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The Fall of Data Haven Sealand
Fluffeh writes "Ars has a great article about the history of Sealand, a data haven — a place where you can host almost anything, as long as it follows the very bare laws of Sealand Government. Quoting: 'HavenCo's failure — and make no mistake about it, HavenCo did fail — shows how hard it is to get out from under government's thumb. HavenCo built it, but no one came. For a host of reasons, ranging from its physical vulnerability to the fact that The Man doesn't care where you store your data if he can get his hands on you, Sealand was never able to offer the kind of immunity from law that digital rebels sought. And, paradoxically, by seeking to avoid government, HavenCo made itself exquisitely vulnerable (PDF) to one government in particular: Sealand's.'"
The idea that you could escape from your own government's laws by keeping your data somewhere else is preposterous on its face. At some point, you have to get that data, and that data will have to cross into your own location, which would make you in possession of the data and liable for possessing it. Unlike Swiss bank accounts which hold money secretly for you, and are relatively safe from the prying eyes of the government, data is something that is not as easily picked up in person.
Tor onions. Are they good or are they whack?
The freedom-minded Hastings had moved to Anguilla to work on online gambling projects
What they really want is an abolition of all regulation so they can exploit your weaknesses and suck you dry.
I wonder whether Parker and Stone are finally realising this with their latest South Park episode on Cash for Gold services?
Sealand has no practical sovereignty. The most they can say is that so far the UK hasn't chosen to take over, and they're not aware of any plans to do so. Nobody believes the UK couldn't take Sealand if they want to. Nobody believes that it would be a diplomatic problem for the UK in their relations with other countries if they did. So Sealand, at best, can operate only if the UK lets it. That's not sovereign in any meaningful sense. Even if you feel that it would be wrong for the UK to interfere, that's hardly something you're going to rely on to stop them doing so.
I wonder why no REAL country in this world wouldn't receive Wikileaks voluntarily. I mean... there has to be a real government out there who just loves trashing the other BIG countries with wikileaks. In the end it's information and information can be used to manipulate people.. somebody MUST love the idea, even if that somebody is a country low on human rights like North Korea or Burma. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have this data being used for manipulations.. I'm just wondering why is there that nobody actually uses it and welcomes it for that matter.
Sealands failed because hosting anything there was crazy expensive and their only known data link was WIFI from the UK mainland.
Also anytime the UK government felt like shutting them down they could. The UN won't defend a country it doesn't recognize.
Isn't the big problem that Sealand's cables would still have to come ashore somewhere? Even if they used satellite the ground stations would still be in somebody's jurisdiction.
The only way I can see their concept working is on their local LAN. Once they hook up to the internet, they can simply be regulated through their upstream carriers.
This story shows up every couple of months...
And when they find out how badly they're being treated compared to the "consuming world" boy are they gonna be pissed.
So one of two things will have to happen: Either their standards of living are raised to the point of the industrialized countries, or our standards are brought down to theirs.
I guess we know which one the corporate elite would prefer, based on what they've done to the economies of the industrialized nations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How can it be, when there are no horses?
UK - Horses.
US - Horses
Spain - Horses.
Sweden - Horses
France - Horses
Sealand - No horses!
Sealand - seahorses.
Look back in history and realize that it was ALWAYS the "bourgeoisie" that led revolutions. The myth of the worker standing up and rebelling is just that, a myth. Every at least halfway successful rebellion was led by some "educated" people on top of the chain. Sure, having "pleb soldiers" sure helps, but the heads of revolutions always came from a fairly educated background, never from "the mass" of people.
The main reason why revolutions have been fairly rare lately is that these people have been admitted to the ruling class. So why bother revolting?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sealand (and HavenCo)... just like BitCoins. Interesting in an academic sense, but not at all practical or viable in the real world, for reasons which should have been obvious to everyone involved before things even got started.
Either their standards of living are raised to the point of the industrialized countries, or our standards are brought down to theirs. (...) I guess we know which one the corporate elite would prefer, based on what they've done to the economies of the industrialized nations.
That's a vast oversimplification, our standard of living is based on being able to hire people to work many hours for one of our hours. If you had to pay US wages to all the people that produce your goods then prices would be higher and your effective wealth lower. Redistributing wealth is easy - it happens every time you buy something from India or China. Creating more wealth is hard, businesses aren't inefficient on purpose. In the end you need to have some sustainable advantage to sustainably have higher wages than other countries and there aren't really that many on a national level, there's a few countries like Saudi-Arabia that have that much oil but for most countries it's just people. Give the rest of the world a good education and there's nothing special about an American teenager over an Indian or Chinese teenager. We've tried to sustain it anyway on debt and the results are trickling in.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The reason Sealand was created was an understanding that most often, government and law enforcement will attempt to shut down the SOURCE of data they have a problem with. Just like the "War on Drugs", they're most interested in catching the major dealers, as opposed to small time individual drug users (though certainly, many of them get caught in the wide nets they're constantly putting out, too).
With computer data, it's kind of an "every man for himself" situation out there. If you want to view illegal content? You can do so, but you better be well versed in how to scrub it off of your machine when you're done viewing it, or know how to encrypt it so it can't be found and accessed by anyone but yourself. The SOURCES of the data are the ones at greater risk.
Of course, realistically, Sealand never really worked, because ultimately, they didn't think on nearly large enough of a scale. If you're going to declare a territory is ruled by your OWN laws and not a part of any other nation, you're going to have to fight for it. That means, you better have enough of a population living there so you can maintain a standing army of some sort, and you have to pose some sort of risk to those who might decide to forcibly take you over. (By that, I mean a number of things, including simply the fact that in order to do so, a government would have to injure, kill or take prisoner a significant number of people -- which would raise "red flags" with enough other people about human rights issues.) You should also really possess some natural resources and be able to maintain a level of self-sufficiency. (Even a small island would seem to be much more valuable an asset than a man-made vessel out in the ocean. At least an island is made of actual land/soil, meaning crops can be grown on it.)
That's a vast oversimplification, our standard of living is based on being able to hire people to work many hours for one of our hours. If you had to pay US wages to all the people that produce your goods then prices would be higher and your effective wealth lower.
This is so wrong it is almost humorous... except for the fact that many people believe it and don't understand where the wealth of 1st world countries come from.
No, the wealth of people in major industrialized countries comes from the ability to work more effectively and be able to perform tasks with less effort and to collectively be able to do things in less time or to produce more with the same amount of labor. This is usually done not through hiring slaves or paying people in 3rd world countries, but rather through designing machines or better manufacturing processes that people who live in countries with less wealth.
If you take how many farmers it takes to grow a bushel of wheat or corn in America vs. Ethiopia or Madagasgar, there is a huge difference. One farmer in America can feed nearly a thousand people out of his (or her) own labor. In Ethiopia, perhaps a dozen people. In practice this difference is even more exaggerated but the basic principle still hold true. This also applies to how cloth is manufactured, how lumber is harvested and machined down to be able to construct housing, and just about everything which can be imagined that is made by the hand of men.
Face it, if 3rd world countries simply stopped selling stuff to 1st world countries, those 1st world countries wouldn't starve or even go without luxuries. Many like the United States even historically didn't even depend much upon foreign trade and domestically has been able to produce just about everything it needed and then some. If these "wealthy countries" simply pulled in on themselves with an isolationist movement, they would still be wealthy and be able to tell these poorer countries to "get lost" or even "nuke themselves into oblivion" for all that matters.
Yes, in the short term there might be some inflation if suddenly goods and services from poorer countries stopped flowing into the wealthy countries. But they would recover and in fact the incentive to increase efficiencies in the factories that would at that point by necessity have to be domestic producers would likely improve to the point that overall wealth would even increase relative to the amount of labor that an ordinary worker would have to perform in order to maintain a given standard of goods, services, and supplies available to that individual citizen in that country. Over the long term, the wealthy would become even wealthier.
As for the poor countries, as soon as they told off the wealthy countries they would also be cut off from the wealth of those countries and be forced to make their own luxuries... which they may or may not be able to do. If anything, there would be short-term deflation and then they would spiral downward in a vicious cycle of economic collapse that would be hard to recover from.
You claim that creating more wealth is hard. Absolutely it is! It takes primarily the ability for letting people make their own decisions acted out on a massive scale so that eventually the best ideas can come forward. Bad ideas will be presented too, but those will eventually disappear in the marketplace of ideas... or simply in an open market in general that allows anybody to participate. If you are in a government or society that doesn't allow these ideas to come forth, that society will literally be poorer because of it. Individual personal liberty is the key to wealth creation. Some people simply enjoy living in poverty and I don't mind if they want to follow that as a sort of religion or philosophical principle. I just don't want to be forced at gunpoint to be one of them.
Having read the whole paper, the history part is great, and the legal part is speculative. The key point that comes out is that Sealand was just too small to be taken seriously as a country. The population ranged from 1 to 4. That was the big problem.
If you wanted to start a data haven, Nauru is probably the place. Nauru, population about 9000, is a moderately successful financial haven. Nauru is recognized as a country by all the relevant organizations. It's been a popular location for "High Yield Investment Programs".
The country was once supported by phosphate mines, and had a very high income per capita until the phosphate ran out in the 1980s. 90% of the land area is now a useless wasteland. 90% of the people are unemployed. GDP of the whole country is $60 million and dropping. Only aid from Australia keeps the place going. If someone was looking for a microstate to buy, Nauru would be the choice.
That's the low end of microstates.
Free market cannot in principle oppress you, there is no legal body that is above you in the eyes of the law to do so.
You can't handle the truth.
This is usually done not through hiring slaves.
Really? Then why are American corporations measuring their success in terms of "profit per employee" lately? Last time anybody did that was prior to the Civil War...
Back when Henry Ford revolutionized industry, he realized right away that it was no one else's responsibility to hire potential customers. So the real question is: with so many people making stuff they can't possibly afford to buy, who the fuck is supposed to buy it?
That's the real reason behind the current economic collapse -- a culture of companies that are all trying to squeeze out a little extra profit by hiring people that can't quite afford the product they're producing. The result is more wealth, sure, but when everyone starts doing it, everyone has fewer customers. More wealth X fewer customers = reduced profits. So they try to squeeze harder, and they start using slave-labor metrics to guide their decisions, and the economy continues to become more and more suceptible to disruption as fewer and fewer people actually have the power to make choices in it. Seriously, what's the difference between Soviet bureaucrats and today's wealthy capitalists? Either way you've got 1% of the population planning the economy.