Can HN suggest a good country to trust for hosting servers (if there is such a thing)?
EDIT: I just noticed RyanZAG put together a map for crowdsourcing unsafe hosting countries.
EDIT: I just noticed RyanZAG put together a map for crowdsourcing unsafe hosting countries.
If you had to, I'd imagine the best idea would be to do some multi-party computation/Byzantine system where you place nodes in mutually antagonistic jurisdictions. This doesn't help for email though, since they mail still has to go to one box first.
I've heard KDE devs recommend Switzerland.
But in general it's kind of a quandary. You'd want hosting in a strong nation so that the U.S. doesn't simply use a black bag operation to force-collect the server hardware, but nations that are strong and opposed to the U.S. are undoubtedly being extensively monitored by NSA.
Really it all depends on the threat model you're trying to defend against. If you end up with "You can trust me, I'm not from the government" you're already screwed.
Can you/somebody kindly recommend me a server I can host? I have been looking for a server to host, and I have to admit that I am yet to find company in a safe country which has strong privacy ethics like Lavabit had?
Norway is implementing the EU "Data retention Directive", 2006/24/EC.
While I don't know the exact specifics, it were recently opened for private parties to conduct piracy investigations on behalf of the media industry. I don't imagine they were granted powers in regard to gathering information, I think it's more in regards of keeping/storing it.
Including against one of the members of parliament (Berge Furre) tasked to investigate their abuses while he was investigating them (as part of the Lund commission).
While it's been a while since the last revelations and perhaps they've gotten better, keep in mind that for about 4 decades the official story was that the members of the various predominantly left wing groups that alleged illegal surveillance were all just paranoid and delusional. Then it was revealed that not only were they right - the surveillance was in many ways substantially worse than they thought.
And what they thought was pretty bad. I personally know someone who was followed to and from work every day (he was a member of the communist party, and his route to work took him past the then Soviet embassy), as well as someone who was more than once taunted by high ranking members of PST who gave him details about his private conversations at home with his wife to make it clear they listened to everything he did.
In other words, while Norway might seem "safe" now, I'd be cautious given our relatively recent past history combined with the very cozy relationship between Norway and the US.