The Dangers of Caribbean Data Havens
From Bruce Sterling in "Islands in the Net" to various reports of data havens and Internet services being set up by actual people, there has been much speculation about using Caribbean islands for data havens.
But the infrastructure has been lacking. Low-bandwidth inter-island links. And now yet another huge hurricane is bearing down on the Lesser Antilles, heading directly for Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic). "Outages" lasting days or weeks after these islands get torn up every few years will not go too well with international commerce. Some fixes may help: * higher-bandwidth connections, e.g., undersea fiber. * satellites as primary or secondary connections * more secure on-island facilities, designed to maintain contact with satellites or fibers even with a Force 4 hurricane direct hit. The "regulatory arbitrage" aspects still make using the Islands advantageous (though they can be buffeted by political storms as well as physical ones). At least two current or past Cypherpunks are living in the Islands and working on some schemes. Something to think about. Personally, I think a distributed system based on crypto is a more robust approach, the "Libertaria in Cyberspace" view I've talked about. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Mon, 4 Sep 1995, tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote:
From Bruce Sterling in "Islands in the Net" to various reports of data havens and Internet services being set up by actual people, there has been much speculation about using Caribbean islands for data havens.
But the infrastructure has been lacking. Low-bandwidth inter-island links.
And now yet another huge hurricane is bearing down on the Lesser Antilles, heading directly for Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic).
"Outages" lasting days or weeks after these islands get torn up every few years will not go too well with international commerce.
Some fixes may help:
* higher-bandwidth connections, e.g., undersea fiber.
I don't have the citation handy, but I recall reading that Cable & Wireless has plans to link much of the region via undersea fiber over the next few years. I think it will be a simple North-South line -- Virgin Islands to Trinidad and Tobago or something like that, bypassing the Caymans, etc. The cost of the project is outweighed by the gains of eliminating these recurring weather-related outages. In fact, someone (Duncan?) may have posted the press release here over a year ago. Alan Westrope <awestrop@nyx10.cs.du.edu> __________/|-, <adwestro@ouray.cudenver.edu> (_) \|-' 2.6.2 public key: finger / servers PGP 0xB8359639: D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43 7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMEs3CVRRFMq4NZY5AQG1bQP/SpX3Q4oVYy1BZMALu5jCWOZPi9h1DCNn hJQ//+sRstVRhq3Alek2KHqLtO0lJdngD0RO/zrWwfy+49wFjgplyfSpwlVMFPh/ DrUxZcl3yRkfzTt+4pJtrAjuKGz6uKtbMnZ5NlCI19K9csqt2z4Di93nGwQYDG12 RccfMnhsT6Y= =Bcpk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Mon, 4 Sep 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
From Bruce Sterling in "Islands in the Net" to various reports of data havens and Internet services being set up by actual people, there has been much speculation about using Caribbean islands for data havens.
But the infrastructure has been lacking. Low-bandwidth inter-island links. [...] Personally, I think a distributed system based on crypto is a more robust approach, the "Libertaria in Cyberspace" view I've talked about.
For legal purposes, perhaps, set up shop on the Islands. Then have a site somewhere else -- backup of your corporate system, nothing more. And, of course, a net connection -- all for redundancy's sake. If your Euro/American site is merely a mirror of a legal site in another country, and you're the same organization, would it be legal? Hmmmm... this all still needs work... Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu> (410)494-3072 Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/ You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.
participants (3)
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adwestro＠ouray.cudenver.edu -
Jon Lasser -
tcmay＠got.net