We also posted this on Reddit and received a positive response.
We all know that the NSA has been busy installing backdoors wherever it can. Since the Lavabit shutdown we’ve learnt that FBI/NSA is putting gag orders on American companies (and their founders/employees) so that they cannot even talk publicly - or even privately to their lawyers - about the secret things the American government is forcing them to do.
Ladar Levison preferred to instantly shutdown Lavabit rather than install backdoors for the Feds - and was even threatened with arrest for doing so.
Will VPN providers do the same when the Feds come knocking on their door? We don’t know for sure.
In 2012 we moved the company to Hong Kong to avoid secret court orders to install backdoors & monitoring.
We found it interesting that Snowden chose to go public in Hong Kong… Snowden’s reasons were “Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech. People think China, Great Firewall … but the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting on the streets, making their views known … and I believe the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.”
Even Julian Assange said “Our own political and legal analysis of Snowden’s situation was that Hong Kong would play it by the book…” to keep “…its reputation as a country which has a strong rule of law when it is under a lot of scrutiny, a desire to not lose face from China and to not look like the US is pushing them around”.
Can you really trust a VPN service based in the USA? Even if the company and employees do have the best intentions, will they go to jail or shutdown their company to protect your privacy?
Update: BestVPN just released a list of Important Security Considerations when choosing a VPN provider with the following things to think about…
- Location (We’re based in Hong Kong - not in the USA or EU)
- Keeping Logs (We NEVER log your real IP address or your internet activity)
- Bitcoins (We accept Bitcoins too)
- Encryption (We use AES-256 already)
- VPN client (We have an easy to install & use bundled version of openVPN)
- Shared IP addresses (People connecting to our Privacy locations use a shared IP address)
sources:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/49653/why-did-edward-snowden-flee-to-hong-kong-of-all-places
