
Software companies are leaving the UK because of government’s surveillance plans - korisnik
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/software-companies-are-leaving-the-uk-because-of-governments-surveillance-plans/
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notsony
> _Ghost 's founder, John O'Nolan, wrote in a blog post: "we’ve elected to
> move the default location for all customer data from the UK to
> DigitalOcean’s [Amsterdam] data centre. The Netherlands is ranked #2 in the
> world for Freedom of Press, and has a long history of liberal institutions,
> laws and funds designed to support and defend independent journalism."_

But DigitalOcean is a US company... why not choose a local Dutch provider?

~~~
linkregister
DigitalOcean has an established API, pricing model, and name recognition.

Foreign subsidiaries of US companies are much less vulnerable to subpoena than
domestic subsidiaries.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/faulty-logic-heart-
mic...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/faulty-logic-heart-microsoft-
ireland-email-dispute)

~~~
CaveTech
Just because they're less vulnerable doesn't mean they're less willing to
fulfill overly broad requests or requests without merit. Do they have an open
stance on user protection?

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joesmo
Great. I'm glad they're taking the initiative and voting with their (would be)
money. That seems to be about the only way to "vote" these days. I'm really
surprised more companies aren't doing the same in the US and other countries
with equally bad privacy and software laws. I fully support leaving economies
in countries that have laws hostile to privacy and software (UK, US, etc.).
Hopefully more companies will do the same, enough to have an actual impact on
the economy as a whole and therefore potentially make the idiot lawmakers
reverse their idiocy.

~~~
mikegioia
It's not so easy to move your servers to Europe from the US. Yes they may be
more private there and not subject to seizure, but the added latency would be
debilitating.

It might make sense for privacy apps or services but for the vast majority of
web applications these threats of surveillance aren't really worth the move.

~~~
stephengillie
It makes me wonder about the viability of a CDN system that's targeted at US
end users, but is located outside of the USA. CDN nodes could possibly be set
up in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal, Tijuana, Juarez, and Monterrey.
But that would still leave a huge gap where the USA's population density is
the greatest, in the states bordering WADC.

~~~
mikegioia
I think if you're going to do a CDN system like that, you might as well just
assume any CDN can be compromised. I would structure it where the data "nut"
is in The Netherlands, and there are CDN servers everywhere caching pages with
various TTLs. If you're TTL was low enough (like 5 minutes) you could lose a
CDN and only have a fraction of your data seized.

It definitely runs the risk that a CDN isn't just seized but "bugged".

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vidarh
As much as I'd love this to have an impact, the cynic in me thinks that from
the point of view of the UK government, this is 3 companies of no
significance, so why would they care?

It will take some much heavier-weight businesses before the government will
even be interested in listening.

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jacquesm
If you really worry about this sort of thing do _not_ move your data to a
subsidiary of a US company. Then you might as well leave the data in the US or
the UK.

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higherpurpose
I wish more French companies did the same after the recently passed
surveillance law. But even those that promised they would do it like OVH,
changed their minds after the law passed.

~~~
nameiscarl
Yes, a big disappointment.

As the silence of the ISPs.

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youngtaff
This is about a 'non-story' as you can get…

…three companies non of whom seem to have more than ten employees leaving the
UK!

