy over a few acres of remote land? Contact
us!) We have up to 5 locations lined up now.
Plus, we can always set up our secure facilities
inside other people's colo sites.
We promise to not allow machines to be *compromised*, as far as confidentiality or
integrity -- if someone tries to tamper with
a service, be it a paid-off staff member, a raiding Church of Scientology commando group, or
whatever, the server's contents will be destroyed.
More info on how this will be done shall be presented at a conference this summer, and in
a white paper, by myself. How to do it is relatively well known in the crypto/tamper-resistance community, but no one
has deployed it yet.
3) Your AUP bans obscenity/etc.?
There has been a bit of internal confusion over
that.
Basically, we are planning to have sites in many
countries. Content illegal in the country in
which we have the server cannot be hosted at
the site.
For instance: Sealand. Kiddie porn is explicitly
banned, but other than that, I don't know if anything is banned. In the UK, all UK-illegal
content will be banned. In the US, same thing.
Which is why we'll be putting facilities in
*many* countries, with diverse laws.
The only things which *we* as HavenCo specifically
ban from our facilities globally are spam, network
attacks, and the like. Many of our founders have
participated in spammer hunts in the past, and
it would be hypocritical for us to offer a safe
haven for spammers.
4) These fake sites...
Principality-sealand.net and telebase.es/sealand
are run by criminals who attempted to take Sealand
by force
5) Aren't you just being paranoid?
Um, we're not *just* being paranoid, but by being
overly paranoid ourselves, our customers can
relax. Seems like a fair trade.
As a separate nation, Sealand is in a good position to qualify for its own top level domain in the same way that many other nations, both small and large, have. The owner of Sealand should contact Network Solutions and then he would have no more problems about forged sites, since his government could control a '.se' national domain or something similar if that has already gone.
The fact that the US does not recognise Sealand shouldn't be a problem, after all I believe Cuba and Taiwan have their own domains...
For all those doubters out there, Sealand does exist - stories about it have been in the UK press for ages. I personally would not trust my data, website or anything else to anything out there though, since it seems a lot of shady and dubious dealings go around in its name, not to mention your data may not be very secure with the threat of coup d'etat, kidnappings, invasion etc.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
At least you'll be assured your data is gaurded, I suppose
---
---
You are not what you own -- Fugazi, "Merchandise"
"Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' "
The physical location is going to exist at the sufferance of the British government. Anybody who says differently doesn't know how the Brits practice realpolitik. They're like the Israelis that way -- if something really troublesome is in that data haven, the place might just disappear.
The only way to forestall any possibility of hassles with governments is to make manifestly clear that there are copious off-site backups in undisclosed locations -- but doesn't that violates the sanctity of a data haven in the first place?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.
:=))
Wrong ; you might want to read more than three sentences from websites you review before you post. The FruitsOfTheSea site is linked in sealandgov.com in the front page. It was the first official Sealand website and they say they keep it for "historical purposes".
I don't find it surprising that their servers aren't located in Sealand since they're supposed to have just brought three generators powerfull enough to handle the load of some(?) computers. As for the pictures being fake or legit and the island being big enough to host a server farm, I really don't know. It seems to be hard to get to Sealand these days. Former terrorist attacks and the high controversy of their current project obviously didn't make the royal family feel like developping the local economy with mass tourism
Let's just suppose Havenco would succeed due to two factors: the big players would not be that interested in smashing a free speech group, and enthusiastic small business would choose to use this service to fund it.
Backup on territory defined to protect your data would be a nice selling point. However you still need to move your data over encrypted channel. In a perfect world you would not even trust the hardware owners, so send it precrypted. What would be cooler way to send the data over than a channel crypted with one-time pads (or encryption derived therefrom)?
Too bad it would cost, er, way too much to send the cd-r's over there... would it? I assume they have to shop for food on the mainland, don't they?
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
There still needs to be some other endpoint though. For microwave this has to be more or less line of sight, which severly limits their choices (it would have to be in Great Britain, and nearby). Which means that GB could still exert a lot of pressure against the island.
As for the satellite link, this is more flexible. The other base station could be almost anywhere. However, who owns the satellite? Couldn't the country of the satellite owner exert some pressure there? Or do the Sealanders plan to launch their own satellite? Btw, as they are an independant country I wonder whether they got allocated their geosynchronous orbital positions?
Say no to software patents.
It would be considerably more difficult to seize the data in Sealand, where you'd need to mount a full-scale military invasion, than to seize the data in the US or the UK, where all the government needs is a search warrant.
Cheers,
-j.
this has some, if they are real or not is your guess. Certianly no mansion:)http://www.principality-sealand.net/en501 .html
This idea is little more than a few people's idea to avoid having to follow laws or respect intellectual property rights.
Millions of people routinely "disrespect" intellectual property rights now, without the aid of data havens and with no negative consequences. Why would anyone want to drop a couple grand a month for this service just to host pirated music for the gratification of leeches, especially when they could connect to Napster instead and accomplish the same goal. You apparently have no knowledge or understanding of the background of data havens.
While many may not agree with the current laws, it is not right to abandon them simply for one's own personal gain.
Why not? If you disagree with a law, why should you follow it? And where does personal gain come into the equation of whether or not to follow laws? Let's say you live under a regime which declares the group to which you belong undesirable, and decides to kill you. Would you go along with that edict simply because it's "the law" and the government can't be wrong? Or would you "abandon" that law and try to save your life? And doesn't trying to save your own life lead to "personal gain"? I could go on forever about why your thinking is wrong, but I will restrain myself.
If only out of respect for the people whose works are going to be ripped off by this venture, they must be stopped.
While we're at it, let's shut down Napster, the internet, and all BBSs. Better shut down the phone system, too, or at least outlaw modems. Then we should collect all tape recorders, VCRs, camcorders, put 'em in a pile, and burn 'em. Then to be damn sure the property rights of artists are respected, let's outlaw the ability to transcribe music. Wouldn't want anybody copying down a melody someone else wrote. And for that matter, let's rid the world of writing instruments, so pirates can't copy books. Once again, I could go on like this forever, but you should get the point. Your thinking, if I can call it that, is enormously flawed.
Hey, it's the Swiss bank of data...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
(FWIW, I'm CTO of HavenCo, and responsible for the buildout of the datacenter on Sealand)
We actually have all the equipment needed to get
operational *onsite* right now.
Please remember that Sealand has been occupied
continuously since 24 December, 1966 by the
Royal Family, and they've done quite a bit of
work over the years to make sure the place is
quite suitable.
Operational IP to Sealand exists, but we're not
publishing until we get the second link up. We
will be using a network of caches to maximize
throughput.
We can always use more money, both in investment
and customer revenues, but that's primarily to
increase capacity to serve more customers.
You mentioned the oil industry -- sure, to do things the official way through the offshore oil
industry would cost >$50m if you were starting with an abandoned platform. However, if you're
using a facility almost purpose-built for
secure coloation, with a great deal of infrastructure already in place, which has been
maintained by dedicated professionals for years,
it's a lot cheaper. Plus, we're using commodity
equipment, open source software, and vendor
partnerships to lower the cost on the Internet/server side.
You don't need to trust us; you can just wait
a week or two and see for yourself.
Some French spies blew up the Greenpeace flagship. Nowadays Greenpeace has something of a fleet and France took (IMHO) a publicity hit. I wonder whether they'd pull something like that again.
Any kind of accident is always possible with a single location. A distributed nation effort would have a better reliability, but it would be extremely difficult to form due to personal and ideological conflicts. A distributed alliance of micro-nations might be worth a thought, however.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
At that point, they become invincible.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Mostly because to get to it, they'd have to pass through British territorial waters, something I doubt our beloved government would tollerate. Actually, Sealand has relatively few potential military threats. The UK is one of the safest nations in the world. It has a disproprtionately well equipped military for the size of population, compared to just about any other country in the world. If we treat every nation as hostile to the UK, there are only two that actually pose a real threat -- the USA and Russia. Although others (e.g., China, Iraq, etc.) have armies more than large enough to overrun the UK, only the two I mentioned actually have to capability to get sufficient numbers physically to the UK to cause a problem. The UK would defend Sealand far more readily (as part of the defense of it's own territorial waters) than it would let a foreign nation attack Sealand.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The native inhabitants of Sealand are the Seamen.
They have very peculiar demographics and an even stranger culture. Their population reproduces very quickly, but this is to balance out the devastating effects of their cultural tradition. You see, once every few weeks the many of the Seamen go swimming across the Fallopian Channel in a massive exodus, lured by native myths about making it to a "promised land." Only one of the Seamen ever makes it across the Fallopian Channel alive, and the rest all drown.
The Seamen reproduce quickly, and this cycle of death continues again.
>This fella is one of the Financial Cryptography folks in Anguilla,
:-)], and that happened mostly because he did something especially cool on cypherpunks, (can't remember what, maybe it was fully-indexed cypherpunks list archives?) and I comped him a conference badge and a room in Willies' Inn, (such as it was) for his trouble.
:-).
:-)]
:-), which, some people note, is the way it should be, anyway.
;-).
>along with Vince Cate. Some of the folks who sponsor the FC
> symposia include Zero Knowledge, E-Gold, and Hushmail.
Yes, well...
As the, um, actual founder of same, I should note Ryan actually "interned" at FC98 [the one with the solar eclipse over the volcano's ashcloud
Also, I should note that Ryan also did the "protocols" presentation at my Philodox Symposium on Internet Bearer Transaction Settlement the following year, and, as a result of that, got himself a job slinging code for Ian Grigg and the e-gold folks for most of the following year in Anguilla.
Unfortunately, his job for e-gold was to do an implementation of Wagner Blinding, which, sad to say, he didn't actually do, and which he followed by getting himself deliberately kicked off Anguilla as persona non grata so that he didn't have to come back and finish.
[BTW, Ben Laurie, of Apache SSL fame, actually *did* just finish Wagner blinding for Lucre, and, it appears, he's going to talk about it at the Edinburgh Financial Cryptography Engineering Conference (run code or go home, and all that), which will be held in, um, Edinburgh, on June 23rd and 24th.
Now, I like Ryan a lot, both personally, and in a prodigal, "infant terrible", kind of way, and, unlike a lot of people who probably have reason to say such things, I think he's going to make something happen this time with Havenco. I was, frankly, floored when I heard about it, and I laughed for hours afterward at the sheer audicity of the idea, so it's definitely a good one, on that score alone.
I also like Sameer, who has a proven track record in starting crypto- and privacy- companies, c2.net, for instance, and certainly has the credentials worthy of the above quoted praise.
Nonetheless, I do think that the idea of "privacy-" or "data-havens", per se, and "regulatory arbitrage", in particular, is, mostly, a waste of time. Okay. To be charitable, a stopgap measure at best.
Just like they did in Switzerland, and, even, Anguilla, FinCEN et. al. will legislate "privacy" away, and just because they *can*, to use the ribald expression, leaving us nothing but *cryptography* on the internet, preferrably financial cryptography
Still, Ryan and Sameer are out there, hanging it out, while lots of people just talk about it, and, Sameer, of course, is famous for *doing* things other people just talk about.
And, I should note, finally, that we have all *kinds* of money being raised spent on things of what some people consider to be technology of dubious efficacy. So-called "certification authorities", for instance, which, like all hierarchical schemes on a geodesic internetwork, "trust management" or otherwise, are simply a waste of time. Hell, we even have watermarking companies getting funded when the only thing you can tell from such a thing is who you "stole" the item *from* -- not who "stole" it. I even hear tell of so-called "bearer transaction" companies getting money these days
So, in it's own spirit of "because they can", go forth, Havenco, and, heh, replicate.
I still chuckle when I think about Ryan & Co, out there in a horizontal-rain force-blabla Beaufort-scale North Sea gale, making the world safe for the four horsemen of the infocalypse...
Cheers,
Robert Hettinga
Founder,
DCSB, The International Conference on Financial Cryptography (FCXX), IFCA (*I* say so), Philodox, IBUC, EFCE (kind of), yadda, yadda, yadda...
---------- Financial Crypto is the Only Crypto That Matters
Is Sealand recognized by the United States? If a nation is not recognized as independent by other nations, it can't do much good.
Additionally, how do we know other nations cannot interfere with Sealand? Even a tiny nation like Iraq could take over the island with a few gunboats and some chemical gases.
Furthermore, Sealand, although independent, is still at the mercy of external controls. The fiber lines can be cut, network traffic can be intercepted, etc...
And what about political pressure? Say the US government doesn't like it. It can pressure Sealand to enact controls by threatening to block US business access to the haven ( a significant portion of their market ) by passing a law (which would be quite constitutional, I think)
"...an oil-rig type structure in the sea". Pretty much. It's a "Maunsell fort", which is one of these. I'd be surprised if a mighty fleet were required to take it. There's more about sea forts here, and about unrecognised little island states, if you're interested.
You still need to connect to the Internet right?
;).
It's trivial to blockade even if you have more than a handful of ISPs. They can censor you indefinitely that way.
Your site is already easy to blockade in 3 dimensions - ships, airplanes (I'd say submarines, but I hear the sea there is shallow).
You'd better have the media and public supporting you... Not sure if the toothless 5 nation dominated United Nations will do anything to help you.
No ISP is an island
Cheerio,
Link.
Maintaining the physical security of the Sealand fortress and HavenCo facility is of utmost importance to our success. Our business, personal reputations and financial bottom line, and that of all our customers, could be compromised in the event that a careless or malicious entity were to ship equipment to us that was altered to include a bomb or eavesdropping device. We don't like these precautions any more than you do, but this is the reality that we face in an increasily hostile world.
Although I agree thay phsical security as well as systems integrity is paramount in todays electronic environment. Taking measures this stiff is along the lines of James Bond films. These folks won't even let you bring in your own hardware. So is it a true COLO? From perusing the related HavenCo pages it appears that along with secure services, they also have quite a lockdown on content provided as well as a strong hold on how the hosted sites are run. I could see needing a facility like this to house some business critical warehousing, but that would be about it. I think the leasing arrangements and the spylike security will also come with a huge pricetag. If you spend all thismoney and house your site there, you still can't see or visit the facilities. Seems a bit paranoid to me.
The Principality of Sealand was destroyed today in a tragic special effects accident. During the filming of Das Boobs, a German remake of the shortlived Operation Petticoat series, several torpedos intended for a fake cardboard convoy missed their target. The torpedos ran up on a beach and deconstructed all infrastructure in the tiny principality
A spokes person from the MPAA said oops!
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
o The Principality of Sealand's actual web site is www.sealandgov.com. Any other site which claims to be the web site for the government of Sealand is making a false claim. The web site at www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk was the official site until the recent HavenCo launch, at which point we moved the official site for the government of Sealand to www.sealandgov.com
o Prince Roy is an upstanding individual and has not been involved in the shady schemes using the name of Sealand. A number of shady individuals have been forging Sealand passports and selling them. Recently a number of these shady individuals, who had been acting without the consent of the government of Sealand, have been arrested in Spain for falsifying documents. Sealand does not sell passports.
o Our AUP isn't very clear. =( The AUP states that content illegal in the jurisdiction of the "server" is prohibited. Our AUP was written with the future plan of building datacenters in multiple jurisdictions in mind. If you, as a HavenCo customer, host your content at the HavenCo sealand datacenter, the only content regulation which applies to your content as it relates to our AUP is the Sealand prohibition on child pornography. Sealand has no regulations prohibiting any content other than child pornography.
Thank you. I hope that clears up the questions raised here. We are all very busy dealing with the press barrage, so I apologize if there are questions that remain unanswered.
--
Sameer Parekh
Chairman
Havenco, Ltd.
We can also store data that is too dangerous to store anywhere else, like Barbara Streissand MP-3s. :)
"I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the United States does not recognize the Principality of Sealand,"
- Walter Deering, Miami special agent-in-charge of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
See also: Source of quote
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Based on my reading (IANAL, but a friend of mine is and he specialises in this type of thing :) - while it is a part of Malaysia and (sorta) under Malaysian laws, it's also its own separate environment, duty free and so on. It's one of the best places to set up in.
:)
If you read in some detail, you may note that if you pay RM20,000 per year (about US$5,000) then you don't have to do anything more, no matter how much you might earn. Think about it
Anyhow, like I said, if you're wanting to set up a real off-shore operation, check out Labuan. It's a real place with real laws but enough extensions that you can operate "offshore" from practically everywhere. Sealand seems more suited for political content, risky kind of stuff - not businesses.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
In the UK, all UK-illegal content will be banned.
Does this include all useful crypto (according to the RIP bill) ? I can already buy reliable non-pr0n hosting on the UK mainland, but I'd still like somewhere that didn't have the RIP problem. If you aren't going to help with that, then why don't I just host in Switzerland or Andorra ?
This may be a great idea and all, but since it's not really a part of any other country, what's to stop someone from blowing the place up... no fear of retalliation... sure it may not be the 'right' thing to do, but since when do governments care about that?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The best thing that Sealand offers is a proof point against the current corp perspective that things can go their way--the MPAA's reach can in fact extend to lyrics.ch, the FBI to germany and the philippines, DVDCCA to germany, and so forth. But will there always be some country unwilling to cooperate with most other govs and corps? Yes, seen here.
;)
As to whether the Royal Family of sealand is smoking crack and selling passports is another story, but fortunately not relevant to the point
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
...that the NYT article may have it right that the "paper trail", and interaction with the world's finacial markets would make it difficult for criminals to get away with crime more easily by using this service.
However, it's the ultimate protection against lawsuits against the ISP for hosting supposedly offensive materials. Individuals will not suddenly be free of liability for their actions. They'll still be subject to the laws where they reside. BUT, they won't have to worry about some spineless ISP dropping their content without notice simply because they got a threatening letter from a corporate lawyer.
This seems to be particularly appropriate just off the coast of Great Britain...
- StaticLimit
Yes, the only things that they explicitly state that you can't do are a) spam and b) "Attempts to subvert, disrupt, damage, or misuse data, data traffic, network users, or equipment."
Then, in the very next paragraph;
Sounds like they'll kick you out if you're serving porn and your server came from Saudi Arabia, or if you're posting warez and come from the USA. Though, even if they don't observe the laws of the server-originating country, there's always the might-makes-right argument...
"Okay, so we can't SUE you to get you to take down that site, but lets say we park all of our warships around your island. Any of your planes try to take off or land, we'll consider that hostile. What? Okay, so when will you have the site offline? In an hour? Great, pleasure doing business with you."
--- http://foo.ca
The way to free information is not run beyond the reaches of law, but to distribute it so that for each site that closes, another two spring up
A quick question, the law may not be able to touch them, but they can cut the connection to the rest of the world can they not?
I'll be interested to see what they mean by that. If they're going to be hosting sites fro free-speach reasons, that's one thing. To traffic in stolen property makes them pirates. We'll see how long that holds up... The Napster/metallica stuff might put them on a poor footing, foreign-relations wise. Imagine if they are declared to be a "rogue state."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
According to How to start your own country, he spent over $ 1.5 million in legal fees to clarify the legal position of his country vis-a-vis the UK. Hardly a "pathetic wanker", then, at least in the financial realm.
He apparently made that money in pirate radio stations operated on ships, so he had a lot of solid background in this before starting.
Personally, I feel real admiration for the guy - he had the guts to do what many people dream of.
D
----
According to How to start your own country, the main reference I know of on Sealand, the UK government felt strongly enough about the dangers inherent in Sealand clones to blow up the remaining platforms.
D
----
I was largely skeptical of the Sealand datahaven until I read that Ryan Lackey was the CTO.
This fella is one of the Financial Cryptography folks in Anguilla, along with Vince Cate. Some of the folks who sponsor the FC symposia include Zero Knowledge, E-Gold, and Hushmail.
I don't know about you guys, but when one of that trust-web is involved in something to do with liberty/cypherpunk/finance, I lend it more credence.
HavenCo is donating free colocation space to Non-Governmental Organizations of our choosing. In general, the types of organizations that we will want to provide hosting for are those that promote
Among other groups, Freenet have expressed interest in getting a large Freenet node hosted there (of course, that's very preliminary, and was just posted to freenet-chat a couple hours ago). Between Freenet and HavenCo, this is an exciting time for free speech and the Internet.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The article suggests that a secure data haven could be used to keep goods outside the jurisdiction of one's country, thus preventing e-mails or other information from being subpoenaed. I have to wonder how much security this really offers. Others have brought up the prospect of nations declaring war on Sealand (or simply cutting them off, telecom-wise), but wouldn't it be simpler for them to declare war on the owner of the data? There's already the British law requiring computer owners to turn over decryption passwords on request; how far is this from making it a crime not to turn over all one's data, regardless of physical location?
A properly secured data haven could obscure how much and what one had there, but it seems it would be almost impossible to completely hide the list of clients and at least the extent of their holdings -- especially if they charge by the Mb.
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Data havens will happen, but not at Sealand. There is far too much shady history tainting Sealand, and, other than a few amateur porn sites and "l33t d00dz" warez sites, no real investor will even think of storing secure data there.
Further, would terrorists locate their sites there? And outfits like Cult of the Dead Cow, who might benefit from migrating to a data haven? Would you trust your sensitive data to a location that the government (in this case, the UK government) might seize at any moment?
When real money builds a data haven in waters that are truly outside the jurisdiction of any nation (or in space, one day?), then we will look back at this Sealand escapade and laugh, and admire (yet again) the vision of Neal Stephenson.
As a last aside, what types of organizations _would_ legitimately benefit from the resources of a data haven? Do we _want_ thugs, punks, and criminals to be protected?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Well, there you have it. They are going to host web sites that intentionaly piss off France, and only France.:-) The Brits will conveniently find some excuse to extend their defenses to the Sealanders who have ancestral links back to the old homeland. But there is still the Germans to consider as one of Zeldman's Failed Ads attests to.
This about this, a small island with none of the "anti-hacker" laws. I could crack thier system, get the personal data and even reruite a few billion dollers into my bank account.
Why the hell not, who's going to stop me, I doubt sealand going to track me and then send a sealand police force. No other goverment really has jerisdiction here either. This rocks for the crackers.
Also, this seems like kind of a good idea not taken far enough. If this island is profitable they'll just get invaded. Heck you don't need a nation to take one over. Their are plenty of billionares the could hire mercs, aritillery and missiles to take them over. This however is too good an idea not to be done.
If I had the money or brains to do it I'd make my nation completely virtual. What about servers you say? Space!!!!! Sent up satilites and make them servers. I know we can't do this yet, but NASA did just make a satilite that we could ping. In five years well see nations with servers in space. No other nation can claim they own them. And envations a little tricky. Seeing as how you can't physicaly steal a statilite. Only wrestel control.
P.S. $10 bucks says that when this happens NAPSTER will have thier own space nation.
Do not wright in this space.
I'm torn...
Normally, I'd think this is just an unethical way of getting around laws, and for that reason should be squashed somehow. Normally, that is...
I can't count the number of times I've told people who complain about various freedoms allowed here, "If you don't like the freedoms and laws afforded by our Constitution, feel free to go to another country or hell, make your own damn country." Well, they've done just that. More power to them if it works, and I wonder which aggressive nation will be the first to attempt to take them over.
-Jer
Unacceptable publications include, but are not limited to:
Material that is ruled unlawful in the jurisdiction of the originating server (Such as child pornography or other obscene material.
wouldnt this mean that you couldnt host mp3s, decss etc..?
Here is an idea I just pulled outta my ass... Please don't moderate me down until you hear it...
The concept and requirement of a datahaven is the ability to store information, free from the tampering of others (including government), in a secure (both physically and virtually, as well as politically) environment.
The problem always arises that there is some way to either cut off or destroy access (by either destroying the links, or the location of the servers) to the haven.
So why not make the haven "alive"?
Imagine a virus, which replicates itself - and detects attempts to "find" it - so that it can relocate to another "server" (I use the term loosely, as it could be a desktop - I am looking at it from the virus' POV). It would also carry a payload "packet", which would be encrpyted, but relatively small. Many of these packets would make up the information - kinda like a distributed filesystem, but one that is always on the move, autonomously - think of it as gnutella meets melissa, but without the dumb user needed (you get the idea - I am not advocating the use of 'doze - but such a "virus" would do good to have various strains for each OS - and the virus should be packetized amongst itself, so that it can be "reborn"/repaired, as it needed).
The virus would do nothing malicious (except consume a bit of each system's resources) - however, I can't see that stopping someone making a rogue version, but maybe there is a way around this, too.
Such a data haven could not be stopped - not without bringing down the entire internet, and wiping every "infected" system - which isn't practical in the slightest. Maybe data redunancy and CRC could be used as a form of compression - providing the packet size is small enough (maybe only a few hundred bytes)? I am thinking the virus acts like a mini disk drive, only holding a small amount of info. Like ants building the hive (or whatever it's called when relating to ants), each ant may only carry a single pebble, but if you could pass a query back through the ant line (via the scent trail), you could collect back all of those specks to form a pile of dirt.
Does this idea seem as crazy as it sounds - or is it feasible?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
As a libertarian, I feel encouraged to see something like this happen. Unfortunately, in the end, we *will* have a one world government, and Sealand will only exist in our dreams. People are prone to change, but not changing their selfish ways. With each new law, more restrictions are set in place. Sealand might exist for quite a while. They need to move quietly though, and not quickly. Hopefully they won't do anything that will get any major country pissed. A truly libertarian society *can* and *will* outdo any other, including the U.S. or Hong Kong (Not really a country) even in the free-state they are in. The U.S. (of which I belong) should follow example and see the benefit of implementing ideals similar to the ones that Sealand has. It'd work out better in the end.
Running a data center in an abandoned fortress in the North Sea is going to be a difficult, expensive proposition. It's worse than a shipboard operation; you can bring a ship into port for overhaul. Just getting high reliability marine-grade power and air conditioning equipment onto their island will be a job. And the WWII-era concrete probably needs major work by now. Loading and unloading big stuff from small boats is a bitch. Keeping good people onsite for repairs will be very tough, so they'll probably need a helipad and some helicopters to get workers on and off. That's another construction job and a big operating cost.
It's not impossible. If you're in a position to write a check with eight figures to Bechtel or Fluor, who build oil platforms, no problem. They're trying to raise $3 million, and that's nowhere near enough.
Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:
I remember looking into HAM radio operation and reading about amateur satellites put up by the various HAM organizations. Since such organizations may not be limited to dealing only with NASA anymore, wouldn't it be possible to put up a decent number of amateur satellites with store-and-forward abilities?
While this certainly wouldn't allow for information the size of MP3's, I did see large amounts of e-mail like messages being sent this way.
The equipment was small enough that the Naval officer using it had enough room to transport it around with him in the limited confines of his shared submarine stateroom.
Hmmm... landing large storage devices on the moon for storing information and transmitting it at predetermined periods to mobile transceiving stations across the face of the Earth...
Digital Wokan
I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US constitution.
For one of those great IBM Linux on System/390 setups. You have a situation where you want a combination of:
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Kinakuta was internationally recognized "de jure"
Kinakuta had its own domain "kk"
Kinakuta was rather wealthy to begin with, and did not need to raise capital.
Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net is a more pertinent "data haven" reference.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
Question: At what point does it become economic feasible to bribe an employee of HavenCo in order to set off a bomb inside the server facilities?
I suspect the cross-over point is low enough so the world won't be changing too much.
...unless the principality of sealand has found itself quite close to conshohocken, pennsylvania, usa.
/root]# traceroute www.havenco.com
[root@hydra
<snip>
10 pennsauken.netaxs.com (192.157.69.47) 52.800 ms 62.689 ms 69.065 ms
11 l3-psk-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.201) 64.130 ms 51.568 ms 43.537 ms
12 l3-consh-t3-l.netaxs.net (207.106.3.193) 105.847 ms 79.604 ms 52.046 ms
13 ns1.havenco.com (207.106.32.14) 47.845 ms 40.472 ms 90.635 ms
Check out Labuan - it's a duty-free, offshore banking haven with great Internet connections (Fibre, Satellite, etc). Many companies around the world are planning to set up their data havens/off shore tax-free e-commerce systems/etc here.
:)
Not a place to store p0rn/warez/etc but if you want that, stick to loony land like Sealand. Labuan is for serious operations
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Are you trying to say that there are not enough businesses in the entire world outside of the U.S. to keep a 'nation' about the size of a sports stadium in business?
Something like 90% of the world's Internet traffic goes though USA backbone sites. To get from Poland to France (on the net), you go though a USA site. The percentage of SSL traffic (the "important" stuff) is even higher. Even offshore business accounts often host on USA soil, because that's where the network is.
So, while the USA certainly doesn't have any magic control over the world economy, you cannot dispute the fact that most of the network traffic this thread is interested in goes through sites owned and operated by USA companies.
Now, consider that Sealand is a data haven. Without network connectivity, they are about as useful as a jet fighter without fuel. If the entire USA collectively decides to cut off Sealand, then they've lost most of the market they care about.
Is that going to happen any time soon? No. Too many laws against it, and too much popular opinion behind the laws. It would take a radical change in our culture and political climate. By the time the needed changes could be put into effect, the backbone situation will likely have changed.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.