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And they will go where? To the Netherlands or Sweden? EU regulation applies there. They would have to go to Seychelles or Panama, but their servers would obviou

And they will go where? To the Netherlands or Sweden? EU regulation applies there. They would have to go to Seychelles or Panama, but their servers would obviously still have to be elsewhere. Switzerland would be useless if it can't remain a safe haven.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
McDyver 1y ago
> "This revision attempts to implement something that has been deemed illegal in the EU and the United States. The only country in Europe with a roughly equivalent law is Russia," said Yen. They can go anywhere in Europe, since that type of surveillance seems to be illegal
- mrweasel 1y ago
  The issue is that countries may not care. The Danish government famously refuses to comply with EU verdicts that makes logging all phone calls and spying on text messages illegal. The Danish supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights have agreed with the government that "it's fine" in a "please think of the children"-moment.
  - codethief 1y ago
    That's outrageous. Would you have a source for this?
    - mrweasel 1y ago
      There was a whole special interest group set up to handle the law suites: https://ulovliglogning.dk/ https://ulovliglogning.dk/ all the law suites are on their page, but in Danish. One of the previous ministers of justice flat said he didn't care, as long as it help catch "the bad guys". This a guy who was the leader of the Conservatives. A party that brands itself as the party of law and justice, except when they don't like the verdicts apparently. You can also read about the reaction to the verdict in 2017 (again in Danish): https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-telelogning-den-er-klart-ulovlig-og-skal-skrottes https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-te... where the EU deems the Danish logging unlawful, and the police and the government reacts by ignoring the verdict and wanting even more logging. There is a bunch of followup and related links at the bottom. The site is a tech news site owned by the Danish Engineers Union. There's a Wikipedia page on what is being logged and retained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark It's somewhere between an over-interpretation of EU rules and a misunderstand of the usefulness of the collected data, but the end result is that every single person in Denmark is basically logged and tracked 24/7, unless they go completely offline.
      - codethief 1y ago
        Thanks so much!
        jeroenhd 1y ago
        Should be noted that Denmark is not the only country that weasels its way around bans on mass surveillance like that. Take Belgium, which took the "mass surveillance by default is illegal" and introduced a law that forced mass surveillance in areas that exceeded a certain legal threshold, designed specifically to include every single town in Belgium except for some tiny town where almost nobody lives. Other European countries have applied similar workarounds. They're all pretty much dead the moment they hit the courts, but as long as the public doesn't know and nobody bothers to start a lawsuit, the mass surveillance continues. "Data retention", as the industry calls it, is still active far and wide across Europe. Some countries retain said data for days at most, others for years.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    That seems to be a contradiction. If the courts (the body tasked with deciding what is and isn't illegal) agree with the government than by definition its not illegal.
mrweasel 1y ago
Norway has also been a popular destination for these types of services.
- speedgoose 1y ago
  If someone knows a Norwegian datacentre offering colocation, that has no connection to USA, please let me know.
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    I have no experience with them, so not a recommendation, but perhaps https://greenmountain.no https://greenmountain.no?
    - speedgoose 1y ago
      I somehow missed them. Thanks for the information. I’m afraid that the lack of public prices and an invitation to contact their salesman means it’s as expensive as it could be, but I’m sure Proton can afford.
      - mrweasel 1y ago
        Having worked in the hosting and colo business in Scandinavia, it's normally not cheap. It's been a few years, but you're starting around €500 per month (in 2016 I think we could get you started at €350) and frequently you'll need to take at least a quarter of a rack. Most hosting companies doesn't even really want colocation anymore, it's sort a niche product.
      - immibis 1y ago
        That's normal for colocation. It's not a jellybean service. It's something you have to individually negotiate with your supplier. We've been spoiled by being able to rent virtual servers that are all the same within one provider. Colocation is not all the same. ("Jellybean" is what electronics people call basic parts that are commodities, as opposed to, say, highly specialized integrated circuits. Some say it comes from when electronic part stores would have them in jellybean jars. You could just grab one out of the jar because the individual differences didn't really matter.) There are some places that have jellybean colocation offers (e.g. Hetzner does - notice their normal business is jellybean servers and they run their own data centers, so it looks like a no-brainer to fit colocation into that business model), but it only covers a small portion of colocation possibilities. But typically colocation is just one of those products where every deal is fully custom. That's just how it is. So you have to buy enough of the product to make it worth the salesman's and engineer's time, meaning at least a couple hundred dollars a month worth. By the way, the same is true for business internet access. If you pay the cheapest price for internet (as every residential user does), you get the same basic service as everyone else. But if you're willing to spedn enough money, your ISP will negotiate with you. Though I hear it sometimes takes some prodding to get past the "residential area == ordinary residential connection" assumption (and in many cases their network may not support certain upgrades). And it's true for business transactions in general. You want five screws, grab the best match off the shelf. You want five million screws, we'll make them to your exact specifications boss. (Also related: If you owe the bank a hundred billion dollars, the bank has a problem.)
petre 1y ago
Lichtenstein is closer and uses the CHF.
- sealeck 1y ago
  But is an absolute monarchy (e.g. non-independent judiciary).
  - LAC-Tech 1y ago
    I feel like you need to complete this thought. Australia has an independent judiciary, and look what they did to tech privacy. So I'm not seeing how it follows that an absolute monarchy is a hindrance.
    - sealeck 1y ago
      This is very specious reasoning. At least in Australia if you have a legal problem there is a full court system set up that can help you – Liechstenstein is basically just a state owned by a single man attached to a bank (LGT) owned by the same man.
      - LAC-Tech 1y ago
        Australia's "full court system" completely failed to stop "Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018", where by people can be compelled to install security backdoors at the behest of law enforcement. It looks like Prince Hans-Adams is much more able to protect peoples civil liberties than Australias westminster system.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    But it isn't. To quote wikipedia: "Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy". It is probably as close as you get though in modern europe.
    - sealeck 1y ago
miohtama 1y ago
Sweden, having their legacy in social democracy and more state control, hates privacy https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangerous-approach-experts-urge-the-swedish-parliament-to-reject-the-encryption-backdoor-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangero... It was also Swedish EU commissioner who wants to ban end-to-end encrypted chats and brought various proposals to the EU for this.
- maronato 1y ago
  What does social democracy have to do with hating privacy? The UK, US, Australia, and other capitalist flagships are all trying to do the same. Not to mention the Patriot Act.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    "Crony capitalist", it's not actual capitalism when the government has its fingers and regulatioms in everyone's finances.
  - globalnode 1y ago
    I guess the human temptation to want to know what people are saying behind your back goes beyond political/economic systems.
  - mantas 1y ago
    Social democracy is also capitalism. I’d rather word that differently. High-trust societies with little expectation of privacy and valuing community tend to do well with social democracy. Otherwise people end up abusing the system and it’s hard to catch them if privacy trumps community needs. Here in ex-USSR country people are very pro privacy and individualist. At the same time we try to copy a lot of Nordic stuff from our neighbors. It’s a shitshow how those cultures mesh. A lot of welfare abuse, hiding beyond muh privacy to avoid scrutinity.
  - odiroot 1y ago
hammock 1y ago
What happened to the ideas of offshore data centers and seasteading and pirate radio? Is it time to bring those back (again)?
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  only musk can save datacenters from reaches of earths governments. by transporting every cargo to USA for thorough inspection before flight.
  - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    Isn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? The problem would be all the debris up there. Maybe destroying one satellite would destroy them all.
    - Calwestjobs 1y ago
      Is not changing BGP route cheaper than taking down a satanlite ? Sorry, satellite.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Isn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? Probably not for Starlink. You’ve got mass-manufactured satellites in a constellation launched on a reüsable, profitable platform on one hand. And on the other hand you have experimental expendable ASAT weapons.
      - overfeed 1y ago
        How much does it cost to launch ball bearings into an intersecting orbit? They are even cheaper to mass-manufacture. The anti-satellite side has a budget hundreds to thousands of times cheaper, based on average ball bearings to satellite density in orbit, with a decent spread and multiple orbit intersections per day.
        1y ago
devwastaken 1y ago
Mullvad operates out of Sweden. Unlike proton, mullvad doesnt have to respond to court orders. proton gives up user info thousands a year its right on their transparency page.
- Batman8675309 1y ago
  Proton isn’t giving up VPN users. It’s giving up mail users. There’s a huge legal difference.
- immibis 1y ago
  All entities with known physical addresses have to respond to court orders, or men with guns will break into those addresses and kidnap whoever is supposed to have responded.
- KomoD 1y ago
  Correction:they do in fact have to respond to court orders, but they can't give any info as they simply do not have it.
  - ignoramous 1y ago
    Mullvad stores account (kyc) + payment information in line with Swedish tax laws for (I think) 7 years. What Mullvad apparently don't have are data-plane logs. But then, surveillance laws mandate forceful & secret compliance in certain cases (Mullvad may be exempt but who knows: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290)
    - LMYahooTFY 1y ago
      Doesn't Mullvad accept cash without identifying information?
      - _t9ow 1y ago
        Yes, they do. They accept Monero too.
Aeyxen 1y ago
If privacy service providers have to keep logs anywhere, they lose all technical credibility—doesn't matter if you're registered in Panama, the Netherlands, or Mars. Perhaps, we should design systems where compliance is impossible and data simply doesn’t exist by default.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

McDyver 1y ago

> "This revision attempts to implement something that has been deemed illegal in the EU and the United States. The only country in Europe with a roughly equivalent law is Russia," said Yen. They can go anywhere in Europe, since that type of surveillance seems to be illegal

mrweasel 1y ago
The issue is that countries may not care. The Danish government famously refuses to comply with EU verdicts that makes logging all phone calls and spying on text messages illegal. The Danish supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights have agreed with the government that "it's fine" in a "please think of the children"-moment.
- codethief 1y ago
  That's outrageous. Would you have a source for this?
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    There was a whole special interest group set up to handle the law suites: https://ulovliglogning.dk/ https://ulovliglogning.dk/ all the law suites are on their page, but in Danish. One of the previous ministers of justice flat said he didn't care, as long as it help catch "the bad guys". This a guy who was the leader of the Conservatives. A party that brands itself as the party of law and justice, except when they don't like the verdicts apparently. You can also read about the reaction to the verdict in 2017 (again in Danish): https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-telelogning-den-er-klart-ulovlig-og-skal-skrottes https://www.version2.dk/artikel/bombe-under-ti-aars-dansk-te... where the EU deems the Danish logging unlawful, and the police and the government reacts by ignoring the verdict and wanting even more logging. There is a bunch of followup and related links at the bottom. The site is a tech news site owned by the Danish Engineers Union. There's a Wikipedia page on what is being logged and retained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#Denmark It's somewhere between an over-interpretation of EU rules and a misunderstand of the usefulness of the collected data, but the end result is that every single person in Denmark is basically logged and tracked 24/7, unless they go completely offline.
    - codethief 1y ago
      Thanks so much!
      - jeroenhd 1y ago
        Should be noted that Denmark is not the only country that weasels its way around bans on mass surveillance like that. Take Belgium, which took the "mass surveillance by default is illegal" and introduced a law that forced mass surveillance in areas that exceeded a certain legal threshold, designed specifically to include every single town in Belgium except for some tiny town where almost nobody lives. Other European countries have applied similar workarounds. They're all pretty much dead the moment they hit the courts, but as long as the public doesn't know and nobody bothers to start a lawsuit, the mass surveillance continues. "Data retention", as the industry calls it, is still active far and wide across Europe. Some countries retain said data for days at most, others for years.
- bawolff 1y ago
  That seems to be a contradiction. If the courts (the body tasked with deciding what is and isn't illegal) agree with the government than by definition its not illegal.

mrweasel 1y ago

Norway has also been a popular destination for these types of services.

speedgoose 1y ago
If someone knows a Norwegian datacentre offering colocation, that has no connection to USA, please let me know.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  I have no experience with them, so not a recommendation, but perhaps https://greenmountain.no https://greenmountain.no?
  - speedgoose 1y ago
    I somehow missed them. Thanks for the information. I’m afraid that the lack of public prices and an invitation to contact their salesman means it’s as expensive as it could be, but I’m sure Proton can afford.
    - mrweasel 1y ago
      Having worked in the hosting and colo business in Scandinavia, it's normally not cheap. It's been a few years, but you're starting around €500 per month (in 2016 I think we could get you started at €350) and frequently you'll need to take at least a quarter of a rack. Most hosting companies doesn't even really want colocation anymore, it's sort a niche product.
    - immibis 1y ago
      That's normal for colocation. It's not a jellybean service. It's something you have to individually negotiate with your supplier. We've been spoiled by being able to rent virtual servers that are all the same within one provider. Colocation is not all the same. ("Jellybean" is what electronics people call basic parts that are commodities, as opposed to, say, highly specialized integrated circuits. Some say it comes from when electronic part stores would have them in jellybean jars. You could just grab one out of the jar because the individual differences didn't really matter.) There are some places that have jellybean colocation offers (e.g. Hetzner does - notice their normal business is jellybean servers and they run their own data centers, so it looks like a no-brainer to fit colocation into that business model), but it only covers a small portion of colocation possibilities. But typically colocation is just one of those products where every deal is fully custom. That's just how it is. So you have to buy enough of the product to make it worth the salesman's and engineer's time, meaning at least a couple hundred dollars a month worth. By the way, the same is true for business internet access. If you pay the cheapest price for internet (as every residential user does), you get the same basic service as everyone else. But if you're willing to spedn enough money, your ISP will negotiate with you. Though I hear it sometimes takes some prodding to get past the "residential area == ordinary residential connection" assumption (and in many cases their network may not support certain upgrades). And it's true for business transactions in general. You want five screws, grab the best match off the shelf. You want five million screws, we'll make them to your exact specifications boss. (Also related: If you owe the bank a hundred billion dollars, the bank has a problem.)

petre 1y ago

Lichtenstein is closer and uses the CHF.

sealeck 1y ago
But is an absolute monarchy (e.g. non-independent judiciary).
- LAC-Tech 1y ago
  I feel like you need to complete this thought. Australia has an independent judiciary, and look what they did to tech privacy. So I'm not seeing how it follows that an absolute monarchy is a hindrance.
  - sealeck 1y ago
    This is very specious reasoning. At least in Australia if you have a legal problem there is a full court system set up that can help you – Liechstenstein is basically just a state owned by a single man attached to a bank (LGT) owned by the same man.
    - LAC-Tech 1y ago
      Australia's "full court system" completely failed to stop "Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018", where by people can be compelled to install security backdoors at the behest of law enforcement. It looks like Prince Hans-Adams is much more able to protect peoples civil liberties than Australias westminster system.
- bawolff 1y ago
  But it isn't. To quote wikipedia: "Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy". It is probably as close as you get though in modern europe.
  - sealeck 1y ago

miohtama 1y ago

Sweden, having their legacy in social democracy and more state control, hates privacy https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangerous-approach-experts-urge-the-swedish-parliament-to-reject-the-encryption-backdoor-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/a-dangero... It was also Swedish EU commissioner who wants to ban end-to-end encrypted chats and brought various proposals to the EU for this.

maronato 1y ago
What does social democracy have to do with hating privacy? The UK, US, Australia, and other capitalist flagships are all trying to do the same. Not to mention the Patriot Act.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  "Crony capitalist", it's not actual capitalism when the government has its fingers and regulatioms in everyone's finances.
- globalnode 1y ago
  I guess the human temptation to want to know what people are saying behind your back goes beyond political/economic systems.
- mantas 1y ago
  Social democracy is also capitalism. I’d rather word that differently. High-trust societies with little expectation of privacy and valuing community tend to do well with social democracy. Otherwise people end up abusing the system and it’s hard to catch them if privacy trumps community needs. Here in ex-USSR country people are very pro privacy and individualist. At the same time we try to copy a lot of Nordic stuff from our neighbors. It’s a shitshow how those cultures mesh. A lot of welfare abuse, hiding beyond muh privacy to avoid scrutinity.
- odiroot 1y ago

hammock 1y ago

What happened to the ideas of offshore data centers and seasteading and pirate radio? Is it time to bring those back (again)?

Calwestjobs 1y ago
only musk can save datacenters from reaches of earths governments. by transporting every cargo to USA for thorough inspection before flight.
- catlikesshrimp 1y ago
  Isn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? The problem would be all the debris up there. Maybe destroying one satellite would destroy them all.
  - Calwestjobs 1y ago
    Is not changing BGP route cheaper than taking down a satanlite ? Sorry, satellite.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Isn't the cost of taking down a satellite lower than putting it up? Probably not for Starlink. You’ve got mass-manufactured satellites in a constellation launched on a reüsable, profitable platform on one hand. And on the other hand you have experimental expendable ASAT weapons.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      How much does it cost to launch ball bearings into an intersecting orbit? They are even cheaper to mass-manufacture. The anti-satellite side has a budget hundreds to thousands of times cheaper, based on average ball bearings to satellite density in orbit, with a decent spread and multiple orbit intersections per day.
      - 1y ago

devwastaken 1y ago

Mullvad operates out of Sweden. Unlike proton, mullvad doesnt have to respond to court orders. proton gives up user info thousands a year its right on their transparency page.

Batman8675309 1y ago
Proton isn’t giving up VPN users. It’s giving up mail users. There’s a huge legal difference.
immibis 1y ago
All entities with known physical addresses have to respond to court orders, or men with guns will break into those addresses and kidnap whoever is supposed to have responded.
KomoD 1y ago
Correction:they do in fact have to respond to court orders, but they can't give any info as they simply do not have it.
- ignoramous 1y ago
  Mullvad stores account (kyc) + payment information in line with Swedish tax laws for (I think) 7 years. What Mullvad apparently don't have are data-plane logs. But then, surveillance laws mandate forceful & secret compliance in certain cases (Mullvad may be exempt but who knows: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018290)
  - LMYahooTFY 1y ago
    Doesn't Mullvad accept cash without identifying information?
    - _t9ow 1y ago
      Yes, they do. They accept Monero too.

Aeyxen 1y ago

If privacy service providers have to keep logs anywhere, they lose all technical credibility—doesn't matter if you're registered in Panama, the Netherlands, or Mars. Perhaps, we should design systems where compliance is impossible and data simply doesn’t exist by default.