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HavenCo Doing Well
davecl writes: "The off-shore datahaven, HavenCo, is doing well, according to the BBC.
HavenCo is based on a WW2 gunnery platform several miles of the English coast. In the 60s it was outside the 3 mile territorial waters, and a retired Army officer moved there and proclaimed it the independent state of Sealand. In the 80s territorial waters were extended to 12 miles. Sealand's nation status is this unclear, but this hasn't stopped HavenCo setting up their data haven. Customers are largely gambling sites, but an increasing number of political groups, such as the Tibetan Government in Exile, are based there in an effort to escape government censorship. More regulation of the web means more customers, and business is booming. Wonder if others will see this as a way of making money out of beating censorship?" We've mentioned Sealand several times before -- it's great to hear they're defying the skeptics.
Despite the claim of HavenCo, you have to really wonder how secure is the data center. I'm not talking about trying to crack in remotely, it would probably have the same issues as any other data center.
I'm talking about physical security. Now, if I'm running a really important site that requires extreme security, Sealand certainly will not fit my criteria. Gee, a group of 5 people can land a choper on that platform and basically take over the darn thing by force. And then, what do I do? I would have totally lost everything in there.
This is especially true as the platform is so close to other countries, and it has absolute no protection.
I bet everyone here has read the book Cryptonomicon. There's a project of setting up a data haven in Philipines in that book, and they were digging really deep in the ground, and set up all kinds of physical security measures to protect it. That seems more plausible to me than this Sealand thingy.