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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.
"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.
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.
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.
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
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 !
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.
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
well, for a start there is no territorial claim to Antarctica, by Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. And considering the fact that there is a globally agreed moratorium on installation of gun or missile batteries anywhere on the continent (by virtue of Article V of the same Treaty which also and very specifically prohibits installation of ANY fixed (reactor) or mobile (reactor or missile) nuclear materials ANYWHERE within deck-sight (2.8 miles) of the coast of the continent).
So I think your entire idea might be just a little bit illegal.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
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!
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.
Walmart or google isn't going to kick down your doors in the middle of the night and shoot your dog
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."
It's not called surveillance, its called telemetry or analytics
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.
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"
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. :-)
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.
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
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