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Ask HN: Where to incorporate free of the US?
Its a hypothetical question, but answers could be helpful to others.
I'm a US citizen. Suppose that I wanted to form a company providing a service that the US government conceivably might want access to. What would be some advanced countries (internet access, stable government and society, free market) where I could form a company and be free of US government shennanigans?
- ethanazir 13y agoFor patent purposes: and perhaps English language I would look at New Zealand. I don't know the NZ view on National Security though. Singapore is a tax haven but looks real bad if your not very wealthy. Other options I ignored because of language issues or other uncertainties associated with countries like Venezuela.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThere aren't any. Your choices are: 1) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, they can hand you an order to give them access and you will face criminal sanctions if you fail to comply (i.e., the US itself), or 2) Countries where if the US government (particularly, the bits of it concerned with national security) wants access to your system, then either you will be the target of efforts to enlist your local government (if that government is one the US government thinks it can influence on the issue) or you become the target of the most powerful national security apparatus on the planet, without even the theoretical restraints that apply to that apparatus when it is operating domestically (i.e., everywhere that isn't the US.) Neither of these can be reasonably described as "free of US government shennanigans" in either the theoretical or the practical sense.
- BWStearns 13y agoYou could build the system so that giving information would be useless. This could be achieved (depending on the system) by having users host their data on their own computers, or by using crypto that would render you unable to provide the data (i.e. they have the private key and you cannot provide anything but the ciphertext). That said it would only be as effective as your implementation, so hire (or be) a good crypto guy!