Iceland: Safe haven of information

Internet has increased the appetite for information. The information age besides replenishing life with terra bytes of information at the click of the button is entrapped by the burgeoning burden of snooping and data privacy. Now world’s sophisticated technology firms are exploring for safe havens for data privacy and storage. The sub-zero climes of the Scandinavian countries are now preferred for surplus energy supply, excellent connectivity for data and constant cool climate. Companies have started operating data centres from the Arctic. The bone-chilling temperatures of minus 40 centigrade temperatures are now in great demand for operating server farms. Cold temperatures drastically reduce the high costs associated to keep the servers cool. Indeed Facebook established its first server in sub-Arctic town of Lulea, Sweden. More firms are now hunting for such climes because of low electricity charges and high levels of renewable energy.

Internet-related activities account for ever-increasing share of the world’s energy usage. Facebook was reprimanded by Green Peace for obtaining 53 per cent of its energy from coal sources. With an intention to go green it established its server farm in Scandinavian country with surplus geo-thermal and hydro-electric power to cater for data storage. Google too runs its data centre from Hamina in Finland. While big firms were successful in finding an effective place for storing data, data protection laws of those jurisdictions must be congruous too. Security and accessibility of data has become issue of grave concern. Against these fears, Iceland is gearing up to become Switzerland of the data by providing numerous data centres where individuals, corporate and even countries can store their valuable information backed with strong privacy laws. Bank of America estimated that information and technology are already consuming 10 per cent of the World’ produced electricity. Green Peace reports that energy usage for internet is expected to increase by 60 per cent by 2020. While having servers at a distant location may not greatly hamper the speed of operations for services like Google and Facebook financial institutions will incur heavy losses if data meanders through a distant server since a delay by a fraction of second can topple stock markets. Hence these locations may not be ideal for financial sector else Scandinavian region has become a lucrative for its business of data storage. Innovative companies are engineering efficient and less power intensive-server technologies to reduce energy requirements for data storage.

Iceland, tiny Nordic nation, is offering a distinctive advantage by setting stage for implementation of progressive data privacy laws. This has become vital issue ever since the whistle blower Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding wide spread surveillance of the US. The International Modern Media Institute (IMMI) has played a key role in designing and promoting the legal framework for Iceland’s new privacy laws. A group of Icelandic activists began cherry picking best laws from across the countries to evolve the world’s strongest media and free speech protection laws as well as state-of-art privacy laws. The data centres can greatly benefit from a clause in the law that ensures protection of intermediaries like internet service provider and telecommunication carriers. Titled as the ultra-modern freedom of information act, the proposal provides protection to investigative journalists and whistle blowers was passed in the Icelandic parliament.

Business analysts believe that Iceland can become a perfect place for supercomputing and mining of virtual currencies like BitCoin given the availability of high-processing capacity. Most of the towns in Iceland are promoting themselves as ideal locations for hosting cloud service industry from around the world. In future don't be surprised if nations are hamstrung by Iceland for data violation acts.

By: Ramaharitha Pusarla