I would suggest Iceland. But there are several other possibilities, Ireland and New Zealand for starters.
But Iceland is a nice green location for server farms. Cheap cooling, green electricity a small enough economy that they wouldn't want to upset the WMF if it located there, and a government that doesn't hesitate to defend its economic interests even if technically they don't have armed forces.
As others have pointed out there are worse choices we could make than the US, but there are also much better choices.
WSC
Message: 2 Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2019 09:52:41 -0500 From: Risker risker.wp@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] America may go bizarro, but Wikipedia has a choice to make Message-ID: <CAPXs8yTYzmCVLxaF4iH=9Ht1j4e5MeniHqBLe== n6p1y9xSkSA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Without in any way suggesting that David's and Fae's question is inappropriate....I suspect that the people most likely to have used/tested the backups are not people who follow this list; they're much more likely to participate on technical lists.
It's actually a pretty good question, and Ariel Glenn of the WMF may be the best person to ask since they seem to be managing the process of making the files available.
Risker/Anne
On Wed, 9 Jan 2019 at 06:44, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Location: This is a tangent, one that has been raised before as a /non-answer/ to the issue of actually getting on with contingency planning. Realistically I would start by looking at the potential matches of Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands (where servers already are used for WMF operations), or lastly and for very different reasons, Peru.
What I find weird, or bizarro, is that the responses so far are vague dismissals for non-good fantastic reasons, at the level of "let magic blockchain technology solve it for free", rather than taking on board that preparing a hot switch for Wikimedia operations in a welcoming host country, is a highly cost effective disaster contingency plan, whether due to natural disasters in San Fran / Florida / Amsterdam, or due to national government using its legal authority to freeze, switch off or tamper with content due to politically inflated "security" or "emergency" issues. The risks are real and predictable, and as a globally recognized charity with plenty of money in the bank, the WMF should have contingency plans to ensure its continued existence, as any professional business actuary would advise.
As a past IT auditor, what also made the hairs prick up on the back of my neck, was David Gerard's sensible question "So ... when did someone last test putting up a copy of the sites from the backups" - Could someone give a real answer to that please? If it's never, then wow, we all have to ask some hard questions of the WMF Board of exactly how they hold senior management to account.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 at 23:05, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Fae,
I'm curious what nation you have in mind for your stable Plan B. Is it Brexit Britain? France of the Yellow Vests and Front National? Perhaps Orban's Hungary, Putin's Russia, or Germany with its recent right-wing resurgence?
Maybe you'd prefer Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil? I suppose in Italy we'd
worry
about Beppe and criminal libel statutes, while BJP would hardly seem welcoming in India and I can't imagine you'd suggest a home on the
other
side of the Great Firewall.
Maybe you're hinting at Canada, but otherwise, I'd love to understand
what
island of liberal stability and legal safeguards you think is safe from
the
vagaries of electoral politics or rigid authoritarianism.
The countries I list above have their own flaws (although in each
case, I
believe, many desirable traits as well) as does any other alternative. Anyone could reasonably argue it's unfair to stigmatize any of them by glaringly public flaws.
To my mind Steve Walling has it right - the very nature of Wikipedia is maybe the best protection there could be, even against the absurdly unlikely circumstance of a United States government takeover of
Wikipedia.
Nathan
On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 12:17 PM Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow Wikimedians, please sit back for a moment and ponder the following,
For those of us not resident in the US, it has been genuinely
alarming
to see highly respected US government archives vanish overnight, reference websites go down, and US legislation appear to drift to whatever commercial interests have the loudest current political voices. Sadly "populism" is happening now, and dominates American politics, driving changes of all sorts in response to politically inflated and vague rhetoric about "security" and "fakenews". It is
not
inconceivable that a popularist current or future US Government could decide to introduce emergency controls over websites like Wikipedia, virtually overnight.[1][2][3][4]
The question of whether the Wikimedia Foundation should have a hot switch option, so that if a "disaster" strikes in America, we could continue running Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons from other countries has been raised on this list several times over many years. The WMF and its employees are heavily invested in staying in Silicon Valley, and that will stay true unless external risks become extreme.
However, there has never been a rationale to avoid investing in a
Plan
B. A robust plan, where the WMF can switch operations over to a hosting country with a sufficiently welcoming with stable national government and legislation, that our projects could continue to meet our open knowledge goals virtually uninterrupted and without risk of political control. A Plan B would ensure that if the US Government started to discuss controlling Wikipedia, then at least that
published
plan would be a realistic response. If they tried doing it, we could simply power off our servers in the USA, rather than compromise our content.
If anyone knows of committed investment in a practical WMF Plan B, it would be reassuring to share it more widely at this time. If not,
more
of us should be asking about it, politely, persistently but perhaps less patiently than indefinitely. :-)
Links:
https://www.cnet.com/news/obama-signs-order-outlining-emergency-internet-con...
"... this order was designed to empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies." 4.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-...
"The president could seize control of U.S. internet traffic, impeding access to certain websites and ensuring that internet searches return pro-Trump content as the top results." 5. Bizarro, as used in the title of this email: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
________faewik@gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae_________________________________...
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-- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
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Message: 3 Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2019 17:00:18 +0200 From: Ariel Glenn WMF ariel@wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] America may go bizarro, but Wikipedia has a choice to make Message-ID: <CALCvg_4ALsMBSE_STWKo7-Dh1O41XAuDt09wByt_2f+-kx= 8Yg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
The files made available as 'Wikimedia dumps' are not intended to be a full backup. And indeed that is not their purpose. People do set up mirrors using these dumps from time to time, though I have not done so recently.
Actual honest-to-goodness backups (database snapshots) are another thing altogether and one of the Wikimedia DBAs may want to talk about that.
Ariel
On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 4:52 PM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Without in any way suggesting that David's and Fae's question is inappropriate....I suspect that the people most likely to have
used/tested
the backups are not people who follow this list; they're much more likely to participate on technical lists.
It's actually a pretty good question, and Ariel Glenn of the WMF may be
the
best person to ask since they seem to be managing the process of making
the
files available.
Risker/Anne
On Wed, 9 Jan 2019 at 06:44, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Location: This is a tangent, one that has been raised before as a /non-answer/ to the issue of actually getting on with contingency planning. Realistically I would start by looking at the potential matches of Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands (where servers already are used for WMF operations), or lastly and for very different reasons, Peru.
What I find weird, or bizarro, is that the responses so far are vague dismissals for non-good fantastic reasons, at the level of "let magic blockchain technology solve it for free", rather than taking on board that preparing a hot switch for Wikimedia operations in a welcoming host country, is a highly cost effective disaster contingency plan, whether due to natural disasters in San Fran / Florida / Amsterdam, or due to national government using its legal authority to freeze, switch off or tamper with content due to politically inflated "security" or "emergency" issues. The risks are real and predictable, and as a globally recognized charity with plenty of money in the bank, the WMF should have contingency plans to ensure its continued existence, as any professional business actuary would advise.
As a past IT auditor, what also made the hairs prick up on the back of my neck, was David Gerard's sensible question "So ... when did someone last test putting up a copy of the sites from the backups" - Could someone give a real answer to that please? If it's never, then wow, we all have to ask some hard questions of the WMF Board of exactly how they hold senior management to account.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 at 23:05, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Fae,
I'm curious what nation you have in mind for your stable Plan B. Is
it
Brexit Britain? France of the Yellow Vests and Front National?
Perhaps
Orban's Hungary, Putin's Russia, or Germany with its recent
right-wing
resurgence?
Maybe you'd prefer Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil? I suppose in Italy we'd
worry
about Beppe and criminal libel statutes, while BJP would hardly seem welcoming in India and I can't imagine you'd suggest a home on the
other
side of the Great Firewall.
Maybe you're hinting at Canada, but otherwise, I'd love to understand
what
island of liberal stability and legal safeguards you think is safe
from
the
vagaries of electoral politics or rigid authoritarianism.
The countries I list above have their own flaws (although in each
case, I
believe, many desirable traits as well) as does any other
alternative.
Anyone could reasonably argue it's unfair to stigmatize any of them
by
glaringly public flaws.
To my mind Steve Walling has it right - the very nature of Wikipedia
is
maybe the best protection there could be, even against the absurdly unlikely circumstance of a United States government takeover of
Wikipedia.
Nathan
On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 12:17 PM Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow Wikimedians, please sit back for a moment and ponder
the
following,
For those of us not resident in the US, it has been genuinely
alarming
to see highly respected US government archives vanish overnight, reference websites go down, and US legislation appear to drift to whatever commercial interests have the loudest current political voices. Sadly "populism" is happening now, and dominates American politics, driving changes of all sorts in response to politically inflated and vague rhetoric about "security" and "fakenews". It is
not
inconceivable that a popularist current or future US Government
could
decide to introduce emergency controls over websites like
Wikipedia,
virtually overnight.[1][2][3][4]
The question of whether the Wikimedia Foundation should have a hot switch option, so that if a "disaster" strikes in America, we could continue running Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons from other
countries
has been raised on this list several times over many years. The WMF and its employees are heavily invested in staying in Silicon
Valley,
and that will stay true unless external risks become extreme.
However, there has never been a rationale to avoid investing in a
Plan
B. A robust plan, where the WMF can switch operations over to a hosting country with a sufficiently welcoming with stable national government and legislation, that our projects could continue to
meet
our open knowledge goals virtually uninterrupted and without risk
of
political control. A Plan B would ensure that if the US Government started to discuss controlling Wikipedia, then at least that
published
plan would be a realistic response. If they tried doing it, we
could
simply power off our servers in the USA, rather than compromise our content.
If anyone knows of committed investment in a practical WMF Plan B,
it
would be reassuring to share it more widely at this time. If not,
more
of us should be asking about it, politely, persistently but perhaps less patiently than indefinitely. :-)
Links:
https://www.cnet.com/news/obama-signs-order-outlining-emergency-internet-con...
"... this order was designed to empower certain governmental
agencies
with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies." 4.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-...
"The president could seize control of U.S. internet traffic,
impeding
access to certain websites and ensuring that internet searches
return
pro-Trump content as the top results." 5. Bizarro, as used in the title of this email: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae