Protecting floating datahavens?

[William Knowles]

On Thu, 15 Aug 1996, Douglas R. Floyd wrote:
  
> > On Thu, 15 Aug 1996, William Knowles wrote:
> >
> > Something that I thought would make an excellent data haven 
> > would be older offshore oil platforms, Their size would 
> > allow extended living periods, electrcity and communications 
> > are in place, They are generally built outside of the 
> > territorial waters of most countries to avoid any damage 
> > to the shorelines if oil spilled (possibility for becoming 
> > its own country?)
>
> How would this rig be defended?
> 
> Pirates still exist.  Even if you can give them something to 
> think about with a 30/06 bullet at their waterline, there are 
> always small countries who have navies that can be hired.  
> They may be small and defenseless compared to the US navy, 
> but against a basically unarmed oil rig, do have the ability 
> to sink the rig at their whim.

Now I don't claim to be a naval defence expert, But from what 
I do read of the dogeared copies of Jane's Defence Weekly, 
Would be to install three or four Phalanx Close-In Weapons 
Systems, The Phalanx is a radar guided 20mm Gatling gun spraying 
out 4500 rpm at a range of 1600 yards.  Quite perfect for downing 
a privately owned MiG-21, Exocet missles from pissed off French 
gunboats for storing Chirac's medical records and maybe keeping 
those pesky mercenaries from skydiving onboard.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there are literally all 
sorts of firepower for sale in the open markets, trolling in 
the alt.business newsgroups I have been able to find quite 
a few MiG's for sale, and there's a fellow in Finland that 
has a former Soviet 'Julliet Class' Diesel-Electric submarine 
and I understand he's taking offers.
 
Now this is a completely doable concept, and likely more realistic
than the Oceania project, Unfortunatly like all things, it comes
down to how much money you want to throw at it, I remember how 
many us on this list balked at Vince charging $500.00 for one
year on a Unix Shell account, I wonder what the market would 
bear for both a technologically and physically secure datahaven?

William Knowles
erehwon at c2.org


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