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Comment by onli | Hacker News Reader

Don't choose Germany. We may have strict privacy laws here, but we also have the BND cooperating with the NSA, tapping directly into the main internet nodes (Frankfurt). And don't forget that part of the method of the NSA is to use a mule inside the target company, which would be very easy in Germany given its status of being a wannabe ally of the USA and the longstanding sympathy of the german public for the USA.

And Germany has also laws which force every mail provider to install an access point to the German authorities and intelligence agencies. I am not sure if also a generic saas platform would have to do it, but it is quite possible.

Better pick Switzerland or Island.

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"And Germany has also laws which force every mail provider to install an access point to the German authorities and intelligence agencies. I am not sure if also a generic saas platform would have to do it, but it is quite possible."

Thanks for the heads up - as I said in the OP, it really is a difficult task. Those kind of laws are exactly what need to be avoided when choosing a country to host in. I don't believe that this kind of thing can be carried out in absolute silence though, so if a country is actively modifying and silencing hosts it's fairly likely that word of it will leak somewhere.

If I get a chance, I might try to put together a red/orange/green overview of known laws and practices in different countries that would affect hosting services there. Unless someone is already working on that and needs a hand?

Since there seems to be some interest, I put together a very simple map with a couple countries filled in at random with shaky data.

It's up on github, so hopefully everyone can submit pull requests with data and we can crowd source ourselves a very informative map.

https://github.com/Ryan-ZA/hosting_safety_map

EDIT: I also submitted a link to it on HN. Hopefully interested people will see it and can help out with data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182001

I was surprised to see Canada green on that map.

We have a great privacy commissioner ( http://www.priv.gc.ca/index_e.asp ) but the office holds no power so far as I can see, and the Canadian government has a pretty solid track record of being obsequiously cooperative with u.s. interests

Canada is green simply because nobody familiar with Canada's security politics and policies has chimed in yet and there does not seem to be any evidence of foul play that is visible from an outsider's perspective.

Cooperative with U.S. interests is generally assumed by almost any country - this map is more about the (hopeful) safety of your servers in data centers in different countries.

I think you can pretty much colour the Echelon Five Eyes countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) red right off the bat. If they don't have totally intrusive surveillance legislation yet they will have soon - New Zealand is currently trying to implement it.

Please do this! This would actually be very useful..

Please do. If there's anything I can do to help, reply to this comment as I don't have any contact info on my profile.

If you do that, could you send me a mail? I'd be interested.

It took me a while to understand that you probably mean Iceland.

I did - Island is german name. Happens from time to time that I mix languages.

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