Ask HN: Where would you put a search engine server for max privacy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where would you put a search engine server for max privacy?

1 pointsova6 comments

Say you want to build a privacy-centric search engine that uses a novel advertising model (or at least not pay-per-click) that does not require tracking of users. Where would you want the server to be physically located? What else would be important (encryption standards)?

View on HN

Turn it around, if you don't keep any user identifiable data (including logs etc), then the jurisdiction where the servers are doesn't really matter.

That's what I was thinking. At the very least there will be NginX or Apache access logs with IP addresses and times -- but maybe simply purging this or not holding it would be fine to achieve the same privacy. However, makes it hard to prevent malicious actors from DDOS'ing and stuff without knowing at least that much, and users could use a VPN.

Searching based on hashes of the words is one improvement on the status quo that you could do. Hash every token in the documents, then when a user does a search it hashes the words in their query locally and sends that to the server. This reduces the information communicated to the server and reduces the value to an attacker that gets the logs.

I am concerned about FISA and FISC. Based on what I have read, they could, if they deemed necessary at any point down the line, coerce surveillance, and also issue a gag order so one could not even tell people about the coerced surveillance. Of course, this could be mitigated if one has servers outside the USA, but then access points within the USA would become the contact nodes. I just want to help restore the right to privacy, but if for some reason law enforcement finds a reason to demand logs, it gets murky fast. Currently weighing the potential ramifications. But if there were some way to screen unsavory topics out, it might all be alright.

Searching by hash, where the hash is locally generated and then sent to the server, avoids this sort of surveillance issue.

It doesn't stop the issue of forced changes to code that impair that local hashing, but it's detectable by the user. Server-side encryption/hashing isn't detectable by the user, and that's an important consideration in any secure system.

Best of luck with your project.

https://www.thebunker.net/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com