This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always.

This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always..

-- Tom

 

It'll be used for trafficking child porn and drugs and the government will shut it down.

See: sealand.

 

We don't mention sealand.

However in all seriousness this article is a little sensationalized. I'll put my government cap on for a moment, if this ISP is going to operate inside the U.S there is only so much they can legally do to make it harder for customer information to leak. They can fight voluntary sending over information to government agencies, though in local and nation security matters a simple warrant and they will have to comply or risk being charged themselves. Limiting logging may help to a small degree, though they can be ordered to assist in additional investigations. Reading through the article it appears they will add a few more hoops an agency will have to go through to get them to comply though they will comply in the end. Taking that cap off, it’s still nice to see a company put privacy first in today’s cyber world, though can’t guarantee how long they will be able to pull it off with some of the proposed cyber security laws being discussed in congress. This ISP I hope sticks to their guns and hires an army of Lawyers, only time will tell.

 

It seems to me that the only way they can achieve their goals is to have their servers located in another country (like Panama) and distributed in other similar non-U.S. countries like Xerobank has (are they still operating?).

-- Tom

 

A horror story for the ages.

Being in another country won't do any good. Like I said, see sealand lol they had a great situation with their own government build around hteir business and it just couldn't work because you can't stand up to the US and its allies.

Maybe... somehow they will succeed by compromising a bit (sealand made no comprimises! lol) and I hope they do succeed.

 

It'll have to be a hell of a compromise (which, in the case of the U.S, will mean there will be very little left to promise users.). The U.S has this real nasty habit of making laws to get around things like this, and they're increasingly "in your face" about it. Unless you want to run TOR 24/7 and encrypt everything with the likes of Truecrypt, you're frankly running out of options. TOR really is only around still due to various governments using it themselves.

On the topic of Sealand, it had no hope of every staying alive to begin with.

 

Update: The creator Nicholas Merrill has set up a donation site here to help launch his ISP.

 

Sealand was all about hope. That's why it's so awful lol

It was the idealistic situation that focused so much on the implementation of what could have been the perfect privacy service that it completely forgot about the rest of the world.

 

Yes. I still use Xerobank and Cryptohippie. I have seen a few other services located in Panama too. But I think there was some kind of agreement with the U.S. concerning tax havens or something like that, to prevent people from hiding money there.

 

You mean there are actual U.S. government agencies that still use Tor?

 

Of course, but it's for the same reason that they "use" Facebook, Twitter and many other things. A lot of governments are on TOR, actually, the U.S, EU, Pakistan, India and Thailand, to name a few. TOR is a land of anarchy, it is not simply used by "whistleblowers". It's still very useful for operations. It's saving grace, again, is that they are using it.