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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.
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
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
If the French State decides that violating it's rules will protect it from future terror attacks the rules will be violated.
The sinking of the 'Rainbow Warrior" is an excellent example.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
is that they have NOT signed CAFTA. as a direct result of this they are still a sovereign nation.
Costa Rica has a defense agreement with the US. They are totally dependent. I'm not sure you can consider them completely sovereign.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Maybe "harder", but only in relation to certain types of things (things might be seen in public by people who you know). Which also has downsides, such as encouraging self-censoring public behavior (most people here for example generally don't dance unless they're drunk out of fear of what people who know them might think). Also, we're not exactly a shining model of a free and independent press here, which combined with our low population ( = fewer people investigating) makes it harder to bring scandals to light. But I have hope for the pirates - if they can keep up their standing in the polls, they'll win a landslide victory in the next election. What I wouldn't give for a Pírati-Samfylkingin coalition!
Anyway, though it's counterintuitive, the best place to not be spied on is... the US. Even though the US is doing most of the spying (notwithstanding the best efforts of the Russians and Chinese to catch up ;) ). The US has a ban on spying on its own citizens without a warrant which it tries - however imperfectly, in numerous regards - to enforce. For people outside the US's territory, it's open season.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
The US has a ban on spying on its own citizens without a warrant which it tries - however imperfectly, in numerous regards - to enforce. For people outside the US's territory, it's open season.
No. They found a legal loophole around that, using UK as a proxy.
Indeed. The end of the constitutional protections afforded to people of most western nations was destroyed by the passage of the 'homeland' security acts in their countries
Er, that mostly only happened in the US.