Not all providers are based in a single nation.

Amazon, for instance, has AWS locations around the world, although that probably doesn't help you much given their track record.

But rsync.net (I am the founder) has storage locations in Zurich and Hong Kong, in addition to the US. These sites are protected, just like the US sites, by the Warrant Canary:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

So while I agree that everyone in the world should be wary of USA PATRIOT, it's not a given that non-US consumers have to avoid US providers across the board.

If you have an io.com shell account, we would like to gift you a lifetime free rsync.net account for the purposes of backing up, and parking, the contents of that shell account.

I have never had an io.com shell, but between rsync and tar+gpg+ftp you should be able to quickly and easily dump the contents of your shell to an rsync.net account.

Just email info@rsync.net and we'll set this up for you. FWIW, this is a continuation of our efforts to support the work being done by Jason Scott, the "Archive Team" and the safeguarding of digital history, generally.

The Egyptian authorities have the ability to shut down free speech in 2011, but turning off the Internet is not enough - they must completely halt modern commerce.

Since they are not, as far as I can imagine, performing mass jamming of the 2.4ghz spectrum, anyone with a laptop and "wi-fi" connectivity has everything they need to conduct insurrection. This concept is known as "Free Speech or Stone Age":

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html

Unless you remove the general purpose tools of modern commerce, filtering (or even disabling) the Internet will not stop speech.

I couldn't care less what the cloud, or SAS, or software is running _on_. What I care about is whether or not it provides open, standards-based interoperability.

Does Amazon s3 run on linux or bsd or WIndows ? I don't know, but I do know that I can't just connect over plain old SFTP or WebDAV without major gimmickry and transformation. (FWIW, providers like rsync.net do, in fact, allow direct, standards based interaction, so it's not impossible).

On the other hand, another cloud-like provider might run on a completely closed source, proprietary foundation, but if it provides plain old standards based interaction from the outside, who cares ?

I began writing this short piece a year or two ago, titled "Free Speech or Stone Age": http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html The current events in Iran are a perfect illustration of two competing memes: the (mistaken) notion that a state can completely suppress anonymous free speech while maintaining a modern economy, and the (surprising to some) notion that that is impossible. Many Iranians (and even many Americans) may not realize it, but arbitrary, anonymous free speech on any subject is currently available in Iran, as well as China, etc. This is a fact. Only by freezing all international travel, confiscating all general purpose computing devices, and outlawing/jamming all standardized wireless network protocols could Iran possibly hope to curtail this speech.

Please consider these two FreeBSD related bounties:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html

(vmware 6.x working on a modern FreeBSD release)

and:

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2007/12/bounty-posted-f.html

Both of these items are long overdue to be fixed - having a modern version of vmware working on FreeBSD is essential to many, many developers and engineers, and because so much of the web now requires a recent version of flash to _use at all_ it is imperative that there be a method to use flash9 on a native FreeBSD browser.

I encourage everyone that is interested in FreeBSD on the desktop to look into supporting these bounties.