[Infowarrior] - Software companies are leaving the UK because of government’s surveillance plans

[Richard Forno]

Software companies are leaving the UK because of government’s surveillance plans

Growing concerns about Snooper's Charter and crypto backdoors fuelling exodus.

by Glyn Moody - Jun 23, 2015 7:15am EDT

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/software-companies-are-leaving-the-uk-because-of-governments-surveillance-plans/

The company behind the open-source blogging platform Ghost is moving its paid-for service out of the UK because of government plans to weaken protection for privacy and freedom of expression. Ghost's founder, John O'Nolan, wrote in a blog post: "we’ve elected to move the default location for all customer data from the UK to DigitalOcean’s [Amsterdam] data centre. The Netherlands is ranked #2 in the world for Freedom of Press, and has a long history of liberal institutions, laws and funds designed to support and defend independent journalism."

O'Nolan was particularly worried by the UK government's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act, which he said enshrines key rights such as "respect for your private and family life" and "freedom of expression." The Netherlands, by contrast, has "some of the strongest privacy laws in the world, with real precedents of hosting companies successfully rejecting government requests for data without full and legal paperwork," he writes.

This is by no means the first software company to announce that it will be leaving the UK because of the government's plans to attack privacy through permanent bulk surveillance of online activities and weakened crypto. At the beginning of May, Aral Balkan revealed that he would be moving his Ind.ie software project out of the country: "Following the election of a Tory government with a mandate to further mass surveillance, we’re leaving the UK to avoid the possibility of having to add backdoors to our products at Ind.ie." Like O'Nolan, Balkan cited the abolition of the Human Rights Act as one reason for his decision, as well as plans to introduce the Snooper's Charter and backdoors in messaging applications.

A few weeks later, Eris Industries became the second company to react to the new UK government and its plans. Eris is "free software that allows anyone to build their own secure, low-cost, run-anywhere data infrastructure using blockchain and smart contract technology." The company's move was prompted by the threat that new laws could require backdoors in its encryption technology.

Preston Byrne, COO and General Counsel of Eris, explained in a blog post: "with immediate effect, we have temporarily moved our corporate headquarters to New York City, where open-source cryptography is firmly established as protected speech pursuant to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." That temporary move will become permanent if the Snooper's Charter is enacted with provisions that would require crypto to be backdoored. Byrne wrote: "If this Bill is passed into law, we are likely to see a mass exodus of tech companies and financial services firms alike from the United Kingdom. We are happy to lead by example."

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