8 ms·

If I understand this correctly this means a corporation could buy an independent island, store the data there and the US could not issue a warrant for informati

• nxzero 10y ago
  Microsoft is already researching this: http://natick.research.microsoft.com http://natick.research.microsoft.com
  • _audakel 10y ago
    any cost they would save on cooling would be lost on the incredibly expensive repairs process of getting the pods out of water or getting someone down there to fix it.
• marcoperaza 10y ago
  Buying a private island doesn't give you sovereignty over it. There's pretty much no land that's not part of a sovereign state these days. Further, the ruling is based on an interpretation of Congressional statute, not the Constitution. If American companies began moving their datacenters overseas en masse, Congress could just change the law.
  • hirsin 10y ago
    China's strategy of building their own islands seems to have been overruled as well, although I think the wrinkle of datacenter islands being in (previously?) international waters might be different enough. What happens if an underwater volcano goes off one night, and the next morning there's a new island in international waters? Presumably there wouldn't be any guano to fall prey to the US Guano Islands act [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act
    • CodeCube 10y ago
      wat ... It's crazy that this is a thing
    • marcoperaza 10y ago
      >China's strategy of building their own islands seems to have been overruled as well The rulings of international courts on such matters are irrelevant. Unless someone militarily stops them, or applies enough leverage elsewhere to convince them to stop, they will continue to build the islands and they continue to treat them as Chinese territory. The constant and aggressive American naval presence is the only thing stopping China from claiming the South China Sea as territorial waters.
      • hirsin 10y ago
        I think such rulings would be quite relevant to a private company with no military to speak of. While the Philippines or Japan can't quite tell China to shove off, they could certainly tell Microsoft or Google, and this ruling says that it's quite within their rights to do so.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
        • marcoperaza 10y ago
          Tell Google to shove off over what? I don't follow. Google building a island, claiming sovereignty, and hosting from there, as opposed to from some third country, would be without consequence regardless of whether their claim to sovereignty is deemed legitimate by some international court.
• GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  How many 'independent island's are out there for sale.
  • mcbits 10y ago
    There are probably several entire nation-states that you could buy with $100 billion, if you thought it would be a worthy investment.
• dublinben 10y ago
  The ruling in this case means that they do not even need to buy an independent island. They already have one, i.e. Ireland. This ruling just restored a little bit of sanity to the state of warrant procedure and US extraterritorial jurisdiction.
  • Twirrim 10y ago
    Comity still applies, so the Feds could ask Ireland to issue warrants to get whatever data they need.
  • astronautjones 10y ago
    But they don't need warrants to get information intercepted by Ireland - they freely trade information with their security services
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • yulaow 10y ago
      Yes, but first someone in Ireland has to get a warrant to allow someone t intercept those information. And with a very good reason that violates Ireland laws.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• venomsnake 10y ago
  It says foreign - which I think means under other sovereignty ... Basically the case was - there was no way MS to comply with US laws without breaking Ireland's ones. Also independent island could be turned into very dependent extremely fast by a team or two of Navy SEALs
  • dublinben 10y ago
    It doesn't even appear that this ruling took Ireland's laws into consideration. If this summary is accurate, then the appeals court merely ruled that a domestic warrant could not be used to retrieve foreign materials. The proper procedure here is to work through the State Department to get a warrant in Irish court. Presumably they didn't do that because they knew it would be futile, in light of Ireland's data protection laws.
• pc2g4d 10y ago
  No need for an independent island. That would be messy and require a political revolution, after all. Instead, just build a really, really, really big ship. Use solar arrays / wind turbines to generate electricity. Sensitive data resides on the ship, which then floats hither and thither through international waters. But maybe there's some Law of the Sea thing that makes that infeasible. (Not to mention the technical ridiculousness.)