The World's Most Notorious Micronation Has the Secret to Protecting Your Data From the NSA
Randall Webmail
A decade ago, the Principality of Sealand tried to create a data haven—and failed spectacularly. Now it's trying again.
—By Thomas Stackpole
A few months ago, internet entrepreneur Avi Freedman received an unexpected email from a prince. A decade earlier, Freedman had been part of an effort to create a data haven—a safe place where information could be stashed far from the reach of prying eyes and nosy governments—on the world's smallest and most notorious micronation, Sealand, a 120-by-50-foot anti-aircraft platform seven miles off the British coast and 60 feet above the waters of the cold North Sea. Now Freedman's ex-partners, the self-proclaimed royal family of Sealand, wanted to try again.
Freedman said yes. HavenCo, the Sealand-based data haven that failed spectacularly a decade ago, relaunched this weekend. And this time, Freedman thinks it's going to work. HavenCo is offering customers total control over how secure their data is—and if used correctly, its technology could help internet users who want to avoid the National Security Agency's sweeping data dragnet.
To understand what HavenCo is trying now, it helps to understand how this all started. HavenCo's first iteration was intended as a kind of techno-utopia where the revolutionary potential of the internet could be protected. It was supposed to be a self-contained, hypersecure data fortress, with servers located on site in the middle of the North Sea. The company promised it would destroy its servers rather than ever reveal its clients' data. But like many dot-com-era schemes, its founders' fantastical vision overshot what the market, and their own capabilities, could bear. [SNIP]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/sealand-havenco-data-haven-pirate