PROJECT EMAILIA Reading Alex Schroeder's post "Swiss privacy law and mail providers" a while ago reminded me of one of my long-running ideas. There's a clear problem with "private" data storage providers which has surfaced all over the globe, which is that the local authorities always have the power to close them down, and therefore can force them to provide means of accessing user's data. In the case of end-to-end encrypted data, that extends to putting in software back doors that necessarily add vulnerabilities to hacking. Providers who want to stay in business also have the incentive, or sometimes even the legal obligation, to continue advertising the security of their service in spite of their compliance with the demands of their local authorities. gopher://alexschroeder.ch/0page/2021-08-04%20Swiss%20privacy%20law%20and%20mail%20providers As that post points out, it's difficult to simply find a 'nice' country that will respects internet privacy and security, and the reason is simply that as a whole the email/cloud/data-storage industry contributes an insignificant part of their GDP, compared with other industries that rely on relationships with countries such as the USA. Given that the affected email (etc.) companies can usually just lie like AS's ProtonMail example, and foreign operators are all in a similar environment anyway, it isn't even all that toxic to that industry. The answer is simple, just like the Cayman Islands are an offshore tax haven by not charging income tax, I propose the nation of Emailia, the world's first offshore data haven. Founded on the principle of storing data securely, Emailia basically operates as a regular email/cloud/data-storage provider outside the duristiction of any other government. Its primary business is secure storage of data, and it's the right of any citizen of Emailia to study the open-source software that runs it. Now this poses a whole lot of obvious problems, but having thought about this for many years I have come up with a lot of answers, even if perhaps not all of them are very good. WHERE IS EMAILIA? One option that I'll just get out of the way is to give Emailia no physical precence, but to exist illegally within the temporary portions of global computer hardware allocated within a distributed P2P network. I know there are a lot of projects along those lines, but I don't know how you'd actually solve many of the real-world requirements that people have for email/cloud data storage that way. In short, I can't see a way to make it work myself, but I'd be interested in suggestions. There's also the issue of laws potentially restricting the design and development of software to store encrypted data, as exist here in Australia, which mean the physical location of the developers and oferators is important as well, and potentially less easily hidden from state authorities compared with computer resources. The real-world answer as I see it is a physical presence in international waters, which has some prevident with some 'micronations' such as the 'Principality of Sealand'. To this end I'd propose buying a disused offshore oil rig (I checked and they are vaguely buy-able). They're likely not built to last like Sealand's old sea fort, so I'd expect maintenance would require a full-time team and cost a hell of a lot, but they can be pretty big, and have potential for harvesting wave energy for (somewhat ironically) environmentally-friendly power. https://sealandgov.org/ CONNECTIVITY Once you go off-shore there's an obvious problem with connecting to the internet. Here things have got much more promising now though thanks to all the global LEO internet services such as StarLink which, unlike old geo-stationary internet satellites, have to pass over lots of unoccupied areas of ocean. They're also supposed to be quick, though I guess competing with the speed of land-based services will always be a bit tricky. There is obviously a weakness in that the company providing the internet connection will be based in a "real" country, but at least laws forbidding the transmission of encrypted data would be harder to put into effect in many such countries. If just a quarter of the vapourware-like internet constellation projects actually get off the ground, then there might be some decent competition to choose from as well. MONEY Compared with the usual process for launching an internet service of: write software, register domain, rent VPS, it's fair to say this would be in a different class in terms of start-up costs. To this I don't really have much of an answer. You can't really get people to invest in a country, because by the very nature of the thing you're not legally obliged to pay them their share. Getting a loan would be even sillier. It would really have to rely on donations, or personal investment by a very wealthy future ruler of Emailia (in my plan this is of course me, after after I make my millions). If somehow enough money was found to set it all up, users would be citizens of Emalia, with corresponding rights to access to its services, and of course corresponding taxes. I don't think that needs any further explaination, except that handling funds would obviously have some complications which probably _wouldn't_ be entirely solved by making the official currency of Emailia the Bitcoin. DEFENCE Obviously while legal threats are avoided by going into international waters, now you've got to deal with physical threats. A defence force would be required, though careful choice of location should minimise the risk of attacks for the sake of taking hostages or stealing equipment. The data should be protected by encryption anyway, but a system for permanently disabling the facility in case of a take-over would be required t prevent monitoring of incoming data afterwards, ideally including the destruction of all stored data just to be sure. The advertised presence of such a sustem would hopefully deter any attackers aiming to obtain access to user data. Protecting against infiltration amongst the workforce would also be a difficult task only achieveable through particular system design. CONCLUSION Well I don't think it's going to happen, but it would be an interesting experiment. As usual I'm out of time for writing this so I'll just have to leave it there. - The Free Thinker.