WikiLeaks To Ship Servers To Micronation of Sealand?

Velcroman1 writes "Julian Assange's investors are in the process of purchasing a boat to move WikiLeaks servers offshore in an attempt to evade prosecution from U.S. law enforcement, FoxNews.com has learned. Multiple sources within the hacker community with knowledge of day-to-day WikiLeaks activities say Assange's financial backers have been working behind the scenes on the logistics of moving the servers to international waters. One possible location: the Principality of Sealand, a rusty, World War II-era, former anti-aircraft platform off the coast of England in the North Sea. Based on a 1968 British court ruling that the facility is outside the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, Sealand's owner has declared the facility a sovereign state, or 'micro-nation.'"

Comments

Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[elrous0]

This has never worked, would never work, and could never work. And it was a PR stunt when Pirate Bay said they were going to do it, it was a PR stunt when HavenCo was founded, and I can't believe anyone thinks anyone still buys it. Hell, even the batshit-crazy Sealand founder and his family long ago abandoned their "country" and HavenCo collapsed in 2008. It's also been pretty much abandoned since a fire in 2006 (amusingly forcing the few "independent" countrymen left to cry for a rescue from the British Air Force). The facility has a single generator left and living facilities for one person. There is no way to get fresh water on its own. And there are DAMN SURE no internet trunk lines there.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[MightyMartian]

A nation by definition must have territory. No interpretation of International Law I've ever seen allows a steel man-made structure to be considered territory. Thus Sealand, whatever it may be, is not a nation, and thus while it may not be within Britain's sovereignty, if the Royal Navy decided tomorrow to blockade it or sink it, there is no lawful means by which the owner could hope to prevent it, save by appealing to a British court, which means the owner recognizes the sovereignty of Britain.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[snowgirl]

A nation by definition must have territory. No interpretation of International Law I've ever seen allows a steel man-made structure to be considered territory. Thus Sealand, whatever it may be, is not a nation, and thus while it may not be within Britain's sovereignty, if the Royal Navy decided tomorrow to blockade it or sink it, there is no lawful means by which the owner could hope to prevent it, save by appealing to a British court, which means the owner recognizes the sovereignty of Britain.

And Monte Carlo has no judges of its own, and all of its judges are supplied by the French... stick to the "it has no territory" argument, it holds far better water than any other "it has no XY"...

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[eln]

It's also not in international waters in any meaningful sense. The British have pretty much let it be so far because it's basically harmless, but if they start posting embarrassing secrets about the US government from there, you can bet the US will put pressure on the UK to re-assert its territorial rights over it.

The only real way they could get into international waters these days would be to be mobile in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Even then, if they started putting out information the US considered truly dangerous, it would only be a matter of time before their floating fortress was "accidentally" sent to the bottom of the sea by a wayward torpedo.

This whole idea is a fantasy, of course. The only way to be safe from the US shutting it down would be to host it in a country willing to stand up against the US to protect it. I don't think there are very many countries on that list.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[demachina]

"I don't think there are very many countries on that list."

Russia and China almost certainly would be on the list if Wikileaks would confine itself to only embarassing the U.S. But doing that you are trading an increasingly dictatorial police state(the U.S.) for a couple that have been there for a while. I seem to recall Putin was fairly delighted with all the state department cable leaks for exposing how duplicitous the U.S. and its allies are.

But, I think Wikileaks is an equal opportunity embarasser of repressive states so I doubt they would partner with Russia or China.

The real problem is you need a country that is willing to stand up to the U.S. AND isn't heading towards repressive police state itself and THOSE are sadly somewhere between vanishingly rare and non existent.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[Runaway1956]

" It does nothing to stop the ability to prosecute the people who are breaking the laws involved."

Personally, I don't recognize that Wikileaks is breaking any laws. I'm an American, and a veteran of the US Armed Forces. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that Corporate America has been throwing their weight around, using their bought congressmen to bully the rest of the world into submission.

Wikileaks has violated no reasonable law.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[TheRaven64]

Well then, the thing to do is to have two versions of Wikileaks. One that only publishes things not about China, and is hosted in China, one that only publishes things about China, and is hosted in the USA...

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[Ichijo]

Can you show me any decision in domestic courts or international tribunals that recognizes man-made structures as extensions of territory?

Embassies.

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[krlynch]

Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state.[5][6] Rather, the premises of diplomatic missions remain under the jurisdiction of the host state while being afforded special privileges (such as immunity from most local laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even possession of territory is insufficient. Then there's the Republic of China (Taiwan), which has territory, plus citizens, police, military, an economy -- yet is not legally recognized as a nation (except by the Vatican and some small 3rd world countries).

Re:Wow, does that PR stunt even work anymore?

[Americano]

The answer given by GP poster is entirely correct. The technical term for it is "foreign establishment." The US was leased Guantanamo in perpetuity under the Cuban American Treaty of 1903, as part of the overall negotiations involving the removal of troops from Cuba after the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, and leading to recognition of Cuban independence by the US. The US was granted complete control over the area defined by the treaty, but the territory is ultimately acknowledged as sovereign territory of Cuba.

The treaty was signed long before the current government of Cuba came to power. If they want the US military out of the territory, they have 2 options:
1) Negotiate a new treaty whose terms include a peaceful withdrawal of the US from the leased territory in such a way that re-establishes Cuban jurisdiction over the territory;
2) Declare war and evict the US military through force of arms.

Number 1 is difficult when you have no official diplomatic relations under which to initiate negotiations; Number 2 is pretty much impossible for a small, fairly poor island nation 115 miles off the coast of the US.

Moving servers, you mean physically, seriously?

[John.P.Jones]

In this day of age of virtualization, cloud deployments and the like the idea of moving servers offshore being equivalent to physically moving boxes across the ocean seems absurd. You setup some new machines at the new location, sync the data across this thing called the Internet, flip a switch and then wipe the old boxes and sell off the hardware (if you ever owned it to begin with).

And What Defenses Does It Have?

[eldavojohn]

To add to your doubt, the wikipedia article for Sealand makes it sounds like a couple guys with a boat and some small arms could over take it ... so, uh, you're moving your servers to a defenseless island? Where no other nation recognizes you? Where no one will come to your aid if someone decides to just blow you out of the water? And you're planning on hosting what? Oh, sensitive information about the United States government that they consider to be a threat to national security? Yeah, good luck with that. The US will take out anybody in Pakistan (or a number of other countries) in the middle of the night if they want to, I highly doubt they'd be worried about slapping some thermite to some servers out in the middle of the ocean and calling it a day -- which government would they worry about upsetting if they did so?

Re:And What Defenses Does It Have?

[snowgirl]

If I remember my Sealand history correctly, a couple guys with a boat and some small arms almost did overtake it.

Indeed, Achenbach a German citizen also carrying a Sealand passport hired some mercenaries and assaulted the platform with a few boats and a helicopter.

Later, the original monarch recovered the platform, and since he carried a Sealand passport, they charged Achenbach with treason.

It's not a nation

[Sycraft-fu]

Sorry, but them claiming it doesn't make it so. You can claim anything you like, doesn't make it the case. The two ways you can become a sovereign nation is by force and diplomacy.

The first is the most obvious: You simply have a large enough, powerful enough military that nobody can tell you that you aren't sovereign. They are unwilling to spend the money, material, and men to take you down so that is that. You are sovereign on account of nobody being able to say otherwise. This is how the USA gained sovereignty, as an example. They said "We are independent," England said "Nuh uh." A war was fought, the US won, that pretty much settled it.

The second is diplomacy. You get the big, powerful, nations to recognize you as a nation, as well as international bodies like the UN. They all say "Yep, you are a sovereign nation and have the right to your own government and laws," and you do. Since they agree and won't try to attack you, and also usually will keep others from doing so, you are sovereign. The big boys have agreed to leave you be, so there you go.

Sealand has neither, and in fact the UK claims it belongs to them. They can go on all they want and the UK doesn't really care but push comes to shove and the UK has a reason, they can clamp down on them. One platoon of Royal Marines would do the trick.

So this would solve fuck all for Wikileaks.

Re:It's not a nation

[MightyMartian]

You don't even need a platoon. A Sea King helicopter would probably be sufficient. Hell, one torpedo from a British sub and the whole thing goes to the bottom. Sealand is tolerated because it's just some morons with comprehension problems. But if it starts committing acts that might be viewed as criminal, such as, say, violating the national security of the United Kingdom, then the whole farce will come to an end in short order.

Re:It's not a nation

[DerekLyons]

Oh, wait, that already happened? The British courts ruled that it was outside of their jurisdiction?

It's not quite that simple. They were hauled before Crown Court when the comic opera 'nation' was outside British waters. Now, not only are they inside British waters, the finding of the Crown Court is not binding on an Admiralty Court anyhow.
 

there are international laws pertaining to how territorial waters work if two nations are within 12 miles of each other.

Since Sealand is not a signatory to any of those instruments, and is not recognized as a sovereign state by any signatory, and there is no binding decision, precedent, or principle to provide them with de jure or de facto recognition... My guess (though IANAL) is those laws don't apply.
 
tl;dr version: you can't both claim to not be bound by the law *and* seeks it's protection. Not to mention that if you don't understand the difference between different types of courts and laws and their jurisdictions, you shouldn't be parroting crap you patently don't understand.

I can think of dumber ideas

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not many, but there are some. Moving it to Mogadishu, for instance.

On the other hand...

[ForgedArtificer]

If they were to move some FAKE servers out into the middle of the ocean and just wait to see what happened, the results might be very interesting.

I'd imagine they could prove a very good point about the lengths governments will go to in order to censor information - or at least take some attention off of the actual servers.

Hacker Community?

[cosm]

Multiple sources within the hacker community

WTF does that even mean? I understand Fox is trying to tie the negative connotations of the modern day usage of the word hacker to WikiLeaks, but who the flying fuck is this conglomerate of the hacker community such that Fox can claim them as reputable sources, much less assume that these people speak for the community as a whole, assuming that there is a uniform grouping of people that aren't just an amoeba group of a couple people who claim to be 'hackers', and thus the whole community is now tied to WikiLeaks via Fox's shitty sourcing in the first couple sentences that catch eyes.

Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer. Ein News Channel.

Good deal on a ship

[zule666]

I think Costa Cruise lines has a good deal on a slightly used ship Wikileaks could use.

Get you own Sealand email address

[synthespian]

http://www.sealandgov.org/announcements/get-a-sealand-email-address

Let's make Sealand a financially stable nation. :-)

Anybody but me who noticed...

[internetcommie]

... that this story came from FAUX News???? Nothing about it makes any sense at all. Apart from that moving the servers to Sealand would be illogical and stupid, it would take more than one boat as they already are in many different locations. And investors who might consider buying a boat for the purpose must have so much money that it is likely they already own at least one boat that could do the job. In addition, of course, boat can be hired or rented. Somebody are trying to drum up hysteria about Wikileaks again; probably to cover up something that is really happening. NOT news, but normal operational practice for media.

Re:Makes takedown far easier ...

[snowgirl]

No one that counts recognizes Sealand's sovereignty. It is within the UK's territorial waters, it belongs to the UK.

Cool, what court case do you have to substantiate this position? Because there are already two UK court cases that explicitly disclaim Sealand as being under UK jurisdiction...

I understand that no one has made any positive recognition of Sealand's sovereignty, but it has acted with de facto sovereignty for a number of years already now, and modern international law does not require anyone's recognition of your sovereignty.

Sealand has fallen through a weird legal crack, that the UK could easily pave over at any moment, but until that time, Sealand is best described as an unrecognized sovereign territory.

This story sounds FAKE

[tekrat]

I call shenanigans. The story has all the hallmarks of being manufactured.

#1) It's from Fox News, a known organization that will lie, lie, lie, violate the law, lie some more, and then lie to cover up the law violations. Oh, and they lie.

#2) "According to sources in the hacker community" == something I heard on Reddit. A rumor.

#3) You don't have to physically move machines to a new host -- There's this thing called FTP I'm sure the author knows nothing about.

#4) Wikileaks is already redundant across the globe. What would be the point of putting machines on Sealand? This is also something the author doesn't understand.

#5) Sealand, if they were to be the sole host, like the author implies, doesn't have the bandwidth to serve Wikileaks.

Re:Makes takedown far easier ...

[snowgirl]

The legislative conditions that created that stemmed from a time when the UK's territorial waters only extended 3 miles beyond the coast. This is no longer the case, so while it was not within their jurisdiction at the time it would be today.

Agreed, if Sealand were to attempt to construct its sovereignty now, it would fail, because the territory would already be under the jurisdiction of the UK.

However, Sealand constructed its sovereignty when it was not UK territory, and thus has rights to establish its own sovereignty.

One could argue that when the UK extended its territorial waters from 6 miles to 12 miles, that it annexed Sealand, and Sealand is now properly territory of the UK, however this has not been established by any legal rulings, and the UK continues to not assert any jurisdiction over the territory, while Sealand continues to operate with de facto sovereignty.