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Would splitting the data in half work?

I mean literally cutting the data sent into two pieces and each piece entering a different database server in a different country. Then, when requested, pulling both pieces and sending them to users who patch them together with client side script...?

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So, basically a RAID array? You'd have to have a fair amount of redundancy, to make sure that if your Dystopiastan server gets taken down, your servers in Freedomia and Libertania have enough data to continue serving your users. (And yet you can't have so much redundancy that a single country could rebuild your database if they take enough servers.)

Not to mention, latency issues would be a problem.

There has been some academic work on this (CIDR'05), but I'm not sure if it has been used in practice.

http://ilpubs.stanford.edu/659/

Thanks, printed it off, will try to read on the train.

Sounds like a good use case for Instapaper :P

Might not want the FBI to know he read the article if they come back for a "followup visit"

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