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Ask Slashdot: Best Country To Avoid Government Surveillance?
simpz writes: Which country is best to choose for hosting Internet services and locating VMs to avoid government surveillance (both NSA and local)? It should be a country with good connectivity to the US and Europe, but have strong legal protections from mass surveillance. People talk about Switzerland, Norway and Iceland (even Spain). Anyone worked through the pros and cons of each of these? I'm not concerned about legitimate (with court order) surveillance, just the un-targeted mass surveillance most governments seem to do. I don't believe this bad behavior should be rewarded or made easy.
If you can find it.
Downside is, you have no livable infrastructure
"but have strong legal protections from mass surveillance"
Both the US and the EU have strong legal protections from mass surveillance. The problem is those protections get ignored or subverted.
If you want to avoid omnipresent surveillance, you need a time machine. Otherwise expect to be spied on by several different governments and corporations. At best, maybe the government you're living in will have less surveillance on you than corporations and foreign governments.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Next question...
North Korea.
maybe not atlantis...but there is sea land ;)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
... doesn't exist. It just doesn't. No matter how many privacy walls a country throws up, a properly motivated rival country WILL find a way over them. Want to avoid surveillance? Learn about end-to-end encryption. Stop storing crap in the cloud. Be mindful of your choices in operating systems and mobile devices. And, even then. realize that a five dollar wrench is ultimately all it will take to defeat you.
Let's see: If you live in (x), you are spied on by: US(), Russia(), China(), NK(), Syria(), Iran(), Israel(), everybody else()...
US: maybe, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Russia: probably, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
China: probably, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
NK: hopefully, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Syria: Depends on if the electricity is still running.
Iran: probably, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Israel: Wow... that's a toughie, but I'll go with yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Everybody else: Maybe not Trinidad and Tobego, unless you're running drugs, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
The French state is notorious for extreme hypocrisy. If the French State decides that violating it's rules will protect it from future terror attacks the rules will be violated.
Most of Europe is actually entirely dependent on the US Defense-Industrial complex for protection from Putin, that's the reason the Germans insist on creating investigations of NSA surveillance and then six months later announcing "gee, it's kinda hard to charge US Government employees, who live and work in Virginia, in a Court system in a different country on a different continent." No shit, it did not take you six months to figure that out; you're just stalling and hoping the issue will go away because there's bugger-all you can do to fix the problem. Until countries like Germany start spending their money on expensive materiel like aircraft capable of transporting tanks, they are de facto vassals of the US in all matters relating to the military, and therefore totally reliant on the NSA regardless of what their local laws say.
Try Switzerland. "Neutrals" closer to Putin's Russia are actually worse bets then non-nuetrals, because the Greek capital isn't a day's boat ride from the Russian capital. Also avoid countries near active political conflicts. Ireland not only has extremely close historical links with both the US and UK, it also has a strong interest in creating it's own database of it's own people because of that little conflict in Northern Ireland; which is heating up after Robinson resigned in a dispute over IRA weapons decommissioning.
seems reasonable, but not sure if it developed enough for your lifestyle choice. then there is the rumbling volcano to be dealt with.
Just stop paying your taxes.
It really is that easy. :)
#blacklivesmatter
Your thinking about this the wrong way around.
If you're concerned with surveillance, you shouldn't be thinking in terms of "which country", you should be thinking in terms of "which software".
There's no guarantee that *any* data will be safe *anywhere*. Your best choice, and in fact the only choice with any chance of success, is with a technical solution.
Use strong encryption end-to-end, encrypt any data on the servers, give your clients/customers their keys, and make certain you don't have a back door.
That's the only way to avoid it. Hire some really capable security people to implement a strong system, and employ a security maintenance team to keep you current with known security issues.
For all the bad you can say about Julian Assange, he's an expert in this sort of thing and even *he* wasn't able to choose a good country.
Security through technology, it's the only way.
Assuming that all of your data is secure-in-transit (HTTPS/SSL/TLS/etc), you only need a country that enforces due process when seizing servers.
The only exception I can think of is if you need plaintext/HTTP, presumably if you're concerned about users/locations that can't use HTTP. In that case, you'd be screwed anyways; even if you're in a country with strong laws against, that's no protection that the network isn't compromised in several ways.
So encrypt your network connections, and unless you're in a country that can seize hardware without process, you're fine. The US actually isn't terrible at that, where some countries in the EU actually are.
At least in the US you supposedly are legally protected. Leave the borders and the only protection you have is the one you erect. Good luck keeping the NSA out of your business once they're determined. If you set up shop in any other country you're completely legally fair game.
At least in N.Korea they don't try to hide the fact that this is a corrupt dictatorial government which acts solely in its own best interests.
Elsewhere -- it's exactly the same -- except that they pretend they have a democracy
I'll list just 2 countries, --- China, Cuba --- ...and there are more ... that do not pretend they are 'democratic' and , unlike the United States of America, both Cuba and China never pretend that they never spy on their citizens either
It's easy to find, it's an old Channel gun battery three miles off the coast of Essex. Last I heard they were trading server room space for a little cash and supplies.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Those "strong legal protections" have numerous loopholes for national security and other purposes. That's in addition to those governments quietly tolerating the US and other nations spying on their citizens.
Some of the enclaves for the super-rich, like Switzerland and Monaco, may be decent choices... if you are super rich. But if you are super rich, you can probably avoid government surveillance pretty much anywhere.
Iceland has the best privacy regime. Its cable to London can also be sketchy, as can the hosting there. And it's expensive.
Switzerland is well-cabled and has pretty good laws. They've recently been deanonymizing bank accounts, cooperating with SWIFT, and been flirting with the Euro. They could go nuts, but so far they just look a little bit wobbly. They never fight in wars, so there's a level of maturity and stability to be noted. Hosting is cheap and solid. Probably safe.
Spain is anything-goes. Jesus, what a mess. You might get lucky.
Norway I don't know about - I haven't seen it show up on competitive hosting sites.
Most countries fall into one of four categories here: Five Eyes (shares surveillance data with U.S.), 'The West' (same, probably with implicit economic threats involved), Laizzes-faire governments (trivially bribed in order to share surveillance data with U.S.), and totalitarian (keeps the info to themselves but surveils everything openly).
Reporters Without Borders maintains a nice ranking here of countries based on their histories of surveillance and censorship; however, sometimes it turns out that a country high on the list will be revealed to have been engaged in a mass-surveillance scheme all along or has major corruption problems that weren't factored in.
In practical terms, it has always been advised that anything unencrypted sent over the Internet should be assumed to be snooped upon, and now we merely know how true that assumption always was. Your efforts should be put into ensuring everything is encrypted and hashed using secure algorithms that haven't been broken. Even if your server is physically located in Utopia, whose government never does any surveillance, censorship or takedowns, hackers (government or otherwise) from other countries can compromise your server and take all the data or install backdoors to your encryption efforts, so security is more important than location. Of course, a country that doesn't have a history of raiding datacenters hosting certain materials is still a good idea, but don't forget that your upstream hosting providers are one bribe/threat away from pulling your plug unilaterally, so choose them well too.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Instead of asking
"Best Country To Avoid Government Surveillance? "
a question better representing the reality we live in could be
"Least hypocritical country which neither pretends that it is democratic, nor that it never spies on its own citizens"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
costa rica is, geographically, a nexus for the undersea fibre cables. translation: the internet connectivity is *fast*. intel has a major centre there. the advantage of costa rica - apart from being absolutely beautiful and one of the most bio-diverse areas on the planet, is that they have NOT signed CAFTA. as a direct result of this they are still a sovereign nation. also, it's *really* hard to do mass-surveillance when most of the country is covered in dense greenery. you can get a tourist visa then, every few months, pay the $30 fine for staying a little bit longer. some foreigners have paid that gosh every few months for shock horror 20 years!
Why worry about government surveillance? Corporate surveillance is far more pervasive, intrusive and probably something you participate in and contribute to. When you unquestioningly hand boatloads of your personal data over to corporate inspection, control and monetization, when you actively help a corporation surveil you and others you associate with, then what difference does it make if your government has a look too?
Want zero government surveillance?
Just move to Somalia.
If you're trying to avoid spying on any specific connection, you'd want to distribute and encrypt your data so not everything passes through a single link. There are a number of solutions for that, tracker-less BitTorrent being one of the more famous ones. You can buy a network of small servers all over the globe to serve your data, even partially hosted by Amazon, Google and other supposedly NSA-friendlies and you have a system that will be very hard to spy on.
You can never protect your (virtual) hardware from being seized however you can protect your data from being compromised in those situations. Running fully encrypted data stores is not that hard these days. Just keep up on the updates and use intrusion detection and you'll be pretty safe from your run-of-the-mill westerner inquiry. You can never protect yourself from a dedicated hacker entity though (ala China and North Korea), you will make mistakes at some point and they can be found with enough dedication; the west will just use legal-like tactics (jail time) to get you to divulge your password, the far-east not so much (they also may use large wrench tactics).
There are some hosting companies that promise they'll let you know when a warrant is executed, but those promises are empty when they are no longer allowed to tell you.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Kim Dotcom.
The middle of Antarctica, in your own bunker, full of guns. Gubment can't get you there! Hahahaha!
NSA are a bunch of retarded faggots.
Gotta be Pakistan, where you can hide for years, although a foreign power can come in to assassinate you.
If you are smart enough to ask this question and understand why you should want to do so then the only answer is a frontal lobotomy that turns you into one of the ignorant mass of people that generated this state of affairs in the first place. It applies to all western countries however America's Benjamin Franklin summed it up best (to paraphrase) when he said that 'ultimately the demise of *any* democracy comes from the corruption of the people'.
One only has to look at the TV to see that serious democracy no longer exists, that we have moved from a covert to an overt surveillance state and that you are asking for a way out of the new world order.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They all have much higher tax rates. If you want to pay lower taxes and convince yourself that the government is leaving you alone, you'll need to go to Somalia or Afghanistan.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Locating to a different country does not address the issue, and indeed makes it worse.
In western countries, the internally directed surveillance is legally questionable , and exploits a lot of loopholes, but still has some limits in law.
Once you are extra-territorial, the few legal limits that remain no longer apply, and the full force of technical and non-technical capability can be applied with negligible legal constraint (e.g. extra territorial, they _can_ (and have) tortured people to get passwords, domestically that is far less likely in a Western country).
The mass surveillance occurs primarily at a trans-national level - so long as you are communicating back to the western country, you are in Scientology speak "fair game". Something as simple as using Google for DNS is sufficient loophole to sweep you up. Intelligence services operating across national boundaries are far less constrained by law than domestic activities in their country of origin.
Picking the Scandinavians as the more "people centric, kinder, gentler" kind of government is not a bad idea - If you are domestic in Norway, and only dealing with Norwegians, then you can have a stronger expectation from the Norwegian government, and probably won't be rolled up. Host in Norway and communicate with US citizens, then you have less protections than if you were hosted in the US (from the US government agencies).
People in the US often use the Bill of Rights as their guideline between the right and wrong uses of the government, without realizing where, in our legal system, the protections they intuit should exist actually come from.
Yes, congress could end PRISM with a line item. And they should. The National Weather Service would love to have all new hardware.
here - the answer is most of Central and South America, most of Africa, most of Europe except for France and Great Britain, Canada, Japan and Philippines
I just finished reading Cracked for the past 20 minutes and this comment made me laugh the hardest. Good luck on that, by the way!
1) Impossible to live 'off the grid'... just a small densely populated urban city-state.
2) Security cameras everywhere (elevator lobbies, streets, public transport, parks, schools).
3) Your movement is tracked if you drive (GPS) or if you take public transport (fare card stores your time/location history).
4) Singapore govt is a satisfied customer of FinFisher (look up Wikileaks).
5) Draconian, micromanaging laws.
6) Biometric data captured when you enter or leave the country.
7) There are virtually no laws protecting your civil liberties or private information e.g. health records.
Of course, YMMV especially if you are some rich expat who just wants a stable place to park your wealth.
However, speaking as a guy who's born and bred in Singapore, it's an Orwellian disneyland.
Pretty low Government involvement in most things. Reasonable taxation, strong protections of private property, a very good economy, and it's a beautiful country. With a pretty low cost of living as well.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is a good question. And very few name any candidate nations.
So I'll throw the first stones:
Equador. Paraguay. Uruguay. Cambodia.
I am afraid there is no general answer, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. Snowden found safe haven in Russia, the country not known for freedom or privacy, because Putin is not interested in protecting western powers. You may well find a totalitarian king who is not interesting in enforcing copyrights. Now imagine your perfect pro-privacy, anti-surveillance country under attack from NSA? Don't you think they would do some surveillance to catch the spooks?
If you just want to avoid mass surveillance, just locate in any poor country that doesn't have the resources. Syria sounds about right. If you actually want respect for your rights, you have to look for people who share your values.
countries that engage in surveillance (ie most of them) don't recognize borders when it comes to engaging in surveillance and most of the ignore the laws of countries that have protections. So no country offers you any protection. Some countries will offer you protection from "Legal" warrants as in they won't recognize warrants from the US or Europe etc, but anywhere that offers that protection requires you to give up a whole lot of other freedoms or be the subject of the whims of dictators etc. basically if you want freedom from surveillance then you have to do yourself through encryption, obfuscation or stay off the net altogether.
People in the US often use the Bill of Rights as their guideline between the right and wrong uses of the government, without realizing where, in our legal system, the protections they intuit should exist actually come from.
I believe the answer is "the tenth amendment"... "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Of course, this is a strong states rights stance, rather than a Federalist stance, so it will sit well with neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, each of which want a strong central government, for their own reasons.
Nevertheless, it states exactly what Jefferson wanted it to state (given he was strongly anti-Federalist).
We have FRA snooping on us.
Airgapistan has a really strong track record for avoiding surveillance, but the ping times are atrocious...
LOL
or Pluto if Mars gets too wired
Table-ized A.I.
It is already dead in the water - Encription is your only protection
It's not called surveillance, its called telemetry or analytics
As soon as you say someplace is cool... that's the turning point. These pinky and the brain fucks are playing Godless-World Life-for-the-flying-fuck-of-it Edition.
Any country where Facebook is banned has 50% better chance though. I don't think there are any though... unless Germany is still harping on Holocaust denials.
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Germany-warns-Facebook-Clamp-down-on-Holocaust-denial-or-else-413595
Anybody who subscribes to -isms will fail. Judaism is anti-Christian. That is literally all you need to know about it.
Aside from being a 'Five Eyes' country, the GCSB bill was pushed through in 2013 despite the opposition of many ISPs and the largest public protests in NZ history. One outcome of the bill mandated black-box data collection at every ISP. Oddly, after the bill passed there hasn't been a peep of protest, or at least I haven't seen any media reporting on it.
Now we've got all the demands of the TPPA rolling in on top of that...
Believe it or not Mexico is a nice country for those who do not like government surveillance.
-A strong right to privacy coded in the law (only a federal court in special cicumstances can issue approval for surveilance), reinforced by the absolute technical incompetence of the authorities and ISPs.
-No laws of any kind against encryption.
-You cannot be legally forced to surrender passwords or equivalent information. (Well you can be "compelled" by the authorities but if you don't comply the maximum punishment is 72 hours in jail or a fine of about 100 dollars).
-Software patents are illegal.
-Downloading copyrighted material is completely legal, as the law allows one non-for-profit personal use copy of any copyrighted work.
-No download or upload caps in broadband connection. This concept doesn't even exist.
-A strong constitutional rights protection system, free and with ease of access. I just won an injunction (amparo in spanish) and constitutional protection against a recently issued law, as part of a class in law school. The judiciary was very objective and fast in issuing the injunction against a notably inconstitutional law. Also free.
-You can find very good lawyers for cheap, in case you get in trouble.
-Consumption and posession of most drugs is legal up to a certain amount (but trade is illegal).
-Search in airports is a joke. I recently forgot I had a full bottle of zippo fuel lighter in my luggage and guess what... security just let me through. Twice (I forgot to buy a gift so I had to exit the gate and return later). The second time I asked the security staff about this and they told me: "It's not like you are going to blow up the airplane with that" When the metal detector goes off they just look the other way.
-Contrary to popular belief gun ownership is legal, as long as the caliber is smaller than 38 special.
-Very large cash economy. One of the countries in the continent with less people with bank accounts. Many friends of mine don't feel they even need a bank account. Safes in banks are very cheap in case you want to keep large amounts of cash around.
I'm an engineer but I'm also studying to become a lawyer in Mexico, so I can tell you firsthand all of this is true. I can provide citations for the law if you want.
Search for 14 eyes on Wikipedia and avoid those countries.
It's not talked about much, but Finland has a really strong record on this one. The government hasn't really gotten a foothold in network surveillance.
There is no way to avoid surveillance. What we called "privacy" has never been an unassailable right, rather a consequence of limited technological capabilities on the part of governments. The moment those limits were surpassed, privacy was dead for all intents and purposes. No government likes their populace to go unchecked, and if you think moving out of the US will keep you safe from Big Brother you'll be sorely deluded. The EU intelligence agencies cooperate with NSA fully and with no fear of consequences. Those who are not aligned with the US are either aligned with Russia, or China, or both. Neutral countries are too small to put up any resistance (Switzerland was forced to give up banking secrecy and surrendered without a fight) or they're part of an economic bloc (Sweden is neutral but is part of the EU and will obey Brussels' - and hence Washington's - orders). It's done. We live in the Surveillance Age. We will die in it. Our children will live and die in it and will find this state of constantly being under control the natural order of the things. Same for our grandchildren. The only thing that can put an end to it is the end of technology, which may happen at some point in the next 200 years out of energy depletion but as long as technology exists your life is not yours anymore. Get over it.
Mod here. Alas, there's no -1, Full of Intellectual Dishonesty.
Exercising *some* discretion and wanting to keep things *somewhat* on-topic is not being "Ned Flanders".
And I was very likely reading Cracked before you were born. You may now get off my lawn and go find some traffic to play in.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
US pressure... backed by US surveillance with Swiss banking attacks as the lever (All that "we'll fine Swiss banks billions of dollars for the tax evasion of our rich people" cause the Swiss government/spooks to be more compliant to the US surveillance agenda.). It's suffering the same split Germany is seeing, with the population demanding their privacy rights as per their laws, and the military/spook complex pushing back as if it no longer answers to the populace.
But the fear of Putin is driving it, that and ISIS.
Which is sad really because NSA should have been watching Putin invade Ukraine and anti Syrian rebels fracturing to carve out Iraq, and instead it was analyzing little Johnnys WhatsApp messages to his mum! General Alexander was a dick who lost NSA focus.
Somalia
Any protections from Western mil/gov mass surveillance do not exist. The clandestine services work well with each other globally and have great local support in most bandwidth ready nations going back decades (1950's on).
Switzerland has had decades of top level staff working with, been trained by the US mil. Any request from the US gov over telecommunications issues is just a very friendly chat away.
Norway offered the UK reconnaissance flights from the 1950's on. A long term working relationship with the US and UK. Iceland, Spain: Western mil support over decades. Re "hosting Internet services and locating VMs"
Have nothing interesting on them and explore all encryptions options. If your interesting any hardware offered or sold will be shipped with a Tailored Access Operations rebuild. Then face the junk standard encryption as a default- trap door, back door, front doors..
So just find a good nation with good cheap bandwidth and build your network with the clarity of been part of a global 'collect it all' system. Via the local telco, the hardware, software and all local networks.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm gonna play devil's advocate and say the USA. On the following logic: the USA is the only country with the capability and desire to perform mass surveillance in pretty much any nation on Earth, so they're your main concern. There's nothing stopping US surveillance agencies from monitoring other nations' citizens, but if you're American, they have to jump through a few hoops before they can look at your data -- FISA court, etc. They're bullshit hoops, I agree, and they won't stop a serious investigation, but at least they might make an NSA agent think twice before jacking off to your selfies.
Luxembourg! First, nobody is interested in spying on them. They have a Navy of half a ship (shared with Belgium) and also one of the US Awacs planes is flying under their flag, that's about their air force.
They also have 2 old cannons to fire for state celebrations.
They have 100% cellphone coverage, 100% DSL coverage and in about 3 years also 100% glass fiber coverage.
And if Paypal ever blocks your account, you can _walk_ to their office with a big stick and demand explanations.
Disclaimer: I'm from Luxembourg. :-)
Join a community network or create your own.
Wether it is a LAN or a community wireless project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or even citizen band radio is looking quite good now.
Don't worry Australia is capable infarct more so in every component of Australian lives as they have been setting this up for the last few decades.
Though, you'll probably provide employment for one of the locals keeping an eye on the weird foreigner.
And I suspect their network infrastructure is a bit below par.
There are countries known for there spying, then they are countries that didn't get caught yet.
Besides if your communication is secure it doesn't mean the other end or the route to get there is.
Basic rules. Encrypt everything & don't try to send compromising info.
Think of the Internet as communication at a public square. You may be talking to a friend but others may be listing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
> or to the people
Corporations are people... so outsource the mass intercepts to corporations, which has been done... then repatriate that data back to NSA using some other trick of law (like a domestic version of 5-eyes)... bye bye pesky 10th.
Spain. The level of incompetence of the spanish government (no matter which party is at charge) is difficult to beat. And, in any case, you can bribe the designated officials out of your trace.
The worst is the U.K. China Russia, the United States, Australia and the Neverland's. The question you should be asking is how to best defend yourself from government surveillance and intimidation.. Governments change and policies change what you type on the Internet today may be unacceptable in 10 years time by your governments regardless of what country you live in. Governments are acting more like terrorists every day. So the question should be HOW TOs. not which country may be the safest at the moment for Internet freedoms privacy and security.
Netherlands is a good bet.
For one they don't even really care about copyright!
and you can get good hosting in the netherlands from altushost
over at http://www.altushost.com/ altushost has services in netherlands and sweden.
I highly recommend them!
I've never seen a serious, credible libertarian advocate pure absolute 100% anarchy, just like I've never seen a serious, credible businessperson advocate 100% unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism.
This is mostly true; few libertarians are anarchists. But there are LOTS of "serious, credible libertarians" that argue for a government the size of the one in Somalia, and assume that reasonable (yet strong) structures created by private citizens acting independently will magically arise to pick up the slack and create an orderly, just, society. Curiously, none of these libertopias ever seem to actually happen. If a bunch of libertarians want to lay claim over a chunk of Somalia and show the rest of us How It's Done, it's not like anybody is going to stop them.
In my research I started with exactly the same question and the answer was quite unexpected.
The only European country with proper Internet infrastructure and a strong Constitutional protection against mass surveillance is Romania.
Of course, the government pushed by US tried several times to pass mass surveillance laws but each time the Constitutional Court ruled them down.
Flatland...they can't perceive more than a slice of your system so the whole thing will stay very secure.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Having asked this question in a public forum, you've now drawn the monitoring attention of NSAs bots so it doesn't matter WHAT country you're in (provably).
Maybe start using more durable, less monitorable tech like a pencil and paper.
-Styopa
That's a great country, have lots of guns, random militias are in charge, and no government to speak of. If you don't like Somalia, then lots of other politically similar countries in Central Asia, Mid East and Africa
If you stop using the technologies they are monitoring, you can't be monitored. Try the postal system.
People talk about Switzerland, Norway and Iceland (even Spain).
Confoederatio Helvetica (Switzerland) is a really, really poor place to move your servers or data (or both) to, as the Bund (the federal government) has just passed a law which enables the Swiss secret service (equivalent of the United States' NSA) to actively spy on its citizens as well as abroad, legally and without requiring a warrant.
In fact, the new powers go so far as to legally enable the Swiss intelligence to actively hack any target, and even install trojans and viruses, provided they succeed in doing so.
Simply force customers to use hard-disc encryption of which only the customer has the keys, and only allow encrypted traffic in and out of your server.
"Where there is no unencrypted data, there noone can read nothin"
Yermomistan.
The kneejerk reaction is Germany, but even they want into Five-eyes and the BND (German NSA) has gotten its hands dirty. It currently appears like there is no German secret surveillance court, but yknow, we learn about stuff later.
In terms of pro-active stuff Brazil seems OK. Greenwald knows Portuguese and I think Miranda is Brazilian so there were lots of government hearings where Brazilian politicians heard meaningful and eloquent opinions. Greenwald lives in Brazil now for example.
The Libertarian paradises of Somalia and Namibia are great candidates, considering they can't keep the lights on for more than a couple hours per day. That should effectively hamper anything that might require electricity to track you. You'll have to look out for warlords and street gangs who'll kill you for sport, but other than that it's a surveillance-free society.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The obvious answer is a country that has no Government. Those don't really exist in Europe, of course.
Maybe something like Monaco, Luxembourg or Andorra. Greenland or some of the islands in the Atlantic Ocean could also work.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Finland is a great place to live, where the rights of the individual are respected.
You will avoid government surveillance, but also you will have the real option of taking part in governmental collaboration.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
The best hope for future generations (probably not for you) is escaping to a new world where there aren't any humans (or at least that you can't trivially overrun). Just as it's always been with the old 'New World' right back to when Ugg the caveman got fed up of the tribe leader and his cronies ordering everyone around by threat ot clubbing, and quit for the next valley.
This is why case law ought to be outlawed: because someone pulled that out of their ass instead of going through the amendment ratification process.
The 4th amendment says peoples' right to be secure against unreasonable searches shall not be violated. It does not say that the right may be violated as long as it's not for prosecuting a criminal. Changing the definition of "search" -- in order to avoid having to ratify a new amendment that grants additional powers to government to sometimes search without due process -- is slimey as fuck.
If some judge can change the definition of search, then they could also change the definition of "freedom" or "press" or anything else.
"Oh, we're not quartering a soldier in your home; we're just pointing a gun at your face and saying that you must feed and board the soldiers or else we'll use deadly force. 'Quartering' according to this here dictionary that we wrote, is when you have to give 25-cent pieces to soldiers so they can play Ms Pacman. And we get to write the dictionary instead of you, because the laws are for us not you."
At least in Singapore, you KNOW everything you do **everywhere** - online, walking, subways, driving, is being watch, recorded, and used.
There is no confusion. THEY are watching.
Seriously, I'd be inclined towards Uruguay, but only for local traffic. Anything that leaves the country will end up in Brazil which has been infiltrated by US monitoring, then back to Miami. Traffic to Argentina might be safe, but that government is barely hanging on and will soon be dealing with hyper-inflation again.
For quality of life, relatively unoffensive government, Uruguay is my choice. Of course, there are issues with getting cheap technology there.
Corporations are people....
Legally corporations are entitled to the same redress in the civil courts as the individual, they are treated "LIKE PEOPLE" in terms of civil law, this does not make them "people" in the eyes of the law. All this means is that they are governed by the same rules in civil courts as people. People can sue each other and defend themselves in the courts, corporations have all the same privileges in terms of civil law.
However, corporations are NOT people in many important legal ways. They cannot vote, they cannot serve on a jury, sign a petition, they cannot run for office or serve in the military. They do not have citizenship and don't have inalienable God given rights like the people who own the corporation. These rights are reserved for actual people.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Argentina!
There are no cyber-laws whatsoever. You can open a website to sell drugs and slaves and nobody will give a fuck
I suspect the governments that are less likely to do mass surveillance are also the same governments that won't prevent outside sources of mass surveillance.
If your server is in the US, you might be the subject of mass surveillance of the US government. But the US government also has a vested interest in keeping foreign hackers out of US resources. The US government has an interest in keeping business secrets within the US. So, you might be under the surveillance of the US, but you can be reasonably assured(or as sure as you possibly could be) that you won't be under the surveillance of Russia, China, Britain, Germany, etc.
If you decide to plop down in some piss ant country that doesn't have mass surveillance purely because it *can't* have mass surveillance(not enough resources), then you're putting yourself wide open to anyone, with no protection at all.
Think of the US as a fort: you're sitting in the middle. You might be hassled by the folks running the place one in a while, and perhaps they have hidden cameras throughout the fort, but they're also pointing their guns away from you - they're pointing their guns at possible invaders. This piss ant country with a lack of surveillance is more akin to a village without a wall - even a bear can come meandering by and fuck up your life, let alone all the armed militias, barbarians, bandits, etc.
As others said, the proper route is to ignore the mass surveillance and implement end-to-end encryption. Require HTTPS. Require TLS/SSL. Make no exceptions. For better or worse(mostly worse, imo) we live in a world with mass surveillance. Rather than burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist, you need to take the necessary measures to ensure it can't affect you.
Legal protections against mass surveillance mean basically nothing. If some government doesn't do it officially, they will do it unofficially, and if some government doesn't do it at all, someone else will do it.
So your best bet would be assume someone is watching and react accordingly by using encryption and good security practices. If you really are paranoid, you can add proxies. I don't believe in anyone, NSA included, breaking standard modern encryption, at least not for untargeted mass surveillance.
Your choice of country maybe more important for protection against court-ordered surveillance.
What you appear to be asking is: What country or countries would actually respect my liberty while still managing to provide a relatively stable place to live? What are the pros and cons of these countries? Switzerland and Iceland offer protection from the USA. They are stable. They have legal codes similar to any other Western nation. They are cheaper than the Scandinavians. Germany is very similar to the UK and USA when it comes to law, but they do have a better track record human rights (post WW2) than the UK and USA. New Zealand is another option, but they are no longer quite as welcoming toward US immigrants due to the vast number of neo-cons who showed up. In Australia, things are alright, but all of the wildlife is deadly. Nicaragua and Chile are both great destinations. Things are inexpensive, you have a great deal of liberty, they are relatively stable, and they are generally welcoming toward people who actually wish to live there and acknowledge that they are choosing to become Nicaraguans or Chileans and not just Americans who live in an enclave. There are a few MASSIVE issues you need to be aware of when leaving the USA: 1) People around the world are not always welcoming of the USA because the USA does some fucked up shit. Most people are smart enough to realize that those things are actions of the US government and not necessarily representative of the US's population, but it still happens. 2) Do not move somewhere and start talking about your politics or philosophy because no one is going to give a shit, and you will most likely just piss people off. 3) Many things that are inexpensive in the USA will be more expensive in some places. As an example, clothing is often more expensive in Europe than in the USA because Europeans typically do not trade with countries that do child labor. Another example, while it is easy to get a gun in Chile, guns are more expensive because they're imported from the USA, and the dollar is strong against their currency.
Most countries, especially in the five eyes, monitor their communications infrastructure. Outside of that, the ones that don't are still likely being monitored by other countries. Also, communications often transit borders, and once it's out of your network, it's definitely out of your control.
Encryption raises the bar, but unless you are a mathematician who can prove that P != NP (or vice versa) and implement a perfect version of a cryptographic method, you can't really be sure of anything anyway. If it's important enough to conceal a communication, or a collection of communications taken as a whole, then do a key exchange in person with single-use keys, AKA a one-time-pad. Make sure to never, ever use the same key twice, and use an isolated device to perform the encryption/decryption. Keep that device as isolated as possible by, for example, using OCR on printed documents instead of digital media. That will protect against mass surveillance, especially if your encryption algorithm is both unique AND at least as strong as AES, which, again, is hard to prove. (See the section just on attacks on TLS/SSL, and those are the algorithms that secure some of the most valuable corporate data on the planet.)
If you want to communicate in private, then do it in private, in a secure environment. Assume everything else is no different from communicating in public and is being recorded, because it is probably being recorded, and at some point it may very well be public.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Corporations are people....
Legally corporations are entitled to the same redress in the civil courts as the individual, they are treated "LIKE PEOPLE" in terms of civil law, this does not make them "people" in the eyes of the law. All this means is that they are governed by the same rules in civil courts as people. People can sue each other and defend themselves in the courts, corporations have all the same privileges in terms of civil law.
However, corporations are NOT people in many important legal ways. They cannot vote, they cannot serve on a jury, sign a petition, they cannot run for office or serve in the military. They do not have citizenship and don't have inalienable God given rights like the people who own the corporation. These rights are reserved for actual people.
Such as the CEOs and Presidents of such corporations...
North Korea and Iran could make a lot of money by hosting data centers. They might spy on your data but they will not hand it over to western powers.
Get off planet. Live in space. Or build yer own country.
Either of Peter I island or Bouvet Island. Both isolate dependencies of Norway - so overall state surveillance shouldn't be a problem. Physical geography means they're unlikely to be snooped on by unfriendly governments.
Luxemburg is land-locked, so its navy would be sailing the Moselle river.
I would recommend Antarctica or Somalia. Not much government there.
Or just make your own network and base it on IPX/SPX. Either way you would be alone.
Argentina has laws against government surveillance. They only would disclosure information if there is a warrant with credible proves that some information has terrorist origin.
http://scholarlycommons.law.no...
For some strange reason the persons within corporations who *do* commit such crimes in the name of the corporation are rarely punished.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
For some strange reason the persons within corporations who *do* commit such crimes in the name of the corporation are rarely punished.
I don't accept your view that persons committing crimes for corporations are some how not punished. Persons within corporations who commit crimes are often charged with crimes and being "ordered" by your boss to do something you know is illegal is not a defense in a criminal trial.
But... NONE of this has anything to do with corporations being treated as people in civil law.... Corporations cannot be tried for a crime (What are you going to do? Put a corporation in jail when it's found guilty?) in CRIMINAL court, but they can be sued for damages in CIVIL court. So this is just more proof that where corporations are treated as a person in CIVIL law, they are NOT legally exactly like people in the eyes of the law in general.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yeah, but the Commerce Clause has been interpreted to allow the Feds to regulate literally anything, beginning in the twentieth century. That's why they needed a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol, but not to prohibit drugs, later. You can argue that almost anything affects interstate commerce, and they do make that argument, but the internet is a "no-brainer" in that regard.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
... then Eritrea should be at the top of the list.
It's always good to see Michael "No probable cause" Hayden posting. No, the 4th Amendment is not simply governed by the phrase "reasonable." Because it's nearly guaranteed that the government executing the search ALWAYS sees its actions as unquestionably reasonable. Michael Hayden himself argued with a journalist that the phrase "probable cause" did not appear in the 4th Amendment. He kept digging even after being taken to task, arguing, "If there's any amendment we know at the NSA, it's the Fourth!"
Citizens United didn't say that. What is said is that people don't give up their right to speak just because they form a corporation.
No, the local warlords would totally not be OK with just handing over land. But I'm sure both the local population and the world at large would be perfectly fine with it if Libertopia was as great as libertarians claim it would be; it would certainly be an improvement over the current state of affairs, which is essentially anarchy.
According to libertarian doctrine apparently the citizens will band together effectively to defend their newly-claimed territory, and this defense will somehow magically occur with a tax base near zero, because an all-volunteer force will be both well-equipped and well-organized, even with nobody on the hook to actually pay for any of it.
Yes, they would totally encounter some sort of outside force (and probably inside forces) that would try to destroy the fledgling nation. Defending your borders and providing for internal security is what makes a nation a nation; it's kind of silly for libertarians to argue that their ideas would work great if only they didn't need to do those things. Yeah, and communism would work great if only people would produce what was needed with no incentive to do so. And fascism would work wonderfully as long as it could be ensured that no raving lunatics could take charge, etc.
N/T
Try it! Library of Babel
Is there an option for mass 'off topic' modding?
I'm always wary of anyone who thinks the road to freedom is paved with state's rights.
In the US the system (checks and balances, staggered elections, almost every official art the state level is elected in his own name, virtually impossible to change Constitution that everyone argues about constantly, etc.) mean the most likely tyranny is that of the majority. It's unheard of for the Feds to get taken over by an oppressive majority before states do, and generally the state is much crueler. The Feds have nearly unlimited resources, a vast bureaucracy, etc. which tends to lead to a cold and powerful, but extremely impersonal, evil that doesn't actually do much violence; whereas states tend to rely on Entrepreneurial Evil like the KKK.
Then when the majority comes it's damn senses the state can;t even pay the oppressed minority back because a) EvilEntrepeneurs do not keep the great records the Feds keep, so you have no idea who to pay, and b) the state wouldn't have the money anyway.
Pick some.
Now, show the intersection set of 'countries with good privacy', and 'countries that will let you immigrate there'. I think you'll find that a null set.
Only the people lower down get punished. The higher-ups generally (not always) know how not to leave incriminating evidence. For example, setting performance goals that effectively can't be met by legal means isn't a crime in itself.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
India, if you bribe the right people;
http://business.rediff.com/rep...
Casteism
Kiribati.