Network World: Back Spin: The need (or not) for data havens

Did you read Network World's Wider Net article a few weeks ago,"Selling bunker mentality to IT shops"? The story concerns a slightly eccentric couple, Don and Charlene Zwonitzer, who purchased a 1960s-era Atlas E Missile Silo and converted it "into home sweet home - and eventually they hope, a modern-day computer disaster-recovery facility

The idea makes a lot of sense.This building is 20,000 square feet, has 2-foot-thick walls and ceilings constructed from 139,000 cubic yards of reinforced concrete and 27,840 tons of structural steel, and can withstand a 1-megaton blast up to 1.6 miles away Sounds really cozy and for a disaster-recovery facility, highly sensible.

Not that setting up such a service is easy. A company called Underground secure Data Center Operations (USDCO) opened its subterranean doors in July 2001 in a disused gypsum mine near Grand Rapids, Mien. It seems local zoning laws subsequently conspired to shut down the company sometime in 2003. Curiously, despite a lot of positive press when USDCO opened (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 6461), its passing was barely noticed.

Of course, weVe talking about facilities on U.S.soil. While they might be disaster-proof, they wouldn't meet the criteria for organizations that would like both disaster resistance and real privacy.

For that kind of service,you'll have to go to somewhere like Sealand.Sealand is a reclaimed World War II British artificial island fortress a few miles off the English coast.With a surface area roughly equal to that of a basketball court, Sealand is a real country complete with passports, stamps and all the trappings of sovereignty

Sealand's history is an extraordinary story of brave, but loosely wrapped people. Roy Bates, the "crown prince'Of Sealand,sailed out to the platform in 1966 and claimed it as an independent nation.The British government wasn't too keen on this and tried to kick the Bates Royal Family off the platform, but the law.it turns out, was on the side of Crown Prince Roy.

Sealand's independence was upheld in a 1968 British court decision on the grounds that the structure, called Rough's Tower, was in international waters and thus did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the U.K.According the official Sealand home page (www.sealandgov.com), this judgment "gave birth to Sealand's national motto of 'E Mare Libertas,' or'From the Sea, Freedom.'"

It is from this platform that HavenCo.a data warehousing operation registered in Anguilla, operates. HavenCo boasts "Unsurpassed physical security from the world" and immunity from "government subpoenas [as well as] search and seizures of equipment and data."

So if you want to store your data somewhere that's potentially as physical!) and legally secure as can be, then it looks like HavenCo might be the place.

HavenCo says:"Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents, libel, restrictions on political speech, non-disclosure agreements, cryptography restrictions on maintaining customer records, tax or mandatory licensing, [Digital Millennium Copyright Act], music sharing services, or other issues; child pornography is the only content explicitly prohibited." HavenCo also prohibits spamming.

So running non-regulated gambling operations, money laundering, and all sorts of interesting activities could be legally, by Sealand's laws, going on.

This raises interesting issues forSealand and HavenCo should any major governments take objection to what HavenCo's customers might be up to. I'm wondering to what extent should Sealand's, and therefore HavenCo's, rights be protected?

Does the world need safe data havens? Is it consistent with our need for increased security in the face of terrorism that such places should exist, or is our commitment to democracy so profound that we recognize Sealand's sovereignty?

Let's hear your opinion at backspin@gibbs.com.