8 CommentsThe virtual services provider Clipperz, a platform that only accepts Bitcoin, has left the United States and definitely moved to Iceland.The service, which runs strong encrypted algorithms in the browser, has been quietly moving to the European country since September, but the final changes are still waiting to be implemented on January 1, 2014. First of all, Clipperz will leave the .com domain and will now be called Clipperz.is.
“You may wonder what was wrong with the previous arrangement. Nothing. We were completely happy with all our providers: Joyent for SmartOS hosting, Dyn for DNS services, Amazon for backups”, the platform explains in a message published on Clipperz website. But the explanation comes right after: apparently, the founders of the platform claim to be “under attack”, despite the fact that neither Clipperz infrastructure nor encrypted data are exposed to any risk.
According to the website, everything started in June, after the launch of Clipperz’s new website and its Bitcoin-exclusive feature. After several accusations, Clipperz bank, the largest in Italy, is considering to close the platform’s account due to potential fraud allegations and internal money laundering policies.
“What is going to happen now we don’t know. There is yet no formal charge against us, but it’s not completely unlikely that a single district attorney could order the seizure of Clipperz assets including the domain and servers as a ‘pre-trail precautionary measure’. Our first goal at this point is to protect Clipperz, its users and their data. We’ve been working at it out of pure passion for almost eight years. Doing nothing illegal, but allowing people to better protect their most precious bits of information. We will fight to prevent anyone from destroying it just by signing a paper. We can and will do everything in our power to make getting unauthorized access to your encrypted data as difficult and expensive as possible”, the message adds.
The first step was exactly change the website’s technical infrastructure from the United States to Iceland, due to the success of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a jurisdiction that guarantees protection for people and institutions fighting for freedoms of expression and information.
“Joyent, our previous hosting provider, has a safe harbor agreement in place with EU authorities which can intervene on Clipperz servers as if they were physically located in the EU. Or Joyent could be forced by a FISC order to hand over data, keys or fiddle with our code. Or US authorities can just cancel Clipperz from DNS registries or simply seize its TLD. So we had no choice, but moving to a place where we have at least a chance to actually start the fight if necessary”, it’s possible to read on the website.
In a few weeks, Clipperz will also implement another major change and turn into a paid service, but “the transparency will remain”, partly thanks to the guarantees provided by cryptocurrency.
Comments are closed.