Internet Archive preps Canadian safe haven to swerve Donald Trump It's something many Americans have talked about – moving to Canada to escape President Donald Trump – but now the Internet Archive is preparing to do just that. "On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," reads a blog post from the organization's founder, Brewster Kahle. "It was a …
First of all, I'm a huge fan of making lots of copies of stuff, and spreading them about the place, it's just common sense.
However I can't help thinking that this fear of Trump stuff is a bit silly. The US will still have rule of law, and the various Houses and courts will continue to play their parts.
Even if he says he's going to do things, there are ways that Governments work, and I wonder if he understands this.
In the context of DRM or DMCA, the Internet Archive might already be fragile, if some leader had a mind to play hardball. Or maybe the DMCA, if not already there, will receive a small amendment in an obscure subsection of a farm appropriations bill. I don't think the Internet Archive is overreacting at all.
yeah for sure it's over reaction, internet archive is already subject to existing laws whether it may be copyrights, porn or other things. Whether or not anyone has ever gone after them for such things I have no idea.
If they are going to move somewhere there have got to be better places to go than canada, which is what the 52nd or 53rd or something state?
That high PISA score would not prevent Canada to be very eager to please US administration. This reminds me an old joke circulating during the communist regime in my country of origin. We used to say USSR was not our friend, they were like a brother to us because you can choose your friend but you don't get to choose your big brother.
I deeply regret Trumps election. Not 'deplore' cause I think this, and her we-won in her campaigning when The Donald was on the ropes probably did her in. Hillary might have made a good prez but she sure sucked as a candidate.
But I don't appreciate the deep alarmisms, the what to do in a dictatorship (linked to in another post), the calls for resistance and civil disobedience. This popular vote vs electoral college thing is as stale as my socks - that's the US electoral process is set up for better or worse. The wrong man was chosen but it was done democratically. Let him govern and wait to see what comes out first. After all, not all of our countries have always been clever in our recent votes, neh? And Marine Le Pen has a good shot at scoring quite high this time.
I expect our PM, Trudeau, to swallow his pride and get along as he can with our biggest trading partner. If and when that _really_ goes against our principles and values, I also expect him to stand firm. But do so for pragmatic reasons not just to grandstand.
For now, let's see what comes out. 4 years of Trump may teach US voters that simplistic throw-the-bums-out populism, whether from Bernie or to the right, can be all smoke and mirrors. Ditto a not quite as hoped Brexit European negotiation outcome for UK voters.
I think the main reason for people like Trump and Farage winning is our relentless drive to out-shout each other in griping about how corrupt and incompetent our elected representatives are. Governing is not as easy as some think and electorates are fickle. Easy fixes have usually been done, what's left is either hard to do or hard to pass legislation for. Actual corruption? Throw them in jail but otherwise let them govern until the next election for fucks sake.
So long as laws are followed, sure. But the warrantless wiretapping that Bush started and Obama continued until it was leaked (and likely still continues in some form) show that they aren't always followed.
It may be an overreaction to do it NOW - if they were worried about this they should have done it as soon as Snowden's revelations went public.
Not sure I agree that Canada is necessarily a good location for the backup, given their participation in the Five Eyes spying. Switzerland seems a much better home for it.
You mean there weren't cases in history - even recent one - when democratic rules were bent to serve an autocratic regime? Russia? Turkey? Just to name a couple. Oh yes, there are houses, there are courts... And they started looking perfectly legit ones? Not saying Trump will go that far, I hope he won't, but it's not a good start.
It's not like the surveillance state was going wane under Clinton so I don't consider that a credible rationale. Extending DMCA or some such on the other hand seems plausible but that too has Clintonian ties. In the end, it's probably a reasonable move that should have been decided and implemented right around the primary if not before unless one really did think the country was going to 'feel the Johnson'.
As for Russia, I'd say it was never a real Democracy any more than other countries that even have the word Democratic in their name. It's kind of like saying they don't still have a command economy regardless of what they call it. After all, it's the only way they can keep the money going to the 'correct' people.
Only time will tell. However, it can't hurt to play it safe, so moving the archives is a good idea. It will remain to be seen whether Canada is far enough.
Meanwhile, here are some pointers on how to survive an autocracy. You never know.
True, there still is "rule of law". However, if you've been following the news here and elsewhere, much of what we take for granted on the internet is coming under fire, such as the big one: privacy. A rider on an obscure bill or even a big one like the budget and we'll be in deep crap land.
I'm surprised to find out that they weren't backed up in another locale. Keep the main base in SF probably isn't a good idea given the nature of earthquakes. So perhaps the good thing in this is they will have a site in another location "just in case".
May be that journalists have kind of discovered the value of the Wayback Machine the last few years, and have been using it again republican politicians who try to erase their past - like Mike Pence trying to whitewash campaign positions from when he ran for congress that we should defund fighting AIDS and put it towards conversion therapy to "cure" homosexuality.
Of course it can and has been used against democrats as well, but with Trump's open hatred of "the media" I'm sure he wouldn't mind taking away some of their tools if he could get away with it. I'm just not sure exactly how he could, unless he pushed some major changes to copyright law to severely curtail fair use exceptions (so they couldn't archive sites without permission)
The US will still have rule of law, and the various Houses and courts will continue to play their parts.
In theory, yes; but in recent years, the US has established a series of precedents and Catches-22 (?) that the feds routinely use to circumvent or ignore the Constitution. The schoolbooks say that we have laws and rights that are protected by checks and balances; but if the government as a whole chooses to ignore or abrogate them, what recourse is there?
Example: To challenge something in court in the US, you first have to prove that you have "standing;" i.e., that the action in question affects you, and that it has a potentially deleterious effect. Surveillance programs, watch lists, no-fly lists, data slurps, etc. are all highly classified and run under gag order. As a result, it's the rare person or organization that can prove standing. No standing, no legal challenge.
Example: Several laws grant extra-judicial powers and suspend habeas corpus in cases of "terrorism." Change the definition of terrorism to "actions in opposition to the government" and boom, free speech and due process are dim memories....things that we would like to tell our kids about, but won't dare to because of the secret surveillance. Remember, the word terrorism traces its roots to la terreur, which was a government program...
The UK is moving in the same direction; some would say that Blighty is at least as far down that road as the US. The Snooper's Charter, all-pervasive surveillance, "criminalized" photography, and other things that have been well-covered here in the Reg easily match or exceed the governmental paranoia in the US.
Not over reaction. DMCA etc. Even without Trump, USA is a bad place for anything like this.
Is there a mirror in Egypt for some strange reason? If so a bad choice.
Some bad locations:
USA, UK, North Korea, Most Middle East & North African, Other African, China, Iran, Russia.
" The US will still have rule of law, and the various Houses and courts will continue to play their parts."
This would be a Donald Trump White House, a DT-appointed Cabinet, republican-controlled Houses of Congress, and a Supreme Court to which he will appoint one, possibly a couple more Justices.
Yeah, don't necessarily count on it.
Laws can be changed.
You are forgetting Republicans have control of the Congress, Senate and the Presidency, hence no checks and balances.
The people who voted him POTUS cares nothing about the Internet other than may be,for watching porn.
Most of the conservatives like thyself, wants to control natural human activities like free speech and free choice and call everyone else philoshophically opposed to these controls, Liberals.
Liberal archives like the Internet Archive should not solely based only in such conservative country. Canads is good choice and I would also recommend creating one in Sweden, just in case Canda also gets the conservtive contamination from its Souther Neighbor.
Where do I sent the donation for this effort?
Laws are not a compass fixed on some far-off immutable point. They are nothing but a heavy blunt object ready to destroy anyone those wielding them don't like. Those weary of them do well to look not at what their letter says but who is currently enforcing them, and in that context this move makes perfect sense.
Just because republicans have control of the presidency and congress doesn't mean Trump is king. Obama had the same control his first two years, one of the things he did was Obamacare. That's going to be dismantled now by Trump. If he does something similar the majority of the country does not like it will be dismantled in 2020 when he loses re-election[*]
[*] I'm assuming that his negatives and unlikability that polls show can go only go higher after four years of daily exposure, especially if he turns right in his policies like Pence and Bannon are pushing, so unless the democrats run Hillary again pretty much anyone including the reanimated corpse of George McGovern will beat him...and the cycle will begin anew.
Besides, even conservative Supreme Court justices are no guarantee whatever laws they pass will be approved. Scalia was among the majority deciding that Bush's law against flag burning was unconstitutional back in 1989.
at least, that's what our National Anthem says. "Personally", I'd be inclined to put the backup of the Internet Archive (for which many many thumbs up) in a country that was not so friendly to the interests of the USA. I guess they're counting on us continuing to be friendly to the traditional values of the USA, rather than the new ones come January 2017.
If you check the List of destroyed libraries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries), Canadians make the list! Specifically Harper for the Library of Fisheries and Oceans. Only 6% of the collection survived.
I worked at one of the branches years ago. The quality of the science and engineering was incredible, and much of the materials we held didn't exist anywhere else. So much was lost...
The Internet Archives had better focus on the "lots" part of the phrase, as only two copies means you have none.
Many of the countries "not so friendly to the interests of the USA" also would not be so friendly to freedom of access to information. The US might present some issues surrounding privacy, but is hard to match for prickliness* about anything resembling press freedom, and that certainly would include the Internet Archive. The government, and litigation attorneys and clients, being what they are, moves to restrict access could be tied up in rule making and the courts longer than Trump will be President, even if he is reelected in 2020.
As an aside, it would be easier, legally, for the US intelligence community to collect IP address information from a service in Canada than from one in the US, although its use might be limited by treaties or side agreements to pretty much the same population in either case.
* Except, in the short term, by those upset by "fake news" on social media.
I'd like to point out that donations to the Internet Archive, which is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, are deductible (to the fullest extent allowed by law) from your US Federal Income taxes
Might be, but if the Internet Archive truly wants to escape any Trump related reach it's not enough to move the DATA abroad. The organisation itself will still be subject to US law and its leverage of whatever control you have over information. I've seen some proposed legal constructs to move data at arms length, but none of these have ever been tested in court so that's not something I would base a move on either..
The whole shebang, company et al, will have to extract itself from the US and move to Canada, at which point there will be issues with its charitable status under US law.
It was "landslide Donald", according to President-elect Pussygrabber. I'm thinking more of the future slow change in the landscape, mud volcano. Slow destruction is destructive nonetheless.
I wonder how she weighs in on the Donald Burger. But poppa Hilton and Donald may be bosom buddies.
She performed in an ad against McCain - McCain who seems rather tame compared to the turdbag supposedly elected.
I don't know about the Canadian wall being sufficient to protect all those northern assets against the US despicables. I'd say, make as many copies as possible; distribute shards everywhere; send beams of the archive/wikipedia into space where it might still survive post trumpschloss.
> McCain who seems rather tame
Well, that's just like, your opinion man.
McCain was crazy ass bonkers while trying to the presidency. "Bomb this and Bomb that (especially Russia and Iran)" and nothing except confused neocon soundbites. Basically the Clinton hard-on for war from the Repukes' side and not hidden under the leper's clothing of "Progressivism".
Gas!
good lord.
when there was actual talk about restricting networks over last 8 years the internet archive (whom I am a fan of) admin Brewster Kahle (heavy Dem party donor) did not freak out.
this seems to be purely drama.
with that being said maintaining a full (realtime if possible) copy elsewhere would be good idea.
> a full (realtime if possible) copy elsewhere ...
If your object is protection, then a real-time mirroring operation is probably not the correct strategy. After all, if some organization with hugely capable offensive IT attack capabilities were subtly to damage Copy 0, you wouldn't want that to be immediately mirrored in Copy 1. Unless there were many backups of both copies, of course. I have no idea what the resilience architecture of the Internet Archive might be, but creation of Copy 1 cannot make it worse, I think, so I've bunged them a few quid.
"I have no idea what the resilience architecture of the Internet Archive might be, but creation of Copy 1 cannot make it worse, I think, so I've bunged them a few quid."
Same here.
As for copies, how about that terrorist scum sucking piracy tool, Bitorrent? A special client so that millions of PCs each storing a few GB of "backup", with extra algorithms to make sure that each GB "block" is stored out to some multiple of clients with clients passing each other various chunks randomly so it's all moving arounf all over the world.
(only half joking)
I love the idea of multiple copies of Archive.Org, but let's be honest - Canada isn't exactly the home of free speech...
https://popehat.com/tag/canada/
(Popehat is a lawyerly site that spends a lot of time on free speech issues).
New Zealand, Japan, or Estonia might be more interesting choices...
I take it you said that last with your tongue firmly in cheek.
Both New Zealand & Japan can experience rather large earth quakes and also Tsunamis (although we have been lucky so far in that regard in New Zealand), so not the best locations to store a electronic backup. Estonia well, to close to another super power.
New Zealand's West Island (aka Australia) might be an option though.
5 Eyes is bad from the surveillance POV but in terms of ludicrous interpretations of surveillance results, I fear that Trumpland may turn out to be the worst of the five for the next 4 (or, God help us, 8) years. But I do agree that *outside* 5 Eyes would be better. Switzerland comes to mind.
apparently moving the archive to Canada (or anywhere else on-planet) would make it easier for the three-letter agencies in the US to slurp metadata (and content!) . . . i believe that once you access anything out of the US from inside (or inside from outside) it becomes legal to slurp away under US law.
[ . . . of course, being an old, i could be just having one of my episodes ]
Take your data. Break it up into packets with headers to identify it. Grab a pR0n image from the 'net (there are trillions of them, I've confirmed this...). Watermark your data into the borrowed pR0n image, and post it up somewhere. Repeat until the file is thus processed.
Within minutes, each pR0n image (carrying your data) will be inevitably copied and instantly hosted on ten thousand other pR0n sites. Zillions of copies. Your data will be widely distributed and perfectly safe. Reliably copied and constantly in motion. A trivial script can be used to retrieve your data from the 'net in minutes.
Plus, there's now a very good reason for all the pR0n traffic on the corporate network. Bonus.
Free Distributed Backup. It's ingenious.
Methinks we all should just grab a SAN large enough and download *.*
How large is the Internet Archive? [...] twenty-six petabytes
Dear Reg Bureau of Measurement Standards,
The following new conversion factors are needed:
1. PB to Olympic-sized swimming pools full of CD-ROMs (without jewel cases).
2. PB to Olympic-sized swimming pools full of 1.44MB floppy disks.
Regards,
-FD
For everyone worrying along the lines of "Canada isn't that much safer than the US, instead they should do X", may I recommend you take a look at a related effort: IA.bak.
This is an effort to have at least three geographically distributed copies of all the data in the Internet Archive. So far all of the disk space (82TB at time of writing) is provided by volunteers.
Got >1TB of spare harddrive space? Want to help mirror the Internet Archive? Maybe you can help!
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