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European Servers may be an option?

Jade

NodeServ
Verified Provider
As you all know the hype talk that is going around with what's going on with our nation and spying on citizens, do you guys think it's a good possibility European servers will become a better option vs going with US one's specifically for that reason?

Your thoughts, :)
 

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
No.

The European Union (EU) is its own batch of issues and vile rivalry to the US police state.

Some EU countries have enhanced modern privacy regulations.  Unsure if those truly mean much.

There aren't many European countries that are not EU members or actively trying to become members.

Getting out of this police state crap isn't anywhere near as easy as having your data escape to Europe.

Basically, a short list would be non US controlled offshore havens semi known for money stashing, purchased citizenship, and lucrative incorporations.  Those place continue to be reduced in numbers.
 

kaniini

Beware the bunny-rabbit!
Verified Provider
It doesn't matter where your data goes if the source endpoint is owned, like I said in another thread.  With point-and-click wiretapping, just assume both endpoints are owned.
 

ComputerTrophy

New Member
The European Union has better privacy laws than the United States. Human rights is much more powerful in the EU. You can purchase European Union servers based on where your clients are. If they're in the US area, stay with the US. If a large number of clients are in the EU and its surrounding countries, then buy an EU server.
 

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
The European Union has better privacy laws than the United States. Human rights is much more powerful in the EU. You can purchase European Union servers based on where your clients are. If they're in the US area, stay with the US. If a large number of clients are in the EU and its surrounding countries, then buy an EU server.
I agree European countries generally have better privacy laws.

Problem is, it just isn't that local country you have to contend with and that could be a problem.

Nearly all traffic aside from local peer exchange or that within the same network hits major peering points.  Those major peering points are almost certainly bugged.  Bugged by whom?  Well the undersea cables are tapped by the NSA as per recent forced disclosures.   The local peer points likely have UK buggery in Europe where traffic origin is from within Europe.   Germany and other countries are doing the same. 

In theory, you could be sniffed by 2 or more countries intelligence agencies routinely in Europe.

If you were the sysadmin for a big mega corporation, they by all means corporate communications should be housed within your business and all the data pipes tying remote locations in should be corporate tunnels that are highly encrypted (i.e. no end user config of anything and totally transparent to end users).   On top of that crypto pipe, might want to run another crypto tunnel session, different technology.

Providing a secure or safe spy-proof system to your customers ---there just isn't any way widely to do that.  You could accomplish that semi-effectively on a campus or city basis.  But, anyone using other carriers to get at their data would be likely feeding the spy monitoring.

This is a very complicated matter and highly specialized and limited use and range solutions are about the only way to solve this.  Plus end to end crypto and lots of house cleaning and auditing for leakage ongoing, time without end.
 
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Jade

NodeServ
Verified Provider
I agree European countries generally have better privacy laws.

Problem is, it just isn't that local country you have to contend with and that could be a problem.

Nearly all traffic aside from local peer exchange or that within the same network hits major peering points.  Those major peering points are almost certainly bugged.  Bugged by whom?  Well the undersea cables are tapped by the NSA as per recent forced disclosures.   The local peer points likely have UK buggery in Europe where traffic origin is from within Europe.   Germany and other countries are doing the same. 

In theory, you could be sniffed by 2 or more countries intelligence agencies routinely in Europe.

If you were the sysadmin for a big mega corporation, they by all means corporate communications should be housed within your business and all the data pipes tying remote locations in should be corporate tunnels that are highly encrypted (i.e. no end user config of anything and totally transparent to end users).   On top of that crypto pipe, might want to run another crypto tunnel session, different technology.

Providing a secure or safe spy-proof system to your customers ---there just isn't any way widely to do that.  You could accomplish that semi-effectively on a campus or city basis.  But, anyone using other carriers to get at their data would be likely feeding the spy monitoring.

This is a very complicated matter and highly specialized and limited use and range solutions are about the only way to solve this.  Plus end to end crypto and lots of house cleaning and auditing for leakage ongoing, time without end.
Great info :)!
 

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Mind you, there is tons of info from the recent Snowden alleged disclosures and the details of the various spy programs individually.

For each US program, you can bet counterparts abroad have a similar program.

When you start talking about exchanges like say LiNX,   the US is sniffing mass packets, the UK is sniffing packets, major telecoms going outside EU/US are being tapped by their regional super power plus potentially their own domestic government.

All of this totally ignores organized crime (since most of that is just the government outsourcing) and hackers (which are mixed lot of outsourcing and moderately bored cellar dwellers who probably will stop their behavior in near future when they find their ding dong, drugs, etc.).

Rule #1:   Clean up your DNS.   Work to make it not leak and tell on you.   Throw that in a big pool where you aggregate lots of users, so the data is essentially unidentifiable noise.

Rule #2:   All internet activity cannot originate or be identified originating at location where you are or lay your head down at night.  VPN (although I distrust them) and SSH tunnels (distrust them less than VPN).

Rule #3:  Your computer MUST not leak requests, data, etc. out to the internet.   Facilitate that with??? iptables maybe?  Hard annoying rules that force everything to your SSH tunnel.

Is that secure enough?  No.  It's a start and most of what I've done for a few years.  
 

blergh

New Member
Verified Provider
Rule #1:   Clean up your DNS.   Work to make it not leak and tell on you.   Throw that in a big pool where you aggregate lots of users, so the data is essentially unidentifiable noise.

Rule #2:   All internet activity cannot originate or be identified originating at location where you are or lay your head down at night.  VPN (although I distrust them) and SSH tunnels (distrust them less than VPN).

Rule #3:  Your computer MUST not leak requests, data, etc. out to the internet.   Facilitate that with??? iptables maybe?  Hard annoying rules that force everything to your SSH tunnel.

Is that secure enough?  No.  It's a start and most of what I've done for a few years.  
Aggregating it will not solve anything whatsoever, just make it easier to spot out anything odd. VPN might add some layer of security, but all in all these steps are useless, and if you are this paranoid you should perhaps just stop using the Internet as is. It's easier to just accept the fact that you/we are getting it in the butt, and use the Internet accordingly.
 

xCubex

New Member
If your hosting/website is nothing out of the ordinary, then they will have no reason to spy on you anyway. 
 
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