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The Internet Archive Is Building a Canadian Copy To Protect Itself From Trump (theverge.com) 590

The Internet Archive, a digital library nonprofit that preserves billions of webpages for the historical record, is building a backup archive in Canada after the election of Donald Trump. The Verge adds: Today, it began collecting donations for the Internet Archive of Canada, intended to create a copy of the archive outside the United States. "On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," writes founder Brewster Kahle. "It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a web that may face greater restrictions. It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase."
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The Internet Archive Is Building a Canadian Copy To Protect Itself From Trump

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  • Valid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TFlan91 ( 2615727 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:02PM (#53387543)

    With Trumps position on libel laws, smart move to project against legal action.

    Still need to project against the ever-in-the-news cyber vulnerabilities. In today's world, physical location only goes so far.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      not really more like sensationalized hogwash...

      If they claimed to be doing it for redundancy sake, then sure completely legitimate reason. To claim its because of trump, now your just grabbing for headlines and/or extra money.

      • by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        From what I read, they're not trying to protect against trump, but just adding redundancy in general.
        Trump's election was just a reminder of how vulnerable they might be to changes in political power.

    • Re:Valid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:17PM (#53387681)

      I'm firm believer in backups, so Awesome!

      But where were these concerns about "government surveillance" not going away when Pres. Obama was expanding them rather than ending them like he promised in his first campaign.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      Yeah, I hear he's going to eat our babies, ban all birth-control, and put all Democrats into concentration camps too!!!!!!!

      DID I MENTION THAT I'M TOTALLY RATIONAL, and in no way just a sore loser who is freaking out like a petulant child over losing an election?!?

      • Re:Valid (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NatasRevol ( 731260 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:30PM (#53387813) Journal

        You sound a lot like the winner. Who's ranted against free speech, and freedom of the press. And that's just this week.

    • you know for how "crazy" trump supporters sounded pre election there sure seems to be an uptick in crazy since the election from the other side

      isnt canada still technically ruled by the queen of england??, and didnt the UK just institute draconian surveillance laws???

      my guess is this is nothing more than them using the outrage by people to get more funding at the expense of clickbait headlines
      • Queen of Canada (Score:5, Informative)

        by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @04:31PM (#53388323) Journal

        isnt canada still technically ruled by the queen of england??

        No Canada is technically ruled by the Queen of Canada. The title is held by the same person but it is entirely separate and equal to her title as the Queen of England. The Canadian and UK Parliaments are equal but separate: no law passed by the UK parliament affects Canada and no law passed by the Canadian parliament affects the UK. But please don't let these facts get in the way of a good rant...

      • by quenda ( 644621 )

        isnt canada still technically ruled by the queen of england??

        The Queen does not rule. She reigns.

  • Well then... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:02PM (#53387545)

    It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.
     
    Why didn't they start this years ago when Obama extended and expanded the Patriot Act? Sounds like more leftist hypocrisy and hyperbole to me.

    • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      Did I miss something? I don't remember either candidate so much as suggesting that they would do anything about the rampant government surveillance.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      yep...just like all the libs that scream "I'm moving to $Canada-or-UE-Countrey if $Republican wins $Office"

      They never follow thru...I love the Archive, but this just seems purely political and not based on real threats to speech or archival activities.

    • Re:Well then... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by butchersong ( 1222796 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:33PM (#53387855)
      It is simply a marketing tactic. Canada is not exactly an ideal spot to locate such a backup in any case given their hate speech legislation and tactic of slapping very heavy fines on people who might have offended one of an infinite number of gender pronoun protected groups.
      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        I was wondering about that too. I would have thought Denmark or Norway would be a better choice. Neither is going to be very interested in censoring English language stuff. Iceland would be still better, but there would be connection issues.

        • Re:Well then... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by HornWumpus ( 783565 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:49PM (#53387969)

          At least three backups, Iceland, Russia and China. Not that Russia and China are great, their data will likely have to be encrypted...but they are among the few that won't just take an American order and execute.

          Each should have a provision for marking part of its dataset 'edited by court order' (in the foreign copies, so out of the crooked courts reach).

          Canada's hate speech laws are awful, almost rival Muslim nations for 'worst practice'.

        • by swb ( 14022 )

          How about the Netherlands or Switzerland?

          The Netherlands seems to have a pretty good handle on civil liberties. Switzerland seems to have a pretty good handle on individual privacy and has the bonus value of general global political neutrality.

          I'd say it's a toss-up, with a nod to the Netherlands which probably has slightly better network connectivity due to geography although I'd bet Switzerland wouldn't be too far behind on that, either.

      • Re:Well then... (Score:4, Informative)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @05:50PM (#53388917)

        It is simply a marketing tactic. Canada is not exactly an ideal spot to locate such a backup in any case given their hate speech legislation and tactic of slapping very heavy fines on people who might have offended one of an infinite number of gender pronoun protected groups.

        Actually, it's not hate speech legislation. It's inciting hatred legislation. Our hate speech laws target recruitment of other people to incite harm to a group.You can threaten to harm someone, and that's a law unto itself (assault), but no matter how disgusting it is, unless you're trying to get others to join you, it's not hate speech.

        You are free to be as racist as you want, and to shout it to the world. One person did, and while hate charges were considered, they did not apply [ctvnews.ca]. He was just charged with simple assault.

        Likewise, you can discriminate against gays but as long as you're not telling others to harm them, you're fine.

        That's the two key elements to the law - first, you have to incite others to join you, and second, you have to be threatening to harm. Just saying "I hate (gays|Jews|Chinese)" isn't hate speech, and even saying "I hate (gays|Jews|Chinese) and think they should be killed" isn't hate. But saying "I hate (gays|Jews|Chinese), and we should form a group to kill all of them" is hate speech because you're inviting others to harm.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Sadly its not hyperbole, this probably does need doing. The reason its happening now is because there are lots of lefty looser in tech, they made some token gripes about the surveillance stuff going on but mostly they were okay with it because 'their guy' was in charge.

      Now that someone else is in charge, suddenly they are scared. Hopefully they will learn a hard lesson about big government, hint: your party is not always in power!

      All and all though the threats to internet freedoms are real, and I don't se

  • by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:05PM (#53387561) Homepage Journal

    If you have a domain name under which you have a lot of content -- an example is kuro5hin.org -- and, after a decade or so you find yourself impoverished and stressed to the point that you can't renew the domain registration (as did Rusty Foster), a domain squatter jumps on it and holds it hostage for thousands of dollars. When that happens, frequently even "The Wayback Machine" is told to deep-six the archived content by the simple expedient of placing a robots.txt file in the home directory of the hijacked domain. "The Wayback Machine" then dutifully removes public access to the content. OH but the fun doesn't stop there! So now let's say you fork over the ransom money to the domain squatter, get the domain name back and remove the robots.txt. Of course "The Wayback Machine" then restores public access to all those articles... right?

    WRONG!

    archive.org does keep it stored and it is accessible to those with insider status, but no more public access EVER.

    There really is value in hoarding history and if you can get away with it by doing it "on accident" all the better!

    • by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      How much does insider status cost? I've run into that problem more than once.

  • Is Canada Better? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slashkitty ( 21637 )
    It's going to have to be in all in french now, right? And, aren't some of their harassment laws much worse? Some of this internet archive certainly offends some minority.
    • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
      The bilingual requirement is only for governments and companies making business in the province of Quebec. It does not force companies to translate anything if they're not going to open shop there. Hell, many governmental institutions outside of Quebec and businesses (both in and outside of Quebec) don't follow those rules and nothing happens. I'm never quite sure why Americans are so quick to hate on bilingualism when there's almost as much Spanish being spoken in the US as French in Canada, proportionally
  • Great idea, but not sure Canada is all that safe. Trump or some other government entity could easily coerce Canada into seizing the servers. Better to put backups in several out of the way places around the world and not even disclose where they are.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I would think a more decentralized solution would be in line. Home servers, or for the oppressed low cost ISP tier masses, "peer to peer"..., or for the really oppressed, "sneakernet".

      Having the internet archive in a single place, with any sort of centralized authority was a bad idea from the beginning. Centralized services are targets, end of story, game over.

    • by johanw ( 1001493 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:28PM (#53387797)

      How about Russia?

      • by tomkost ( 944194 )
        It would not be a bad choice. Servers are pretty cheap. I doubt you even have to pay to keep them always on. If you remote backup 1x/week, it's probably good enough. Just the idea that there could be 4-5 backups in unknown places would keep the wolves at bay or allow recovery in worst case scenario.
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      Canada and the UK have already been passing Orwellian internet surveillance and anti-free-speech laws on their own just fine without any influence from Trump. Moving the Internet Archive to Canada over concerns about possible libel laws and oppression is like responding to a fear of increased crime in your neighborhood by moving to Detroit.

  • paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:10PM (#53387611)

    Really to protect from Trump? I'm not a supporter, but the paranoid reactions to his presidency are just insane. If that truly is the reason, it is just nuts.

    • Re:paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:13PM (#53387629)
      Seems reasonable, Trump is nuts.
    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean that nobody is after you.
      • by johanw ( 1001493 )

        Nah, I don't think Trump is after me. Hillary, on the other hand, got so much bribes, eh, I mean campaign donations, from Hollywood, that I'm not so sure about her. The RIAA might be after me for down,loading a lot of movies.

        • by sinij ( 911942 )
          I personally don't like absolutes like "Trump is after me". Instead I like to think in abstracts, like "Lizard people are after me". This makes practicing op-sec more entertaining, and coincidentally would also make me safe against Trump.
  • How do they know Trump wont try and annex Canada during the next four years?

    • I don't think the Canadians would stand for such foolishness, given they've had opportunity to join the USA with special privileges for centuries and have so far declined... I'm guessing they will be building a wall to their south myself... A big wall with nice doors, and the USA will pay for it.... (grin)

  • Only now? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by edibobb ( 113989 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:15PM (#53387645) Homepage
    That should have been done years ago. It's stupid to keep something unique, important, and easily duplicated in a single country. The "Trump" point is that some people think he's got a low regard for constitutional rights, and will pack the Supreme Court to this end. This could make it possible (and legal) for the government to effectively revise history by editing the archives.
    • Re:Only now? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kierthos ( 225954 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:22PM (#53387729) Homepage

      Considering that the orange idiot thinks that burning a U.S. flag merits prison time or loss of citizenship, I'd say it's a given that he has a low regard for constitutional rights.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Yes, because thug-enforced safe spaces and opinions that are too traumatizing to be allowed for discussion is so much better.

        SJW-left has much bigger problem with freedom of speech than this.
    • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      How much storage are we talking about anyway? A few thousand terabytes?

    • They were having some major budget problems preventing this. You're right though, this has been long overdue, and it should be in way more than just Canada. It should be on every continent; I'd even support sending the occasional backup to Antarctica. Now that I think about it, these guys deserve my money. I'm gonna start donating.
  • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:17PM (#53387677)
    They should be keeping copies of the archive in multiple locations, along with parity files which can be used to validate potentially compromised and reconstruct corrupted data. That way if one location goes down or is destroyed (fires [wikipedia.org] happen [wikipedia.org]), you still have copies elsewhere. If one site gets hacked and the data changed, you can cross-reference the parity info with other sites to determine which is real and which is modified, and revert the changed data. Kinda like a worldwide ZFS or RAID 5.

    Trump makes for a convenient excuse. But given that they're literally keeping snapshots of history, they should already be taking these steps just to safeguard the integrity of the data.
    • I concur. The "because Trump" part is just plain silly projection.

      But I was quite surprised to learn that they don't have a multi-continent presence. I would have assumed they had multiple copies located all around the globe. It is a pretty huge site with what I would assume is a large volume of traffic from around the globe.

    • This is my feeling as well, however I've also aways had the feeling that the situation over there in archive land may not be so professional and seems to have grown up from a basement project. I would think that they would be better served emulating, or becoming part of the wikimedia foundation which has considerable experience (and qualified expertise) to deploy copies of the archive in many different foreign countries.
  • Time to build another wall! Make them pay for it too with an import tax on beaver pelts and maple syrup!
  • ... from following the UK with its "new and improved" surveillance law?

    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      If Stellaris taught me anything, is that most effective way to absorb upcoming civilization into my Galactic Lizard Empire is to build secret world government, harmonize policies across countries, establish puppet world government and then have it "voluntarily" join my empire as a a fresh source of slaves.

      Canada too will have mas surveillance because lizard people decided so.
  • Damn. We're going to run out of floppies.

    I like it when a group knows what it's talking about.
    They are not saying "we'll just put it in the cloud and it will be safe forever!"

  • by ageoffri ( 723674 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:22PM (#53387725)
    The progressive elements have become nothing if predictable. It wasn't that long ago that Obama got the Nobel Peace prize simply for being elected President. Now we have the opposite but equal over-reaction with. Instead of Obama saving the world, we have Trump destroying it. I have no doubt that just like Obama didn't earn the Nobel Peace prize, Trump won't earn the terror his election has triggered.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Cro Magnon ( 467622 )

      I've often said that Trump won't be as bad as the left says, if only because that isn't possible.

    • by Verdatum ( 1257828 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @04:47PM (#53388443)
      Obama got the Peace Prize from the Nobel committee, which is mostly Europeans. Most people on all political sides are still a bit confused as to why he won that thing, beyond it just being a kinda silly symbolic act. People on both sides overracted to Obama's election. There were the ignorant liberals who believed that Obama's presidency was gonna do stuff like halt middle-east conflict and put an end to racial inequality, and there were the ignorant conservatives who ran to gun stores in droves believing Gun-industry funded NRA scare campaigns saying Obama was gonna take their guns and they should all become preppers and build survival shelters.

      The trouble with Trump is that between his complete lack of experience in government, and his continued declarations of clearly unconstitutional ideas, he's an unknown. Most people don't have a reason to be terrified of anything, this is true. However, it gives people an opportunity to take stock of things and do a little risk assessment.

      In this case, I think it's a good move. Not because Trump will ruin the world, but becuase "Oh, hey, now that you mention it, all this really really important information in a single country is a pretty dumb move, because, laws and stuff can change."

  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:25PM (#53387753)

    Obama's the one that let the NSA capture all the communications in the US.

    If history has shown us anything, it's that both the left and the right will attempt to expunge information from archives...but the left does it on a bigger scale. Look a the Cultural Revolution under Mao, or the various programs under Lenin and Stalin. Heck, just look how the left in the US is rewriting history.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn.earthlink@net> on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:51PM (#53387983)

      Yes, but that's a part of the consistent pattern. The Democrats use a need of the people to create enhanced government power. (Never mind whether it's a real need of the people, it just needs to be sold as one.) Then the Republicans take power and use that increased power for elitist ends. Then the Democrats take power and use a need of the people to create enhanced government power.....

      At no point in the cycle is the government power decreased, despite the rhetoric sometimes used by the Republicans.

  • Nothing to see here folks, other than unfounded paranoia.

    • "Nothing to see here folks, other than unfunded paranoia."

      TFTFY
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Calling the paranoia unfounded is unjustifiable. It may not happen, as campaign promises often aren't kept. Unfortunately, it often happens that the campaign promises I most wish would be forgotten are the ones that are kept, and the ones I don't care about, or even approve of, are forgotten.

  • Don't let the door in that big beautiful wall hit you on the way out with all that data..

    Seriously? You are doing this because you are worried Trump might make you destroy your data or what? Where do folks get such foolishness into their heads.. I get the impression that, like the pending vote recounts going on what will accomplish nothing of importance (Trump will still be president come January), this is really just a scam to get attention, funding or both...

    BTW, you really SHOULD have multiple copies o

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      They should have multiple copies of their data, but that takes cash. That said, Canada seems an extremely silly location to pick for their only backup. It was probably picked because it was cheap to access.

  • One little problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:28PM (#53387801)

    America is the only place in the world where it is legally permitted to criticize anyone and everyone.

    See, for example: The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws [salon.com]

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I believe that there are many places that let you criticize anyone you choose, provided you don't do it in the local language. Has Canada, e.g., ever censored ANYTHING written in Swahili?

    • by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @04:01PM (#53388081)
      Don't worry, Trump has already promised to fix that.
    • You are legally permitted in Canada to criticize anyone and everyone. You are just not allowed to do it in any way that incites hatred or promotes genocide.

      According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (emphasis is mine):

      Under section 318 of the Criminal Code it is illegal to promote genocide. Under section 319, it is illegal to publicly incite hatred against people based on their colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation, except where the statements made are true or are made in good faith

      In addition to Canada, most European countries have similar laws, i have lived there and I don't think it limits one's abilities to express one's opinions if one has any respect for the historical truth so I would be interested to know where you think the problem is with this law.

  • Yeah? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:44PM (#53387943)

    I've decided to build a giant dome with battery powered artificial "sunlight" as I heard Trump is going to outlaw the sun. I've also added some support braces into my home's roof in case the sky does actually fall, and I've heard a credible rumor that he may in fact be a transgendered succubus.

    Geez people get a grip. It's like half the population of the country is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who acts like the world is ending because they can't get the toy they want. Under a Trump presidency - some things will not go the way you want. That $15 minimum wage ain't happening and student loans for useless degrees aren't going to be forgiven. Overall though - things aren't going to change much.

    Sit back, and relax. Maybe you'll like the way he handles the country, but probably not. Regardless, the country isn't going to fall apart.

  • Expensive (Score:4, Informative)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:56PM (#53388031)

    I'll ignore all the political aspects of this discussion and simply point out that this is a rather expensive proposition. I don't see a recent size estimate, but we know that the site increased from 10PB to 15PB between 2012 and 2014, so it's reasonable to estimate that it's around 23PB today.

    How expensive is 23PB of storage, including the serves themselves? If we use BackBlaze's cost estimates (they build custom high-density chassis) of $0.036/GB, we get a figure of roughly $868k USD spread across 49x4U servers. Of course, that's just the hardware. The colocation space (including power and connectivity) would be at least $10,000 CAD per month.

  • Why Canada? (Score:5, Informative)

    by wisnoskij ( 1206448 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @04:27PM (#53388279) Homepage

    We do not have 1/4 the free speech laws as America. In fact right now we are looking at Bill C-16, which may class improper pronoun use as harassment. Making it entirely possibly that every time someone transitions, all archives of their past gender would need to be updated or erased. While I am not positive this one law is a serious threat to The Internet Archive operating in Canada, it shows how tenuous their situation would be if they operated in Canada.

    This is as ridiculous as American citizens talking about moving to Canada. You already need id to vote here and we do not allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country. We are the exact thing all these people do not want America to become.

  • by m0s3m8n ( 1335861 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @04:59PM (#53388551)
    OMG. I just love the histairia.

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