HavenCo, on the quasi-maybe-might-be independent state of Sealand, is the first real-life attempt at a data haven state (as opposed to just setting up shop on some Caribbean island with loose accounting laws). Is there a (non-)place for such data havens, and how does sovereignty, whether earth-bound or virtual, play in all this?

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #1 of 44: mz (smz) Fri 16 Jun '00 (12:50 PM)

I hope everyone's read "Islands in the Net" by our friend Bruce Sterling.

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #2 of 44: (jabloe) Fri 16 Jun '00 (12:52 PM)

My take on Sealand/HavenCo itself is that it'll be more a marketing foray for the idea of data havens, than a practical co-lo facility; going by Simson Garfinkel's article in Wired, it'll be frightfully expensive compared to running some bunkered facility in Omaha (what with the elements, transportation headaches, and being hostage to only a few connectivity providers), and many of the technical features (e.g., a machine room they don't let customers bring equipment to, for security reasons) are readily duplicable.

So maybe it's the data haven meme their incubating... (sorry, "they're")

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #3 of 44: Raven (ravensclaw) Fri 16 Jun '00 (01:07 PM)

One kind of "non-place," which is still a physical fact, would be a satellite. Then any physical location on earth could be in a client relation to the extra-terrestial host.

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #4 of 44: Sir Nose (paparoach) Fri 16 Jun '00 (01:09 PM)

how about those pesky satellite uploads and downloads -- where would the dishes be?

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #5 of 44: Raven (ravensclaw) Fri 16 Jun '00 (01:32 PM)

I guess the dishes--which can be pretty small now, can't they?--could be whereever the people who participate in the sovereign entity (let's call it a virtual state) would be.

As for sovereignty it's interesting to note that Max Weber considered territory (in the physical sense) to be a defining characteristic of the modern state, i.e., you can't be a state without territory. He and others talk about the peculiar fact, then, that no other criterion except control over a population in a territory seems capable of defining a state, since references to population traits (e.g., ethnicity) as criteria of citiz, with most citizens living in various places on earth and participating in the body politic via various sorts of IT-enabled connections. The second, and I think crucial, issue would be what Weber called "legitimacy." The experience of legitimate authority, which all successful states have to some sufficient degree, is hard to define (though familiar to normally socialized individuals) and even harder to imagine separated from place, or territory. But I think it could be, though I don't know if this is the right place to go into it. Maybe if somebody has and objection or issue with what I've said so far, I could respond?

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #6 of 44: Rob Beltre (rbel) Fri 16 Jun '00 (01:33 PM)

To and anyone else on this topic: I've got to run now, but will return with greatest interest.

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #7 of 44: Frak Piece (the-negatory) Fri 16 Jun '00 (01:47 PM)

i'm seeing off-world data havens connected by here-they-are-now-they're gone mini satellite dishes as temporary autonomous zones that arise and the collapse as needs dictate.

surely the powers that am would be as helpless before a distributed and ever-changing dish network as they were and are when dealing with so-called pirate broadcasters with now you see em now you do china

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #8 of 44: Brian Frank (blue) Fri 16 Jun '00 (02:02 PM)

If citizens of the state don't have any place to live openly under their own laws, it seems to me it's not real

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #9 of 44: (jabloe) Fri 16 Jun '00 (02:30 PM)

There was an interesting discussion on NPR last week, re the Vatican, the Holy See, and the status of both; the former is kind of a state, i.e., a multi-acre portion of land within Italy (within Rome, specifically) that enjoys its own soverignty relative to Italy, while it's the latter that has observer status at the UN. IIRC, there were four criteria for bher states, and one other. There's a group lobbying to have the Holy See stripped of its particular observer status at the UN, wanting it instead to be accorded the same status as a religious body.

Eruditorium 138: Data Havens #10 of 44: Raven (ravensclaw) Fri 16 Jun '00 (04:02 PM)

Re Dennis: I was thinking similarly. Another example of the power of here-now, gone-later functionality is the ever-popular nuclear sub, which can launch a missile from who-knows-where. Of course, just as the nuclear sub has a home base, its country of origin, that remainint about virtual states is not that they would have no physical actuality, and hence no physical security issues; the point is, virtual states would have a qualitatively different physical actuality: physical, but not territorial.

Re Brian: Take American citizens today. They live under their own laws, and not only while they are physically inside U.S. territory. If they are outside the country, there are reciprocity agreements, etc., with many other (but not all) countries. So I could imagine a sovereign vight now to entering into agreements with virtual states. I think the first set of issues would be about how a VS might serve and control its own citizens. Can the VS police its own citizens and, hence, be able to enter into responsible agreements with other (territorial) nations regarding the permissible conduct of VS citizens? And could the VS protect its citizens through its own police functions, or would the VS have to effectively subcontract personal security functions to the territorial government where the VS citizen currently resided? I think a VS could do those things for and on behalf of its citizens, but only if the VS could be the legitimate government, i.e., "have legitimacy," for its citizenry. So we wouldn't be talking about a voluntary organization or such-like.

R say, Italy's. For example, here in the U.S. we have quite a few Native American tribes that are considered sovereign under law, but it's clearly a matter of the U.S. granting, with the implicit power to "ungrant," this sovereignty to the tribes, just as Italy somehow grants, or allows, sovereignty to the Vatican. In both cases (more so, I should think, in Italy), the "host" sovereigns would surely play hell if they tried to revoke such sovereignty, because their own citizenry wouldn't tolerate it. But that only goes to show who's really in charge of that kind of sovereignty, namely, the host, "real" sovereign. ***I fear, however, that these remarks might lead to interesting but, from my point of view, off-the-track issues. I'm sure a lot of people are passionate about sovereignty claims of the Vatican or, maybe even more so, of Native American tribes. My only point is, thinking about these claims to sovereignty may derail us from the question of whether and how it could be possible for a virtual state to exercise and embody the same kind of sovereignty that modern nation-states do (and I don't think either the Vatican or the Native American tribes exercise the same kind of sovereignty that modern nation-states do).