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Web Hosting For Privacy Activists?
BritishColumbian writes "I'm thinking about setting up a Web site driven by user submissions. I was wondering which locations have the most liberal (i.e., libertarian) privacy laws. There are some great hosts in the US, however there have been so many FBI requests for user data that I don't want a server hosted under US jurisdiction. Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions as to a suitable jurisdiction? It doesn't look like Sealand's HavenCo is guaranteed to be privacy-friendly any more."
What's wrong with geocities? :p
I host my website from a mini server taped to the back of the toilet in a local coffee shop with free wifi. I change the battery twice a month.
I don't want a server hosted under US jurisdiction. ...as of lately, nearly the entire planet is under US jurisdiction.
Tor has a few blog hosts available. That way nobody would know who's hosting it. Of course, only tor clients could see the blog....
OTOH, you could just create an account on blogspot while you're on Tor, and only post to it via Tor. That should keep you kinda safe, as long as you don't reveal yourself on the blog.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
They don't seem particularly friendly to the US government these days yet still have enough ties and technology for a website. Cuba or North Korea would be out as options for obvious reasons.
Why do you hate our freedoms?
the shit is funny as fuck hahaa
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ They will allow you to pay in cash, anonymously.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
xs4all.nl is brave enough to face $cientology in a 10-year lasting court case. And winning!
My bet on the premier hosting location will be Antarctica. Think of the HVAC bills a server farm would save. Plus its neutral territory.
Well basically nowhere!
Let's say you find a hosting company in a country that is very libertarian and will not comply with any request for info.
The routers to that place can be sniffed here in North America (or anywhere along the route) and voila the trick is done. Not as easy as getting logs but...
If your subjects are that hot, then an easy break-in into the premises of that hosting company. (or a bribe). Remember Watergate?
hosting in another country won't save you. if they find out who you are the government will just arrest you anyway, they don't even need a real reason these days.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Try Kinakuta.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
go after terrorist organizations, child pornographers, etc.
if you are hosting such things, you deserve to be hunted down
but with your jibe at "libertarian" one assumes you are the usual privacy absolutist who simply doesn't understand the government has no interest in you. it inflates your ego to think anyone in society or the government actually feels threatened by you
it is of course evil for governments to oppress people just for speaking their minds
luckily for you, unless you are in iran or china, no one is going to do that
people actually do evil things in this world, and governments actually go after them for that. and that's a good thing
i know that's a really radical wacky concept i just put forth there and it clashes with your mythology about government oppressing you just for the hell of it, but you can safely ignore me. i'm obviously a brainwashed sheeple or an advance unit of the illuminati
some people just need hysterical melodrama to make their lives feel meaningful i guess
oh, and for saying this, i'm obviously a neocon loving propaganda addled fear loving monster right?
i couldn't possibly be saying this form a point of view who holds both neocons and privacy absolutists in contempt, right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
judging by the pirate bay legal responses and general attitude, i think that in Sweden it must be possible to have something more on the private side...
:-)
on the other hand, i once saw a Brazilian website which said in the footer:
"want to sue me? good luck. we're hosted in Slovenia." - and a nice little flag that said "proud to be Slovenian"
If your server is hosted in a safe area but you (the owner/responcible operator) reside in the US. Can the FBI contact or require you to provide that info?
Having it hosted in a safe are only protects the hosting company. The FBI will not get anything from them, the next step is for them to contact you (if they can figure out who you are).
Atleast that way, you know when the FBI is trying to get info about you or your users.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Canada has wonderful privacy laws. I recommend checking us out. Of course, you should really investigate the specific company you might wish to host with. Because, many will submit to such foreign requests.
Btw, if privacy is really your concern, you should at most co-locate and use disk encryption, etc. Also, if you aren't in the physical US, you should consider hosting the site yourself. That's really the only way you'll know for sure...
How about hosting it overseas? In singapore? Check out this: http://hosting.my-useful-links.info/
No signature at the moment!
You have a few options, the first being Havenco in the micro-nation of Sealand, which is an old WWII off shore platform that claims sovereignty. They have not, however, been recognized by other states, leaving their international legal status in limbo. They do claim, however, to not be under the jurisdiction of other nations laws.
Your second and cheaper option is hosting via Tor network. There are a few blogs and other sites hosted via Tor, although there are some technical difficulties involved.
Be aware, if your privacy blog angers a powerful entity such as China, they can choose to just block all traffic to your site, rather than forcing your site offline.
--Boycott Nokia - Stop corporate Greed. Nokia, connecting people with the unemployment line.
who hosts gnu.org?
Bluntly put, but not untrue.
Basically, you're going to have to pick the least-bad option. The idea of 'data havens' where conventional meatspace law doesn't apply is sadly seeming more and more like a lost concept. It seemed possible during the early 90s, when government and the big corporate interests really hadn't caught on to 'the Internet,' but now that they have, it's going to become more and more regulated, just like every other area of human endeavor. It was fun while it lasted, I guess, and it'll make a neat story to tell our kids about, but the party's basically over.
Where you want to go depends on the specifics of what you're doing. Political speech, particularly political speech directed at other countries, is relatively well-protected both in the U.S. and the E.U. Although I'm pretty unhappy with the current security paranoia here in the U.S., I think it's unlikely that you'll get in trouble unless you actually start advocating 'direct action' (terrorism) or have a cozy relationship with people that do. In terms of formal legislative safeguards on political speech, the U.S. has a more absolute freedom-of-speech doctrine than many European countries and Canada.* Where you will run into trouble in the U.S. (viz political speech) is when you are saying things that can be construed not as speech but as 'action' or as appeals to action. Saying things that are highly politically unpopular in the U.S. may get you put under surveillance or monitoring, but probably won't land you in a lot of legal trouble or get you locked up. Bottom line: if you're looking to deny the Holocaust or write nasty-but-true things about just about anyone, the U.S. is the place to do it.
Where the E.U. becomes the superior venue is if you're doing things that would be a crime under certain U.S. intellectual-property laws drawn up by the megacorporations that essentially own large chunks of Congress. Hollywood is a double-edged sword: it likes freedom for political speech, but really hates freedom if it might negatively impact this quarter's bottom line. Thus while you can advocate genocide in the U.S., linking to copyrighted material may land you in prison. For that sort of thing, you're better off in Europe, probably as far north as you can get. (E.g., Sweden.) You're also probably better off in Europe if you're looking to do something that's edgy and involves sex; I'm not sure that the laws per se are a whole lot better, but overall attitudes may result in those laws not being used as aggressively to bludgeon you.
There are more minor specialty venues that you might want to consider if what you're doing involves money changing hands. Antigua in particular seems to be a popular choice for shady financial-transaction sites (cf. 1MDC) as well as gambling. Exactly how tolerant they'll be of (U.S) copyright-violating material, as a result of the recent trade decisions, remains to be seen. I wouldn't hold your breath for a Bittorrent Free Zone, though.
I admit to not knowing a whole lot about privacy laws in Asian countries but I get the impression that they're more restrictive than the U.S. in many cases. One datapoint: 2chan, the popular Japanese imageboard, is run out of the U.S. to shield it from Japanese authorities and law.
Really, I don't think there's any place you can go where you'll get 'total freedom,' except maybe Freenet (and it's really slow and impractical to use). You need to think hard about what type of content is going to be the most problematic, and then choose a hosting location that's going to be least hostile to it.
* To wit: Many European countries prohibit certain types of political speech under the guise of 'hate speech' laws and anti-Nazism/fascism policies. Although Canada isn't nearly as bad, their Bill of Rights-equivalent document, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, "guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society," a cave
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
try http://www.ouriran.com/ and just try to imagine the mullahs (circumcised) answer to an american government request :)
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
You don't want to host in a country with "libertarian" privacy laws, as those countries have no privacy laws, meaning there is no real incentive for a company to protect your privacy from anyone who asks. Sure, they probably wouldn't give just any random schmuck your records, but they would probably give it to their government if asked, just like in the US.
Go with Sweden. They have "strong" privacy laws.
Hosting costs are quite expensive at the moment, but getting cheaper all the time.
Word is that NASA are budgeting a couple of shuttle flights to ship over some servers. But the chinese deals look better.
And you might consider consulting one (if you have the money). You might also consider exactly what sorts of liability you'll be exposed to and search for jurisdictions with the most lax regulations in that area. You say that your site is going to be driven by user submissions . . . are you worried about copyright? You say you're worried about the FBI requesting user data, is there any particular reason you think the FBI will ask for your user data (that is, will you be requesting submissions on political/revolutionary/Islam topic areas? I suppose one could even piece together a user submission website dedicated to the discussion of criminal activity and how one might go about practicing crime . . . clearly an exposed place to be).
Also remember it isn't only the FBI that can compel disclosure of user identities. The Think Secret/Apple, Inc. lawsuit proved that. A foreign jurisdiction might make it really hard for the government to get at user data, but make it really easy for private parties to do so in a lawsuit. Also consider, however, that if your servers are in a foreign jurisdiction then U.S. constitutional guarantees may not apply (you might say that they don't apply here anymore, but I would submit that they protect you at least a little bit). That could mean that if the government wants your user data, and the servers are outside the U.S., they could tap/hack/physically break in and get the data they want w/o even the pretense of judicial sanction, and w/o even the possibility of court action for you.
My point here is that jurisdictions treat privacy differently across subject areas and differently depending on who's asking or taking the data. Find the subject area that your website most squarely fits under, and then find a jurisdiction with the most protective privacy laws, on the whole and against everyone you're scared of, for that subject.
Nazi Germany 1933-1945. Thanks for playing!
You can host it in Serbia. You can just leave wrong identification data (someone form Serbia) and as FBI cannot order Serbian hosts to give them server logs you should be ok. Also, they cannot prosecute Serbian citizen living in Serbia as they have no jurisdiction here. They can kidnap him but that is impossible if he never existed :)
Privacy International [http://www.privacyinternational.org/] ranks Greece highest among the nations they have examined in terms of the protection it provides for privacy.
why think about a subject when you can kneejerk your retarded stereotypes and live on in blind propaganda
oh sorry: propaganda is only a tool of neocons, heaven forbid i should suggest it exist elsewhere, or that is exists in you, right?
now if you will excuse me, i have to get back to sucking dick cheney's cock and drinking oil from the sjulls of iraqi children
pfffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Liberal IP and fair use laws, public notice and awareness of State side (**AA) bullying, decent bandwidth availability fair privacy laws.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
why think about a subject when you can kneejerk your idiotic stereotypes and live on in blind propaganda
oh sorry: propaganda is only a tool of neocons
heaven forbid i should suggest it exist elsewhere, or that is exists in you, right?
now if you will excuse me, i have to get back to sucking dick cheney's cock and drinking oil from the skulls of iraqi children
zzzzzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can not get more freedom than FreeNet. Yeah, everybody knows netcraft has confirmed that it is dying but it is still there :)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You could host with someone who says they won't give out your info but you still have to deal with their server provider. If the server provider get a signed court order to give up a server most companies will be obligated to obey it.
I run a small web host in Canada that hosts Cannabis related sites. I had to ask my server provider first if they allow that kind of traffic and their said they are ok with it and will only give out info with a signed court order. Same goes for me. Unless you have a signed court order from a "Canadian" court/judge I won't give out a customer info. Once there is a court order I'm obligated to flow it since I do run a business and don't need the legal hassle. You could be the FBI/Secret Service, if you are not a Canadian authority with a legally signed court order you can take a hike.
You'll find that most businesses will do this no matter where they are unless they have deeeep pockets to pay for your legal problems.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - MLK, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
No, I win arguments by using ironic ad hominem arguments.
Hi there.
Anonymous web hosting is the answer. If you cannot be linked to the site, then you're save.
(1) Get a anonymous credit card, for example from http://card444.com/ - it's not cheap, but probably worth it. Don't pay it with your real credit card.
(2) Get a webhoster in some country that doesn't have too good political contacts with your nemesis, and that does allow paying by credit card (you want to use your fresh, anonymous one!). For example, http://www.shinjiru.com/ is known to ignore abusive complaints against their hosted services in the anonymisation subculture.
The patriot act explicitly allows the government to fuck you over with no warrent or due cause if they can trace your transactions internationally. In otherwords, by hosting internationally, your rights are forfeit.
Yes, it sucks. Yes, it's unconstitutional. But it's a lot like taking a crosswalk in front of a speeding semi: Ok, he is in the wrong. You're still dead.
If you arent hiding anything, you have nothing to worry about.
Of course I'm joking, but good luck finding a place 100% secure, anywhere in the world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
your ironic ad hominem has totally destroyed my pov, i am slayed
?!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
riseup.net
From their Privacy Policy:
Please delete your user data (No contact info means that they can't be forced to give something which isn't there. Drawback: forget your password, you're screwed)
We keep minimal logs
We do not share data with anyone
We will defend your data
We will not monitor your communications
Your data is encrypted
(No, I am not affiliated with them, just found out about them this week myself)
a crime on the level of jaywalking here must be fought tooth and nail, but outright genocide far away is to be yawned at
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
IANAL.
How would an encrypted, passworded filesystem work as a means of privacy? Granted, the server admin would need to be present at boot time (and for every reboot) either to input a password or connect some kind of storage with a key file. The latter option isn't as secure, because courts could subpoena that media. However, there was a recent court ruling (SCOTUS?) which said that a person cannot be compelled to divulge a password on the grounds that doing so would cause self-incrimination, and is unconstitutional thanks to the fifth amendment.
I believe that, in order to be admissible in court, the server's hard drive (at least) would have to be confiscated, but the information on it would be unreadable because of the encryption. Now, that's physical security.
However, the problem, then, is finding a datacenter that would host such a box and refuse to pull down the box (but wouldn't have a problem allowing the authorities to confiscate it since everything on the disk is encrypted). I suppose that the server administrator could file a counter-DMCA and then allow the servers to be confiscated. The datacenter/ISP is protected, and the server administrator is protected because the fifth amendment bars the courts from compelling him to divulge the password to the encrypted filesystem.
Am I thinking in the correct vein?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
i think not only did they move the 3NM line to 12NM but also germany didnt have unification till the early 90s so i wouldnt coulnt on their theory of it being an separate entity therefore becoming its own state
.. the mexicans
u wana have privacy host it on international waters
on a boat
which u with firearm stand by and hold dear to life because of daily pirates !!!
and even then
I guess everyone in the us will just save this thread so rather then not being able to get you with us jurisdiction on the server.... we just have proof of you talking about it on slashdot
well theres always the RBN.
If you don't mind sharing your server with child porn that is.
>things change in 60 years
The change from a free democracy to a dictatorship in 1930s Germany took just a few years, though.
It was in memory of that quick change that German has had some of the strictest privacy laws and checks on the government until some years ago.
And now they are slowly being demolished one by one on the grounds that "We don't need them, because the government isn't evil", and everyone seems to have forgotten how quickly a government might turn evil when there are not strict laws in place to stop it.
Best comeback ever.
Hey, I'm gonna start using his argument for everything: that was 60 years ago!
The human genome has changed significantly in 60 years, and those old behaviors are all dead and gone. Hell, my grandfather is 80 and he looks NOTHING like he did in those pictures from the war. Proof that his DNA changed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
and can therefore still be tapped, subpoenaed and used in evidence. It doesn't matter where the hosts are, you need to consider where the traffic will flow on it's way to and from whereever. If it touches US territory, they'll still get you.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You might want to consider the Scandinavian/Baltic region.
;-)
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Greenland are all pretty protective about their citizens privacy. Provided your sites contain only "controversial" (but not illegal) content, you would definitely be in the clear!
Illegal content would be: child pornography, copyrighted material for which you do not have the distribution right, neo-nazi propaganda and holocausts-denial. Pretty much everything else is accepted. Including blasphemies drawings
Germany is also a good bet - but you would have to add "scientology" to the list of illegal content
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Sound to me like he wants to host an image board but doesn't want to get party vanned.
I have considered running one myself because I think it would be fun to write the software, but I wouldn't know how to protect myself from the law if people decided to post illegal images aside from trolling the site all day and deleting offending posts.
Anonymous Coward has never been a more appropriate moniker.
I have been looking for such an alternative for quite some time as you can read from here http://tinyurl.com/66488. But to my dismay haven't found anything really interesting. Last month I received an email referencing my post and offering some secure and politically independent hosting solution. It is called the Republic Cyberbunker and it may be an interesting alternative. CyberBunker was built as a NATO base in 1955. In 1995 it was sold to a company under the control of it's present royal family and government but it never officially became Dutch territory. You need to evaluate it and check it yourself. At EUR 350.- per month you can get a dedicated server inside a supposedly de-militarized zone that is outside any official government territory. There is a Skype number and I have exchanged a few emails with them without trouble. You can find more info at http://www.cb3rob.net/ and http://www.republic-cyberbunker.org/
Unless you might have some users slinging about antiestablishment speech about Putin's regime, Russia is probably the safest. Yeah they have some weird laws regarding pornography so that might not fly too well either, but for the most part Russia seems to be the most lax on stuff like this - especially if you find a hosting company that is well connected. Just about anything is possible if you know the right people to bribe...
Venezuela is hardly known for it's love of privacy and freedom either, whilst it may hate the US it's also arguably even more hostile towards privacy and human rights.
It might be good for holding material that infringes US copyrights as that is something that harms the US but for privacy, you need a nation that actually cares about privacy.
A few European nations seem the best bet right now like Sweden and Switzerland. Alternatively, look for rather backwards nations that have internet access but whose goverments haven't quite got the hang of the internet just yet and hence haven't written laws that allow law enforcement and so forth to go round doing whatever the hell they want on it. I'm not sure what the Eastern European nations are like but they may be a good bet, perhaps try countries like Latvia? Slovakia? Romania? Some small island nations like Antigua may be pretty decent also.
Unfortunately, just because a nation is hostile to the US it doesn't mean it's automatically friendly towards privacy and human rights.
And if everyone listens to you, history will repeat itself yet again.
I hope for humanity you are a troll and that you do not actually believe that just because data is old that it should be considered irrelevant.
I could of swore a lot of their colo EQ was damaged in a fire
http://www.bobleroi.co.uk/ScrapBook/Sealand_Fire/Sealand_Fire.html
Someone correct me if im wrong.
If I were you, I would first recognize that no matter how careful you are, there will always be a chance of someone (the govt, your web host) with the authority to take down the physical server hosting your website. So I would physically host the site in at least 3 different countries. Use DNS to spread the load on the different locations (all are active at any point in time). If one of them get taken down, update the DNS accordingly to redirect traffic to the other locations, and start setting up one more server in another country (have the technical procedure clearly described and easy to follow so multiple people you trust can follow it). Of course you need to have the user content posted to any location automatically replicated to the others. (Notice how this sounds much like NNTP).
If someone succeeds into getting administrative access to your DNS records, register a new domain name and get the word out to communicate it (IRC channel where you guys usually hang out, a post to some other forum, etc). Or just communicate the IP addresses prominently.
Good luck to someone trying to take down something hosted as described above ;-) Choose the right 3 countries and, because of red tape, no governments will ever be able to successfully cooperate to take down the 3 physical servers at the same time.
some people need to learn you need to nip evil in the bud, that if you try to appease it and make peace with it, it only grows stronger and bolder
here, what you didn't learn from history
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Obviously, it would be a little less accessible, however, setting up and onion server for yourself would provide excellent anonymity. Though, I don't know of any host companies that could provide such a service. Seems it would defeat the purpose of and anonymity, but, if you were up for hosting yourself, it could work. Just google "the onion router" to look into it.
He is trying to protect the privacy of users of his site, by keeping whatever information he has about them that isn't public (IP address, email, etc), out of the hands of the powers that be. Hosting in multiple locations doesn't address that problem - it makes it worse.
A libertarian government isn't going to be snooping on people.
Patriot - A fan of expanding government power and spending while not wanting to pay higher taxes.
http://sdf.lonestar.org/index.cgi
One of the oldest and most respected Public Access UNIX Systems.
Translation: It wasn't shut down, the government just cut off its ability to reach most of its audience.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The Swedish government gave orders to pull down a server that was hosting the caricatures of Muhammed, and it was done instantly, outside of any legal process.
Of course, if you are very liberal about what you define as "neo-nazi propaganda", then you simply have to classify something AS neo-nazi propaganda to justify censoring it. Such as, anything insulting or in opposition to Islam. But then you can't really whine the day "socialist propaganda" gets banned and repeat offenders punished by imprisonment..
I've got the same concerns as the fellow posting the question above. However, I believe it's entirely possible to host in the US and not feel paranoid. My company is based in KY and our host, BQInternet, is located in two major data centers in lower Manhattan. I personally know the man who oversees operations and can tell you how strongly he treats privacy concerns. He's happily shared with me information about his hardware configuration and the various security measures in place. Find a good host with strong ethics who will stand up for you as a customer and you'll feel confident and sleep soundly. The growing market of data warehousing will only help to reinforce the need for privacy.
Antigua. Since it's not currently subject to US copyright, a supeana for your info would be hard to come by. (This of course assumes you're worried about copyright infringement suits, and from a US origin).
COTSE Privacy Service
If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself.
Think of me when you shave your legs...
http://freenetproject.org/ is what your looking for.
"Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack."
<ad type="ISP">
Check out Bahnhof Internet, specifically http://integrity.st/
They guarantee:
</ad :-)>
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
There are two big things with this.
:)
:) (short story, our customer handed over an exploited server. It was only because it was exploited, it had nothing to do with the content. They had already put a new machine up with restored content, as good exploit protocol suggests.)
:)
First, any provider can and will give in to pressures. Just because they're not "in" the United States doesn't mean that they won't be leaned on by the United States.
Every provider connects to someone else. Otherwise, you being on your residential Cable/DSL/whatever wouldn't be able to reach Rajhed's IndiaPorn.
Being that it is true, the gov't could simply lean on American held companies, or companies with American interests, to find out who you are, find out what's on your servers, or simply get you unplugged. Just because you host at Sealand, in central Siberia, or whereever, you still run the risk of provider A strongly encouraging provider B to do something about it.
Been there. Done that. Got the Federal agent sitting in my office about it. Of course, I played stupid until I found out what the hell he was talking about, and then made some phone calls to find out the rest of the story.
Second, what the hell do you think you're going to say, that will get the feds knocking on your door, on the hosting facility's door, etc, etc?
I run http://freeinternetpress.com/ . If you read what we say, and have said for years, by all the legend of the National Security letters, we quite likely should have our phones tapped, servers confiscated, and been visiting Southeastern Cuba for more than a few days.
In reality though, we've had every (like, EVERY) intelligence agency in the world read our news. That was scary at first, but I made some friends (through other means) who had worked in intelligence, and they broke the bad news to me. The feds aren't watching us because they're interested in getting us. They're watching us because we are a good news source. Even though we've NEVER had a single contact regarding Free Internet Press, we're read every day. Above that, you'd be surprised to find out how many intelligence agencies there are out there. It took us quite a while to decode a lot of the hostnames, even when we ran them up and down a few of our grapevines. My favorite that I still like to brag about is eop.gov . They were monthly visitors.
I haven't bothered to re-check our logs to see what odd hostnames come in any more. It's entertaining, but serves no other purpose.
I'm VERY close with my hosting company. (like, VERY). I'd know the moment they were sniffing around, mostly because I'd be the one to open the cabinet door for them.
If it came down to it though, we'd just dump the hostname off to another server (I have a few spare hosting accounts in my pocket, all under different people's names, at different facilities), and put it right back online with a big notice "WE GOT SHUT DOWN BY THE FEDS, Here's the documents!"
If I didn't do it, there are a dozen or so other people with enough access to do it for me. Like, if I ended up in Southeastern Cuba, with an orange jumpsuit, a blanket, and a copy of the Koran (they issue 'em to everyone, from what I understand).
So, what's going to keep you from landing in hot water?
1) Don't say you're going to kill someone.
2) Don't threaten to blow something up.
3) Don't make claims above and beyond anything you're really willing to do.
For example (EXAMPLE!) if you were to say, "I'm going to blow up the Whitehouse tomorrow", if you're not serious, you're stupid for saying it. If you are serious, you deserve to get beaten down and thrown in jail for a long time. While I'll disagree with
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"I'm thinking about setting up a Web site driven by user submissions. I was wondering which locations have the most liberal (i.e., libertarian) privacy laws.
This is not exactly on topic, but I feel forced to defend myself. Anyone who thinks libertarian and liberal are basically the same thing, is confused by at least one of the terms. You might just as validly say, "I need a new computer. I think I'll get a PC (i.e. Mac)."
It is unfortunate they are similar terms, but I hate to be grouped in with Hillary Clinton due to ignorance.
Zentek International.
Offshore hosting, payment by bank cheque and cash is possible, and they provide high privacy.
Sounds just like what you are talking about. Since they say they give 24x7 support, try sending them an email over the weekend and see when they reply...
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
I think people are missing the point of your question. The answer I have is to host in a country where the people coming to your site are NOT from. International take down orders are far more rare than domestic ones. The main concern you had was FBI requests for logs. This is common for website operators with content such as anonymous phone numbers or mail. Your request was for user submissions, which is free speech. America is good for free speech but your constraint of being outside the jurisdiction of the FBI data log request subpoenas rules out the US. One small note, if you are a US citizen and you try to avoid a data request by locating assets outside the US, you might land yourself in trouble. US citizens are required by law to cooperate with the FBI and not elude their investigations. Please check your local laws and consult a lawyer. As a general rule of thumb I would recommend Antigua and Barbuda. They have good privacy laws, but like any other country you cannot violate their laws. A nice tool might be to have a site restriction forbidding Antigua and Barbuda citizens from using the site. Good luck, I wish I had more information because there are a lot a variables here!!! Belize, Panama and Argentina also have good privacy laws as long as you don't violate their laws. Again restrict the site so the hosting countries' citizens cannot use it. I would even firewall it so that the IP addresses allocated to the hosting country cannot get to the site.
"I'm thinking about setting up a Web site driven by user submissions. I was wondering which locations have the most liberal (i.e., libertarian) privacy laws.
Anyone who things "liberal" and "libertarian" are essentially the same thing, is confused. You might just as easily say, "I need a new computer, and I think I will get a PC (i.e. Mac). Off topic, yes, but it bothers me to claim I'm a libertarian, and ignorant people associate me with Hillary Clinton (Ugh!). FYI - Libertarians believe in liberty, but the fundamental philosophy is one of personal responsibility "I.E." Do whatever the hell you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone. If you do hurt someone though - you are going down, hard. Government's role should be limited to handling things like squabbles among citizens and national defense. Libertarianism Liberals, also believe in doing whatever you want, but personal responsibility is anathema to them. If you are poor, blame it on society. If you hurt someone, blame it on circumstance. Government's role is to make everyone equal (i.e. redistribution of wealth), and to protect the little guy from big entities (i.e. corporations) who screw them out of honest work and give them nothing to show for it but a paycheck. And, oh yeah, be forgiving of criminals, since it is likely the only reason they committed the crime was because they had no other choice. Liberalism
I hear the RNC does a real good job of not disclosing hosted information to law enforcement! You could get Bush or Cheney to put it on their server for you and if ever asked for the data, claim you erased it!!!! Sorrrrrryyyy....I had to go there.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Consider a 3rd world country. Eg. Argentina hay extensive hosting architecture, Russia also. Plus, it's dirty cheap compared to US or 1st world hosting solutions.
If you want to deny the holocaust or advocate nazi-ism, Germany today would consider your speech a crime.
Perhaps such laws are still needed in modern Germany, but I always thought that part of what keeps the neoNazis on the fringe in the US is that neoNazis are able to tell others their insane ideas.
If you're doing something political, your home country is the most likely to get annoyed at you, and in general if there's a government that's annoyed at your website you'd rather not have it be your home jurisdiction, since you don't want to get arrested or have your bank account seized. If you host in another country, it's harder to defend your website, but that government will have a harder time bothering you personally, and you'll have a backup copy handy.
If you're going to annoy somebody in Country X, hosting in Country Y might be a good idea. Sometimes it's convenient to host in a country that doesn't primarily speak Country X's language. (Everybody speaks some English, but they may be better about having an automated website-setup site in English than actually responding to legal complaints in English. It'll be harder for you to argue with them, but less necessary.)
If you're likely to libel somebody, don't host in Britain or Australia; libel laws there are plaintiff-friendly. If you're going to annoy Scientologists, Germany's not very friendly to them. If you're going to annoy US Intellectual Property Owners, you might try China or Russia, but you might end up paying more there. The Caribbean's often friendly, but bandwidth there tends to be overpriced.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A bunch of the original founders of Havenco got voted off the island years ago, Havenco eventually collapsed without having built much of the infrastructure it had planned to, and Ryan gave a talk about it at some Defcon, and has been doing telecoms in Iraq for a few years now. Since then, Sealand has become less friendly to media piracy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
there are a few hosters who accept prepaid cards and cash; so you can effectively have an server or webspace anonymously...
then connect to that via tor or whatever; et voila.
There is no solution to your problem unless you cut out the provider part. For every provider, you will be a minor customer not worth major trouble with government or law enforcement, and often not even with something like the RIAA or even just a lawyer who knows how to write impressive letters.
I ran one of the major DeCSS sites back when they were being taken down by the dozens (and new ones appeared quicker than that). In the turmoil, I offered one of about ten or so reliable static points, simply because I didn't have a provider at all - I worked at the company hosting the site, and I was one of the guys in charge of the server farm, and would have been among the first the lawyers would've talked to in case of any serious trouble.
Go work for an ISP and make sure you know the people in the legal department. Oh, also: Make sure it's not a company server, but a private server for which you have an agreement that it'll be hosted, cost-free, as part of your employment. That's how I've done it at several companies, and the only thing I'd do different today is to make sure I get that in writing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't know what kind of "user submissions" you are going for, BritishColumbian, because their clauses seem rather fair to me. At least, nothing banning free speech on politics or privacy issues. Unless you're actually going for porn or spam, that is...
Although I must say that this list can't be regarded as definite. For instance, material must not encourage a criminal offense, but according to the laws of which country? Even "pornography that would be considered illegal" differs among countries within the EU.
"Good news, everyone!"
To be honest I think a nation like Canada probably has one of the best tolerances for privacy and free speech you can get. Try Iweb8.ca , and see whether they can help you out. They are a great provider with great pricing. otherwise you could always try finding out where websites like Piratebay host their stuff and hook up with their ISP. ---------- www.xencasino.com
Are you a child pornographer or a Warez l0zer?
There is nothing that would suggest a privacy problem at Haven, or that they would hand over your users information to any authorities. It seems you are concerned about things they do not wish to have on their servers. Since I assume you as a reasonable person do not actually see a "Privacy" problem in Haven. We must assume your objections are based on the types of content they do not allow (Which has nothing at all to do with privacy).
You will be hard pressed to find a host that will host pornography that is illegal in the EU (or the us) or actually hosting other peoples copyrighted material. (Not trackers or links by the way, their policy says the material itself).
I am not sure why anyone would want to help you. I am sure their are Slash dotters into kiddy porn, but it most be a very small number,
We also have a hate-speech paragraph which some groups try to use to shut you down.
In the US, Libertarian DOES NOT EQUAL Liberal! The classic US (mutated) Liberal mentality is more government programs, welfare, socialism, quotas, and government "protection" of people from themselves. Libertarians believe in less governemnt programs, less welfare, non-socialism, more individual responsibility.
PRQ hosts The Pirate Bay and a number of highly controversial (but legal) sites that even the most liberal people would like to see shut down. They have come under much criticism, but always defend free speech. They have a number of non-Swedish customers. Check them out!
This is almost certainly too much work to bother but if you were really serious about this distributing the backend over several different jurisdictions would give you a certain amount of protection.
For instance one might be able to store the various posts and identifiable user info on one server and the decryption keys for each record in your database on a server in another country. Requests hit the first server which then handshakes with the second to request the decryption keys for those records it currently requires. The first server need never store these decryption keys on disk which could give you a pretty large margin of safety if you choose two countries without many law enforcement assistance agreements.
Of course the truly determined and expert attacker might try to seize your first system and then set up a decoy version that tries to download all encryption keys. However, unless you are setting up a terrorist website it's unlikely that this level of competence and effort will be applied. If you want to get really paranoid you could set both servers to encrypt all their data using your public key and delete all plaintext if their counterpart ever goes down for some period of time (24 hours). Thus close coordination between the jurisdictions (grab them the same day) would be required or a very sophisticated hack of one of your machines.
---------
Anyway this isn't really a serious answer to your question but no one can really give you that answer without more information about what type of content you are worried about.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
What has radically changed in the last 6 months? That was the last time I checked and it was the same as it ever was, namely, too slow to use.
I understand proxies. I carefully read and followed all documentation I could lay my hands on. I set up a dedicated machine carefully and left it online and churning away for weeks.
I always get the same results. It's just too slow to use. Opening a page took hours if it ever happened at all. Most never happened. Getting a file never succeeded.
I want freenet to work, so I've repeated this test at least 4 times over the last several years. As of now, I've given up on freenet. It's unusable.
Unless you can tell me that something has changed, I say you're playing a cruel joke on people when you encourage them to try freenet.
http://www.anonhost.org/
This website has a fairly good list of anonymous web hosting services.
CORRUPT: Remaking Modern Society
Enough said.
I have been doing a little thinking ... tell you what: I'll host your site for you. Free of charge *). Provided I do not object personally to the content.
;-)
I will not disclose your identity to anyone (and being a private person, I am not required to do so by law) even if approached by authorities/lawyers. Should the day come where someone tries to retrieve your identity from me, I will fight them to the best of my abilities - which means you will probably be a lot better off than if you were a simple customer at some webhotel.
I have my own little server in a professional server-hotel with all the stuff required for serious hosting (redundant internet connections, emergency power, backup, halon-based firefighting, etc).
Throw me a message if you want to take me up on the offer. And remember: I will only do this free of charge if I do not object to the contents and/or goals of your site.
Fair?
- Jesper
*) Free of charge up to a certain amount of traffic. If you exceed 2 gigs a month we will have to work something out. On the other hand, if you reach that amount of traffic you'll probably be happy to help finance the hosting...
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Take a look at your spam inbox and see where those sites are hosted.
BC may have strong privacy legislation but, in common with the rest of Canada, it also has the most bizarre human rights legislation.
One human rights ruling after another, many ratified by the Supreme Court, has walked all over what we once considered our rights in a free dominion, especially freedom of speech and freedom of association. All you need is for someone to complain that something on the site has violated their right not to be offended and the law as you know it flies out the window and you find yourself facing fines, indenture or jail. What makes matters worse is that it is extremely rare for a Human Rights Commission to find for other than the complainant.
You don't want your site in or traceable to BC, or any other place in Canada.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Complete "anonymity" online is a pipe dream... eventually They will track you down. Using encryption, you can hide in plain sight.
My advice would be to skip looking "offshore" and just find a local, reputable hosting company that will defend your rights to the maximum legal extent (perhaps one such as Riseup that intentionally keeps minimal logs), then rent a VPS or (probably better yet) colocate your own machine, use a completely encrypted filesystem on the server, and only support SSL connections.
With an encrypted filesystem, even if evil authority figures seize the machine, in theory they could not read your data without your private key. Keep minimal or sanitized logs. Run an encrypted email server, an anonymizing web proxy, a Tor router, an OpenVPN server... the possibilities are endless.
Linode offers great VPS hosting starting at only $20/month, with support for encrypted filesystem images.
The advanced hosting plan which includes 1 GB Disk space / 100GB transfer / 1 database is priced at 36,50
I calculate that to be nearly $21 US per month based on 1 ANG = 0.573066 USD
is that right?
Some people I know looked at this a couple of years ago, and at the time, Costa Rica and Peru were the top choices -- among other considerations, both had strong privacy protections in their constitution.
I included a direct quote from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but here it is again, including the preamble:
The U.S. Constitution contains no such qualification, and is quite clearly designed to be the absolute law of the land at any particular time. (Cf. Article VI) The sole remedy in the Constitution for conflicts between society and the rights defined therein is via the amendment process; the Constitution does not give the Legislature any leeway to limit Constitutional freedoms, "reasonable" or not.
Now, of course that's theory -- in practice things do not work out to be quite that absolute; the Supreme Court has interpreted its own 'interpretative' powers broadly enough to abrogate certain speech rights, particularly in edge cases where speech is inextricably linked to action, or by defining certain speech as outside the bounds protected by the First Amendment. However, such cases have always been controversial, and more than a few jurists* have held the absolutist line despite what must have been strong social and political pressure to ban unpopular speech. They were able to do so because the Constitution quite clearly does not make room for exceptions -- were the Constitution to contain an obvious invitation for exceptions as the Charter does, I doubt they would have been able to maintain their opposition to censorship of unpopular or repugnant ideas.
If you need a practical demonstration of what I perceive to be the dangers of the Canadian approach, the "reasonable limits" clause is the linchpin of R. v. Keegstra , which legitimized 'hate speech' restrictions in Canada. The more recent example of Ezra Levant vs the CIC (carried out in 'human rights' tribunals instead of open court, which is an issue by itself) seem like the inevitable result.
To sum it up quite bluntly: the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution as a whole, has managed to hold back would-be book-banners for 217 years, in an environment that is and historically has been more hostile and conservative than Canada. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has existed (in its current form, anyway) for only 26 years, and it already has allowed more regulation of speech, in an environment that is widely considered to be far more socially liberal and open to new ideas than the U.S. That's not a particularly good track record.
Lest you or anyone else thing I'm mindlessly Canada-bashing, I'm not; there are lots of things that I think are done drastically better in Canada versus the U.S. (loser-pays-expenses in civil suits, for example). And on a more general level, I wasn't even arguing which system is necessarily better in any objective sense, outside of the OP's original question, which sought maximum freedom (for a web server, no less) as its only goal.
* Probably the most noted example would be Justices Brennan, Black, and Douglas' support of unconditional free-speech rights and rejection of the common-law 'obscenity' doctrine as unsupportable under the Constitution; Douglas somewhat famously concluding in Memoirs v. Massachusetts that "No interest of society justifies overriding the guarantees of free speech and press and establishing a regime of censorship." (Seemingly the exact opposite of the Charter's philosophy.) Unfortunately the Warren court -- which had been packed by social conservatives -- ignored this argument in Miller, but it was a 5-4 split and has been slowly chipped away at since. While
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The answer is so obvious! The white house is the place most impervious to all legal actions. host your server there. They can ignore supenonas and wouldn't let one be served because it would weaken the wall of executive privilege and the imperial presidency they are trying to create. Additionally they don't subscribe to international courts either so you are safe from both US and international legal inquisitive action. They are quick to rent out the Lincoln bedroom so i'm sure if you showed them they could get more bucks per square inch by hosting websites there they would rip out the bed and fill it with server farms. http://vivzizi.com/
http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ I use it myself. From their info pages: "Due to our libertarian Terms & Conditions of Service we allow many things that other hosting companies do not. Consequently, we receive a large number of abuse complaints. Unfortunately, most of them are spurious or non-actionable. This page will help you determine whether to submit an abuse complaint, how to do so, what supporting material you will need to include, and what to expect afterward. Despite the relatively few restrictions in our Terms & Conditions of Service, there is one particularly important point for abuse issues. When our members upload content to our service, they are asserting two things: That the content is legal in the United States. That they have the legal right to make the content available. As part of the contractual relationship formed with our members before they upload content, they are legally obligated to adhere to these two restrictions. It is typical for us to receive complaints alleging that our members have violated this contract with a certain degree of skepticism. However, members do occasionally violate our Terms & Conditions, and we react appropriately to such betrayals of our trust. We will not usually be able to respond in any specific way to an abuse complaint. Our Privacy Policy prevents us from discussing our interactions with our members, including adverse actions we may take in response to abuse complaints. Please do not assume that we support or endorse all the content posted by our members. We believe that freedom of speech is the inalienable right of all people. Consequently, we do not censor our members on the basis of content, no matter how offensive or repugnant we may personally find that content to be. Our company would have to have a different name if we only allowed members to publish uncontroversial content that we happen to agree with."
I'm part of a small social networking site that is concerned about both privacy rights and free speech issues. We have been looking for a good affordable hosting provider and the best we have seen is in Costa Rica, but it's still out of our price range for the space we need. Based on the other responses in this thread, I did a quick search for Swedish providers and could not find much other than recommendations not to host in Sweden due to costs. It looks like the web site for sealandweb (the small-scale hosting provider for HavenCo) is down now.
No one has mentioned Russia yet? I don't think anything can go wrong for you there, unless you critizise local powers or smth... International copyright laws are p*ssed on and probably so do other international "requests". Although, few other aspects may be troublesome there...
You can say anything you want, so long as it isn't a threat or defamatory to an individual (a false statement of fact that harms one's reputation). Any opinion or ideology, however distasteful or mocking or patronizing, is allowed. In America, we believe more speech, not less is better, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Another word for it is "freedom."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Most people on this planet KNOWs whats right and whats wrong if we are talking the "Basics" of knowledge, but how did they all get this knowledge - by learning, sometimes the hard way. Putting a lid on information will only make people more interested in learning about it, therefor there should be no lid on information - no matter how bad you or I think the information is. Everyone has the right to know whatever they want to know. Information should be free for anyone who desire it. Information can not hurt anyone - only a person can be hurt by feelings, and feelings usually derive from either love or hate, and love and hate usually derive from learning either by experience or teachings. If you teach someone that something is wrong or bad in your country, family, friends, religion or politics that someone will be shaped by that, and thus perceive information according to their environment. A child that grows up is a product of their environment. If you sensor information or block their path to information you are inhibiting their ability to shape themselves and acquire much needed knowledge. You can dispute this fact as much as you want to - that is your right - but do not take away other peoples right to do the very same thing, if you take away the information you are doing this - in fact - you are violating everything YOU where because YOU already have the or had the privilege to know this. We have a huge problem, we are letting ourselves be disciplined and governed by feelings, now this would be perfectly fine if you managed this on an individual basis, but people dont. They get collective and populistic about their feelings and mix it with religion and politics - this is a very dangerous mix that put our future in a mental jail where we must-not-see-because-it-is-bad-for-us. Who decide what is bad or good information? You do! But you do not decide this for OTHERS. It is very dangerous for a HOST to HOST information that in our society is regarded as either profane, against-insert-your-religion-of-choice-here or politically incorrect. We debate what we think and block other and future generations opportunities to LEARN for themselves based on our rules and regulations, this is the fallacy of society today. I Praise the hacker who care enough for the individual to dare venture where all others flee scared into the arms of paid opinions, to dare host files that may be seen as "illegal" to some who does not understand the freedom they themselves was in fact born with and even fought for. Information shall be free and available to inquisitive minds worldwide! Always!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.