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| author | Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> | 2012-08-29 15:51:08 +0200 |
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| committer | Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> | 2012-08-29 15:51:08 +0200 |
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diff --git a/report/Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html b/report/Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..56b0ac5 --- /dev/null +++ b/report/Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html @@ -0,0 +1,475 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"><HTML> +<HEAD> + <!-- <script src='/annotator/jquery.min.js'></script> --> + <!-- <script src='/annotator/annotator-full.min.js'></script> --> + <!-- <script src='/annotator/plugins/store.js'></script> --> + <!-- <link rel='stylesheet' href='/annotator/annotator.min.css'> --> +<TITLE></TITLE> +</HEAD> +<BODY> +<A name=1></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-1.png"><br> + <br> <br> + <br> +<b>Islands of Resilience</b><br> +<b>Comparative Model for Energy, Connectivity and Jurisdiction</b><br> +<b>Realizing European ICT possibilities through a case study of Iceland</b><br> + <br> + <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> + <br> <br> <br> +Smári McCarthy and Eleanor Saitta<br> + <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> +1<br> +<hr> +<A name=2></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-2.png"><br> + <br>Prepared at the request of:<br> +on behalf of Members of the European Parliament <br>Christian Engström, Indrek Tarand, Carl Schlyter, Sandrine Bélier, Karima Delli, Eva Lichtenberger, Raül <br>Romeva i Rueda, Heide Rühle, Judith Sargentini, Bas Eickhout and Marije Cornelissen<br> <br> <br><b> <br> <br>Prepared at the request of The Greens / European Free Alliance<br> <br>Authors:</b><br> +<b>On behalf of Members of the European Parliament:</b><br> +<b> </b>Smári McCarthy<br> + Christian Engström<br> + Eleanor Saitta<br> + Indrek Tarand<br> Carl Schlyter<br> +<b>Contributing Researchers:</b><br> + Sandrine Bélier<br> +<b> </b>Guðjón Idir<br> + Karmima Delli<br> + Jason Scott<br> + Eva Lichtenberger<br> Paül Romeva i Rueda<br> Heide Rühle<br> Judith Sargentini<br> Bas Eickhout<br> Marije Cornelissen<br> +<b>Produced by:<br> </b><br> +<b> <br> </b><br> +<b> International Modern Media Institute<br></b> Laugavegur 3<br> 101 Reykjavík<br> Iceland<br> + <br> <br> <br> + <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> +2<br> +<hr> +<A name=3></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-3.png"><br> + <br> <br> <br> <br> + Distributed under the terms of the <br> +Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0-unported License<br> +<b> </b><br> +3<br> +<hr> +<A name=4></a><b>Abstract</b><br> +Locale is rapidly becoming one of the most important competitive differentiators in the <br>provision of cloud-based information technology services. Broadly speaking, three <br>categories of issues define a locale's fitness for hosting the cloud: energy, connectivity, and <br>jurisdiction.<br> +Energy is the largest cost center for most cloud hosts. Beyond price per kilowatt hour, <br>hosting companies must consider redundant network availability, power grid resilience, <br>environmental sustainability, climate, and equipment cooling requirements as core parts of <br>their energy strategy.<br> +Connectivity is clearly essential for hosts, and differentiating factors here include total <br>installed bandwidth, current utilized bandwidth, hub redundancy, international uplink <br>redundancy, round trip latency, traffic shaping and network neutrality.<br> +Jurisdictional issues are an area of emerging concern and awareness for cloud hosts, where <br>the landscape is shifting rapidly. Hosting companies are deeply affected by intermediary <br>liability, hosting liability, state and corporate surveillance, state and corporate censorship, the <br>accessibility of and cost of interacting with courts, corruption, and socioeconomic stability.<br> +This report considers Iceland's relative competitive advantages and drawbacks as a hosting <br>locale relating to these issues.<br> +4<br> +<hr> +<A name=5></a><b>Table of Contents</b><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#4">Abstract</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#6">Introduction<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#7">Energy</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#7">Energy Sources<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#9">Energy Utilization and Pricing<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#10">Grid Resilience and Redundancy<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#11">Climate and Cooling</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#12">Connectivity</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#12">Submarine Cables<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#13">Installed and Utilized Capacity<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#14">Domestic Network<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#15">Round Trip Latency<br>Network Security<br>Future Connectivity Developments</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#18">Jurisdiction</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#18">Commercial Issues<br>Overview of Icelandic Information Regulation<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#19">Compatibility with European Union Directives<br>Intermediary Liability Limitations<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#20">Surveillance<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#22">Censorship<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#19">Data Protection<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#23">Human Resources<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#24">Icelandic Modern Media Initiative<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#25">Source Protection<br>Freedom of Information Act<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#26">Network Neutrality<br>Communications Protection and Communications Data Retention<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#27">Intermediary Liability Limitations<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#28">Libel Tourism Protection<br>Libel Reform and Publishing Liability Limitations<br></a><a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#29">Whistleblower Protection<br>Prior Restraint Limitations<br>Virtual Limited Liability Companies</a><br> +<a href="Greens-IslandsofResiliences.html#30">Selected Bibliography</a><br> + <br> +5<br> +<hr> +<A name=6></a><b>Introduction</b><br> +This preliminary study is intended to give a birds-eye view of the primary factors pertaining <br>to energy, connectivity and jurisdiction in Iceland, as applicable to ICT1 growth in general <br>and cloud hosting in particular.. It is necessarily narrow in scope and largely based on <br>aggregating publicly available information. As a result, some inaccuracies may exist, largely <br>due to poor information made available by private actors. A more in-depth follow up study <br>will remedy this by seeking out more detailed expert insights, detailed statistics, and <br>comparing against sourced cases.<br> +Regardless, this report clearly shows the advantages Iceland has in relation to ICTs, as well <br>as showing some of its potential weaknesses and possible remedies.<br> +Iceland’s key strengths are:<br> +●<br> +Cheap and abundant energy generated from green, renewable, sustainable and <br>resilient energy sources, distributed over a well designed and resilient power grid.<br> +●<br> +Increasingly good connectivity to the outside world with reasonable redundancy <br>and a large amount of unused capacity available for expansion, and a very highly <br>developed internal network with high resiliency.<br> +●<br> +An advanced and stable jurisdiction, with clear information rights and regulations, <br>well structured administration, and well informed governing bodies.<br> +Iceland’s main weaknesses are:<br> +●<br> +Scale discrepancies both in energy generation and consumption which could <br>potentially threaten grid resilience in extreme cases. This can be improved with <br>further diversification of energy consumers, such as large-scale ICT deployments.<br> +●<br> +Iceland’s data connectivity is provided by a relatively small number of submarine <br>cables connecting to the outside world, creating some network precarity. This is <br>currently being improved with the addition of new cables.<br> +●<br> +International data transport bandwidth through submarine cables is currently <br>expensive. This could be mitigated by further investments, subsidies, or other <br>methods to reduce the price for connection, with the intention of increasing the <br>overall usage.<br> +●<br> +Iceland has similar issues with blanket communications surveillance as in the EU, <br>which make it less attractive for hosting than countries where communications are <br>not monitored. This is hard to fix without political will in the EU.<br> +●<br> +Wildcard properties exist in the implementation of the e-Commerce directive, <br>connected to injunctive powers that district sheriffs still have. This can be solved by <br>clarifying the instances under which injunctions can be made, and restricting the <br>issuing authority to courts.<br> +Together Iceland’s key strengths form a very sound basis for the expansion of ICT in <br>Iceland, especially cloud hosting. Most of the weaknesses in Iceland’s position are either <br> +1 Information and Communication Technologies<br> +6<br> +<hr> +<A name=7></a>structural weaknesses common amongst all EU member states or are relatively trivial issues <br>which can be resolved easily.<br> + <br> +<b>Energy</b><br> +Energy is the largest cost center for most cloud hosting companies. Beyond price per <br>kilowatt hour, hosting companies must consider redundant network availability, power grid <br>resilience, environmental sustainability, climate, and equipment cooling requirements as <br>core parts of their energy strategy. <br> +In our analytical model for energy, we asked the following questions:<br> +<b>How prevalent are renewable energy sources in current electrical production?</b><br> +1. Less than 3% of all energy production based on renewable energy sources.<br>2. Between 4 and 40% of all energy production based on renewable energy sources.<br>3. Between 40 and 60% of all energy production based on renewable energy sources.<br>4. Between 60 and 97% of all energy production based on renewable energy sources.<br>5. More than 97% of all energy production based on renewable energy sources.<br> +<b>How much can current electrical production be increased without the construction of <br>new (not currently planned) power plants?</b><br> +1. By less than 5% of current average power use.<br>2. By less than 25% of current average power use.<br>3. By less than 50% of current average power use.<br>4. By more than 75% of current average power use<br>5. By more than 100% of current average power use.<br> +<b>What is the annual average price per kiloWatt hour for a commercial customer using <br>less than 2 GWh/year, including generation and distribution?</b><br> +1. > €0.20/kWh<br>2. > €0.14/kWh<br>3. <= €0.14/kWh<br>4. < €0.09/kWh<br>5. < €0.07/kWh<br> + <br> +Iceland's national energy plan was last updated in November of 2011.<br> +<b>Energy Sources</b><br> +7<br> +<hr> +<A name=8></a>In 2009, Iceland’s total energy utilization was roughly 240 PJ2 of primary energy sources, <br>which equates to roughly 67 TWh3. The primary energy sources were, in order of magnitude: <br>geothermal, hydroelectric, oil, and coal. Geothermal energy use was greater than all other <br>energy sources combined, while coal use was relatively minuscule. Energy use in Iceland <br>has risen substantially since the 1940’s with the industrialization of the country, which up <br>until roughly 1960 was almost entirely rural.<br> +A vast amount of geothermal energy is used for house-heating (45%), followed by electricity <br>production (39%). In addition, it is used for snow-melting, swimming pools, fish farming, <br>greenhouses and for industrial purposes. In 2009 a total of 22.3 PJ of geothermal energy <br>was used for electricity production.<br> +Only 18% of Iceland’s primary energy utilization comes from petrochemicals, of which <br>90% is oil and 10% coal. The majority of the coal is used by the iron smelting plant at <br>Grundartangi, with other industrial processes consuming the remainder. Almost no natural <br>gas is used in Iceland. Roughly 660 thousand tonnes of oil were used in Iceland in 2009, <br>of which 41% went to powering cars, 18% for aircraft, and 29% for fishing. Petroleum use <br>for cars has increased by 64% since 1990 in Iceland, contributing to the overall increase in <br>use. Oil is not used for electricity production except for some emergency backup generators. <br>Some towns have backup generators capable of sustaining basic operations throughout the <br>town temporarily, but the redundancy of the electricity grid renders this use minimal.<br> +As a result, the electricity production in Iceland is almost exclusively from geothermal and <br>hydroelectric primary energy sources. The theoretical maximum energy production in Iceland <br>is 64 TWh per year from hydroelectric sources and between 10 and 30 TWh per year from <br>geothermal sources. However, for natural protection purposes substantial regions of Iceland <br>have been classified as natural reserves, parks, or other protected areas. In addition, certain <br>areas have been classified as energy reserves that will not be used in coming years, in part <br>for sustainability reasons. This lowers the effective energy available for production.<br> +The current installed production capacity is 12.3 TWh per year for hydroelectric power, <br>and 4.6 TWh per year for geothermal power. After subtracting the protected and reserve <br>production categories, the total available hydroelectric and geothermal energy available for <br>future expansion is 11.91 TWh per year.<br> +Variability of energy pricing and availability is a critical issue for data centers. As Iceland has <br>little or no hydrocarbon-based electricity production, electricity prices are largely unaffected <br>by fluctuations in the oil, gas, and coal markets, and will not be affected by supply chain <br>interruptions in these markets. This provides a critical level of energy resilience for the <br>Icelandic electrical system at the supply end. Cheap, reliable, resilience, and predictably <br>priced energy sources are, in combination, a significant advantage for potential hosting <br>companies.<br> +2 Petajoules. 1 PJ = 1015 J<br>3 Terawatt hours. 1 TWh = 1012 W·h<br> +8<br> +<hr> +<A name=9></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-9.png"><br> +(Primary energy sources in Iceland 1940-2009. Inset: Proportional use. Top to bottom: Coal, <br> +oil, geothermal and hydroelectric. Source: Orkuáætlun 2011)<br> +<b>Energy Utilization and Pricing</b><br> +In 2009, 74% of produced electricity in Iceland went to the aluminum industry, with roughly <br>4.9 TWh/year to Alcoa Fjarðarál, 4.0 TWh/year to Rio Tinto Alcan, and 4.0 TWh/year to <br>Norðurál. 6% of produced electricity was used in the services industry, 5% for iron smelting <br>plants, 5% for household appliances, 4% for utilities, 4% for general industries, and 1% in <br>agriculture.<br> +9<br> +<hr> +<A name=10></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-10.png"><br> +(Electricity use 2009. From top to bottom: Fisheries, agriculture, general industries, district <br> +heating, home use, steel mills, services and aluminum industry. Source: Orkuátælun 2011)<br> +Energy use for household appliances accounted for 627 GWh in 2009, accounting for 7.1 <br>B ISK (€44.3 million) in consumer use, including VAT. Average household electricity costs <br>in Reykjavík are 11.30 ISK/kWh, or €0.07/kWh. This rate is substantially higher than the <br>price for industry. In the case of the aluminum smelters, these rates are 30% lower than <br>the European average4, although the energy prices for aluminum smelting have been <br>confidential. Alcoa Fjarðarál reportedly paid between 28-35 USD/MWh in 2006, or roughly <br>€0.044/kWh at 2006 exchange rates.<br> +(Main power lines and power plants. Source: Landsnet. For realtime energy distribution <br> +<a href="http://landsnet.is/raforkukerfid/kerfisstjornun/aflflutningurnuna/">figures, see http://landsnet.is/raforkukerfid/kerfisstjornun/aflflutningurnuna/</a> )<br> +<b>Grid Resilience and Redundancy</b><br> +Power grid resilience in Iceland is fairly high. The 61 power stations in Iceland are connected <br>with a circular grid which goes around the country, providing basic redundancy. In addition, <br>most power stations on the southwest corner have further grid redundancy simply due to the <br>higher population density and related network effects.<br> +There are 50 hydroelectric power stations in Iceland, mostly small. There are 7 geothermal <br>power plants, and 4 fueled power plants—one that generates power through garbage <br>incineration, two diesel powered, and one methane plant.<br> +4 <a href="http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/1026890/">http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/1026890/</a><br> +10<br> +<hr> +<A name=11></a>Some parts of the country, most notably the western fjords, are very poorly connected into <br>the grid and frequently get disconnected during the winter months due to poor weather <br>conditions. Power availability is maintained primarily with diesel generators when this <br>happens. Similarly, Flatey and Grímsey, two populated islands off the Icelandic west <br>and north coasts, respectively, are not connected to the main power grid, but are instead <br>powered by diesel generators.<br> +Resilience is quite high on the southwest corner, where most economic activity is situated, <br>but the east coast has also improved substantially in recent years due to developments in <br>relation to the Kárahnjúkar dam project and the Alcoa Fjarðarál aluminum smelter.<br> +The overall infrastructural elasticity on the power grid is high enough to handle most types of <br>outages due to line failures, power station shutdowns and disasters, but some very extreme <br>edge cases exist where grid resilience is threatened, notably sudden outages in production <br>units such as Kárahnjúkavirkjun, which could potentially lead to chain reactions of failures, <br>similar to the power outage at Itaipu power station in Brazil on 21 January, 2002. In general, <br>larger plants require larger transmission lines and inevitably cause more widespread <br>damage when they do fail. Similarly, larger consumption units may threaten grid resilience. <br>For instance, almost one third of Iceland’s total electricity consumption is used by a single <br>aluminum smelter, meaning that the unlikely edge case of an abrupt total disconnect would <br>momentarily increase the available electricity substantially. This kind of pathological outage <br>may however be mitigated by various means, not least the further diversification of power <br>production and consumption.<br> +<b>Climate and Cooling</b><br> +Estimates for data center energy utilization from IBM5 suggest that roughly half of all energy <br>is used on cooling, and an additional fourth on heat waste, mostly due to internal electrical <br>resistance in system components. Therefore, a priori energy waste in typical data centers <br>is roughly 75% before any actual computation occurs. Mitigating this waste is clearly crucial <br>to the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and sustainability of any data center. The proportional <br>cost of cooling for data centers has risen dramatically over the past few years, relative to the <br>cost of hardware. Reduction in hardware deployments due to virtualization and increases <br>in system density have dramatically reduced equipment purchase costs as a proportion <br>of operating costs. As a result of this, component-level heat waste mitigation is a primary <br>industry research goal.<br> +Increasingly, large data center operators have started to look to areas with relatively cold <br>climates. Cooling costs are significantly lower in cold areas, and most energy use in data <br>centers in those areas that goes to cooling is attributable to airflow management and de-<br>humidification rather than direct refrigeration. An example of this is the planned data center <br>that Facebook, Inc., is building near Luleå, Sweden6.<br> +5 https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/grp/grp030.nsf/vLookupPDFs/IBM%20BladeCenter%20 <br>Product_Tikiri/$file/IBM%20BladeCenter%20Product_Tikiri.pdf<br>6 http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111215-712478.html<br> +11<br> +<hr> +<A name=12></a>In this respect, Iceland's climate is clear benefit for cloud hosting providers even though <br>it’s not nearly as cold as some more northerly locales. The oceanic climate contributes to <br>relatively stable temperatures over the year. Apart from insolation, there is relatively little <br>seasonal variation in the factors that contribute to data center cooling. On the negative <br>side, Iceland’s climate is generally rather humid, with an annual average of roughly 70.75%. <br>In order for outside air to be used for cooling purposes some dehumidification would be <br>needed.<br> +<b>Variable</b><br> +<b>Jan</b><br> +<b>Feb</b><br> +<b>Mar</b><br> +<b>Apr</b><br> +<b>May</b><br> +<b>Jun</b><br> +<b>Jul</b><br> +<b>Aug</b><br> +<b>Sep</b><br> +<b>Oct</b><br> +<b>Nov</b><br> +<b>Dec</b><br> +<b>Average temp. °C</b><br> +-2.60<br> +-2.59<br> +-1.59<br> +1.37<br> +5.24<br> +8.49<br> +10.31<br> +9.58<br> +6.29<br> +2.75<br> +-0.04<br> +-1.91<br> +<b>Insolation, kWh/m²/day</b><br> +0.11<br> +0.53<br> +1.31<br> +2.77<br> +4.11<br> +4.71<br> +4.16<br> +3.27<br> +2.17<br> +0.97<br> +0.25<br> +0.03<br> +<b>Wind speed, m/s</b><br> +10.20<br> +10.27<br> +9.63<br> +8.42<br> +7.18<br> +6.51<br> +6.40<br> +6.63<br> +7.62<br> +8.85<br> +8.76<br> +10.41<br> +<b>Humidity, %</b><br> +80<br> +78<br> +71<br> +69<br> +66<br> +63<br> +61<br> +67<br> +72<br> +77<br> +79.0<br> +(Reykjavík average temperature, insolation and windspeed, source: Gaisma.com)<br> +<b>Connectivity</b><br> +Iceland’s connectivity to the outside world has improved substantially over the last two <br>decades. Since 1994, submarine fiber optics connections have existed to the Europe <br>and North America. Since 2004, domestic Internet connectivity has gone up from 81% of <br>households to 90%, compared to EU growth from 41% to 65%. Of the 10% of Icelandic <br>households not connected to the Internet, 40% (4% of the total) claim not to want an Internet <br>connection, whereas 25% (2.5% of the total) say it is due to price of connectivity.<br> +<b>Submarine Cables</b><br> +As of November 2011, there are four fiber optics cable links to Iceland: DanIce, Greenland <br>Connect, FarIce, and CANTAT-3, in order of decreasing capacity. Several projects have <br>been proposed to increase the number of fiber optics links to Iceland; of them, Emerald <br>Express is the furthest towards completion.<br> +<b>Fiber optic cable</b><br> +<b>Owner</b><br> +<b>Total capacity</b><br> +<b>Installed capacity</b><br> +<b>Utilized capacity</b><br> +CANTAT-3<br> +Síminn<br> +7.5 Gb/s<br> +None<br> +Decommissioned<br> +FarIce<br> +Farice ehf<br> +720 Gb/s<br> +Unknown<br> + <br> +Danice<br> +Farice ehf<br> +5.2 Tb/s<br> +~20 Gb/s<br> + <br> +Greenland connect<br> +TELE Greenland<br> +1.9 Tb/s<br> +Unknown<br> + <br> +Emerald Express<br> +Emerald Networks<br> +58.6 Tb/s (planned)<br> +N/A<br> +Under construction<br> + <br>The CANTAT-3 was the first fiber optics cable connection to Iceland, greatly increasing the <br>country’s telecommunications capacity. Installed in 1994, it was disrupted in late 2006 and <br>was not returned to full capacity until mid-year 2007. The CANTAT-3 cable was retired in <br> +12<br> +<hr> +<A name=13></a>late 2010, due to age, operational costs, and low capacity.<br> +Farice ehf operates two fiber-optic submarine systems as of late 2011. It is partially owned <br>by the Icelandic state and Arion bank, but a 20% stake is held by Faroese shareholders.<br> +Their first system, FarIce, lies between Seyðisfjörður, Iceland and Dunnet Bay, Scotland with <br>a layover in Funningsfjørður in the Faroe Islands. From these locations it is backhauled to <br>Reykjavík, Edinburgh and Tórshavn respectively. It traverses a roughly 1,400 km route using <br>Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) transmission technology. It has been in <br>use since 2004 and is currently Iceland’s main communications line. Currently only roughly <br>3% of FarIce’s total potential capacity is installed, according to available sources.<br> +Farice ehf’s second system, Danice, was laid in 2008 and connects Landeyjarsandur in <br>Iceland to Blaabjerg, Denmark, with a planned expansion to Eemshaven, Netherlands. <br>Despite having significantly greater capacity than FarIce, it is much less utilized and mostly <br>used as a redundancy cable for FarIce.<br> +The most recent fiber optic connection to Iceland is through Greenland Connect, installed <br>in 2009 and owned and operated by TELE Greenland. It connects Milton, Trinity Bay, <br>Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, to Nuuk, Greenland, Qaqortoq, Greenland, and <br>Landeyjarsandur, Iceland. It contains two fiber pairs specified for 128 wavelengths carrying <br>10 Gb/s each. As its landing point in Iceland is co-located with the Danice cable, direct <br>bridging between them is possible.<br> +The Emerald Express is a planned 6x100x100 Gb/s fiber optics cable from the United States <br>to Ireland with an offshoot to the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland. Being constructed by <br>Emerald Atlantis, Ltd. and TE SubCom, Ltd., it is scheduled to enter service in late 2012 and <br>intends to facilitate ultra-low-latency connections to Europe and North America. Its Iceland <br>branch will presumably carry two pairs, one for connection to Ireland, the other to the United <br>States; the last pair connecting the US to Ireland directly.<br> +<b>Installed and Utilized Capacity</b><br> +Total capacity of installed fiber optic cables is currently around 7.8 Tb/s, not counting the <br>CANTAT-3 cable. However, endpoint equipment has only been installed for a fraction of this <br>capacity. The installed capacity is not known, but conservative estimates put it close to 200 <br>Gb/s, or around 2.5% of the total capacity.<br> +Current utilized capacity is also unknown, but various estimates can be used to arrive at a <br>figure. The combined foreign connectivity of universities and secondary colleges in Iceland is <br>currently 16.5 Gb/s through RHNet. As RHNet typically accounts for between 14.2%-14.9% <br>of total traffic through the Reykjavík Internet Exchange, it can be estimated that total foreign <br>bandwidth consumption is close to 120 Gb/s. This number may turn out to be severely <br>understated, but more detailed data is not available. <br> +13<br> +<hr> +<A name=14></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-14.png"><br> +(Map of proposed Emerald Express cable. Source: Emerald Networks)<br> + <br>Uplink redundancy to Europe is good due to the FarIce and DanIce cables going separate <br>routes. However, redundancy to the US is poor, since the only reliable connection is through <br>Greenland. Currently, in the case of an outage, rerouting would have to be through Europe—<br>presumably London. US redundancy will improve substantially when the Emerald Express is <br>completed. <br> <br>Overall uplink redundancy is becoming better, providing more infrastructural elasticity <br>and greater resilience. The older emergency satellite redundancy is slowly becoming less <br>relevant and is probably not realistically needed.<br> <br> +<b>Domestic Network</b><br> +The main domestic telecommunications hub is RIX (Reykjavík Internet Exchange), which is <br>operated by ISNIC. This hub connects the main Internet service providers and data centers <br>together.<br> +In general, domestic fiber optics and copper networks are operated by Míla, Fjarski and <br>Gagnaveita Reykjavíkur. Míla is a subsidiary of the formerly state-run phone company (since <br>privatized, currently known as Síminn). It operates a fiber optics ring around the country <br>which were installed by NATO, but has expanded it substantially and introduced additional <br>redundancy. It also operates fiber and copper networks in most settlements.<br> +Fjarki is a subsidiary of Landsvirkjun, the (mostly) state owned power company.<br> +14<br> +<hr> +<A name=15></a>Gagnaveita Reykjavíkur is a subsidiary of Orkuveita Reykjavíkur, the Reykjavík city <br>power company. It provides mostly fiber to the home connections but also operates some <br>communications backbones within the Reykjavík metropolitan area.<br> +<b>Round Trip Latency</b><br> +Round-trip latency to Europe is generally low, but varies widely depending on destination city <br>and provider, origin location and provider, and various other variables. Generally speaking <br>the network latency has low stochasticity (“jitter”), averaging around 4ms (milliseconds), <br>suggesting natural latency rather than network congestion.<br> +We did informal testing of multiple origin and endpoints on known locations to arrive at <br>some idea of latency trends. Typical round-trip times to London are close to 55ms; 31ms to <br>Copenhagen. Connections to Oslo trend around 70ms, Berlin around 71ms, and to Madrid <br>74ms. On connections closer to the uplinks, slightly better times were observed, while <br>household Internet connections showed slightly worse round-trip times. As such, none of this <br>was particularly unexpected.<br> +The theoretical roundtrip time for a photon traveling over the big circle route from Reykjavík <br>to London is 12.64ms; to Copenhagen it is 14.02ms. Therefore the Copenhagen connection <br>is as close to reasonable expectations as is possible, while the London connection could <br>possibly be improved. The FarIce endpoint is in Edinburgh, so packets bound for London <br>must traverse potentially congested and slow UK networks after their initial arrival.<br> +<b>Network Security</b><br> +No major network security incidents have occurred in Iceland. Denial of Service attacks <br>happen on a relatively small scale on a fairly regular basis, but are easily mitigated with <br>standard techniques. No large scale online attacks have occurred in recent years, although <br>in some cases competent attackers have been able to disable individual service providers <br>for a number of hours. This is not considered to be more frequent in Iceland than in the EU, <br>based on anecdotal evidence.<br> +Individual servers and home computers are moderately well protected from security threats <br>compared to other countries, owing to a fair degree of awareness, a comparatively low <br>incidence of pirated operating system software, and generally well configured routers on <br>home connections. That said, many computers run outdated operating systems with severe <br>security vulnerabilities, and many websites operate outdated web platforms, in particular <br>Wordpress and Joomla, which are common staging grounds for attack.<br> +The Icelandic government is acutely aware of the threats posed to the security of networks, <br>and in recently proposed amendments to the telecommunications act, provisions are made <br>for the establishment of a CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team). This should <br>increase multi-party coordination and responsiveness in the case of online attacks or other <br>ICT-related emergency, and thus overall communications resilience.<br> +<b>Future Connectivity Developments</b><br> +A number of proposals have been made for future developments in connectivity in Iceland. <br> +15<br> +<hr> +<A name=16></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-16.png"><br> + <br>One example which has frequently been brought up is that Iceland’s geographical situation <br>makes it ideal for connecting the American east coast, Europe, and East Asia, due to <br>the receding polar ice cover. Such a connection could land in Longyearbyen in Svalbard, <br>and have connections to Murmansk, some settlements along northern Siberia, and either <br>connect to Yakutsk via the Lena river or go through the Bering strait and connect to Alaska <br>on the one hand and Kamchatka and Japan on the other hand.<br> <br>This would shorten round-trip latency to East Asia substantially, as most current connections <br>go through the Mediterranean, down past India, and through the South China Sea. The <br>Longyearbyen connection would allow for redundancy to Norway through an existing <br>connection. Connections in Russia would help in Russia’s developing ICTs, as currently it is <br>estimated that 70% of Russian communications go through Sweden. However, it would be <br>vital to Europe’s communications security interests that such a connection have direct routes <br>to East Asia rather than an intermittent landing in Russia. There are numerous ways in <br>which such a proposal could be made beneficial to all parties, and it would open possibilities <br>for diverse applications from cross-continental high speed trading and currency arbitrage <br>to online gaming. For telephony applications, this connection would push the latency on <br>communications between Europe and East Asia down below the threshold of human <br>perception, itself a revolution in global telecommunications.<br> <br>Less ambitious potential developments that have been proposed include construction of <br>large data centers on the Reykjanes peninsula, construction of further fiber optics links to <br>Europe and America, and the establishment of data caches and mediation centers in Iceland <br>for high availability applications.<br> <br> +(Example routes for a “polar express” cable; also shows autumn arctic ice cover)<br> + <br> +16<br> +<hr> +<A name=17></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-17.png"><br> +The Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System (ROTACS) project aims to do <br>just that. According to an article <br> +(ROTACS telecommunication project outline; source: <a href="http://barentsnova.com/node/1737">http://barentsnova.com/node/1737)</a><br> + <br> +(ROTACS and Arctic Fibre; source: Laser Focus World7)<br> +TODO: <a href="http://barentsnova.com/node/1737">http://barentsnova.com/node/1737</a><br> +7 <a href="http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-48/issue-04/world-news/fiber-cables-to-span-the-arctic-ocean.html">http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-48/issue-04/world-news/fiber-cables-to-span-the-arctic-<br>ocean.html</a><br> +17<br> +<hr> +<A name=18></a><b>Jurisdiction</b><br> +Iceland is a parliamentary republic which gained independence from Denmark in 1944. It <br>is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Economic <br>Area (EEA), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the North Atlantic Treaty <br>Organization (NATO), amongst others. It is party to numerous international agreements <br>including Schengen.<br> +Iceland’s membership in the EEA means that outside of a few limited areas, all EU <br>commercial directives take effect in Iceland. In addition, both for conformity and utility, <br>Iceland has adopted various non-EEA relevant directives. This tendency has been <br>increasing as part of the preparations and negotiations for EU membership. As of 12 <br>December, 2011, eight out of 33 chapters have been closed in Iceland’s EU accession <br>negotiations. Of particular interest to this report, the chapter on information society and <br>media is considered to generally already conform to the EU <i>acquis</i>.<br> +<b>Commercial Issues</b><br> +After the collapse of the Icelandic banking sector in 2008, the Icelandic Central Bank <br>(Seðlabanki Íslands) was authorized to put limitations on the flow of capital, in particular <br>those with no relevance to goods or services. The Central Bank is also authorized to require <br>domestic companies to deposit and exchange foreign currency. As of November 2009 all <br>restrictions have been lifted on new investments, and in practice trade from Iceland is not <br>hindered substantially by the capital restrictions.<br> +VAT in Iceland is generally quite high, with most goods and services falling in the 25.5% <br>VAT category. However, law 163/2010 introduced new exceptions to the VAT law (law 50/<br>1988) which makes data processing and information provision, as well as “electronically <br>provided services” exempt from taxed capital flows.<br> +Further, this law allowed an exemption from VAT for the importation of servers and related <br>equipment (i.e., equipment which is necessary for the functioning of the servers and is <br>only of direct benefit to the owners of the servers) in cases where the owners have official <br>residence in other member states in the EEA, EFTA, or the Faroe Islands, and do not <br>have fixed operations in Iceland in accordance with Icelandic tax law. This exception puts <br>more specific requirements, for example that the owners of the servers pay VAT in their <br>home country, that the purpose of the operations be of such a nature that it would require <br>commercial registration if it were domestic, that the servers were imported specifically for <br>the purpose of operation in a data center which their owner is in business with, that the <br>servers and other equipment are used only by the owners, but not for other purposes within <br>the data center, and that the servers be used from outside of Iceland. This exception is due <br>for reconsideration in late 2013, but as it stands is exceptionally beneficial for cloud hosting <br>providers.<br> +<b>Overview of Icelandic Information Regulation</b><br> +18<br> +<hr> +<A name=19></a>Icelandic law conforms broadly to the European <i>acquis </i>regarding a number of different <br>information regulations.<br> <br>Telecommunications are in general governed by law 81/2003 (telecommunications act), <br>which implements EU directive 999/5/EC, regulation 2887/2000/EC, the Telecoms Package <br>(directives 2002/19/EC, 2002/20/EC, 2002/21/EC and 2002/22/EC), and directives 2002/58/<br>EC and 2002/77/EC.<br> <br>Electronic commerce and other electronic services are generally governed by law 30/<br>2002, which implements the e-Commerce directive (2000/31/EC), thereby establishing <br>intermediary liability limitations which are crucial to the functioning of Internet service <br>providers, hosting providers and data centers. The only practical failing of the Icelandic <br>implementation of the e-commerce directive is that allowance is made for injunctions <br>which, for historical reasons, can be issued by a regional sheriff (<i>sýslumaður</i>) without court <br>supervision. This has not caused problems in the context of intermediary liability limitations, <br>but has been used to stifle media on one occasion, and could potentially be abused further.<br> +Media is regulated under the media law, 38/2011, which implements Audiovisual <br>Media Services Directive (2007/65/EC). Broadcast media is also regulated by the <br>telecommunications act (81/2003).<br> <br>Personal and private data is protected under law 77/2000, which implements the Data <br>Protection Directive (95/46/EC). Electronic signatures are allowed as a valid form of <br>signature under law 28/2001, and to this end a national authentication card scheme has <br>been developed and is being distributed as a feature of banking cards.<br> <br>Freedom of access to government information is defined in law 50/1996. This law has been <br>under review, and a broad-reaching proposal for a new freedom of information law was <br>submitted to the Parliament during its 139th term (ending in October 2011), but did not <br>pass. A small subset of the changes proposed in that law by the relevant parliamentary <br>committee were adopted into a new version of the bill which was submitted to parliament <br>at the beginning of the 140th term. This new version did not include provisions proposed <br>by the review committee regarding public registration of government documents and public <br>advertisement of confidentiality terms, reasons and durations for secret documents.<br> <br>With regard to intellectual monopoly rights, patents are defined in law 17/1991, biopatents <br>in law 58/2000, descriptions of electronic components are protected under law 78/1993, <br>trademarks under law 45/1997, and in particular corporate logos are protected under law <br>155/2002. Finally, copyrights are defined in law 73/1972, which implements EU directives <br>89/552/EEC, 2003/4/EC, 2001/29/EC, 2001/84/EC, 91/250/EEC, 92/100/EEC, 93/83/<br>EEC, 93/98/EEC, 2004/48/EC (IPRED) and 2006/123/EC. Law 53/2006 defines specific <br>permissions regarding the collection of evidence pertaining to violations of intellectual <br>monopoly rights.<br> <br> +<b>Compatibility with European Union Directives</b><br> +As previously stated, Iceland’s laws regarding information technology and media are largely <br>in accordance with European <i>acquis</i>. However, in the European Commission’s Opinion on <br> +19<br> +<hr> +<A name=20></a>Iceland's application for membership of the European Union (COM(2010) 62)8, a few minor <br>issues are laid out.<br> +The most salient issue is that the EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) has not <br>been transposed. This is however a trivial issue——the telecommunications act contains <br>provisions for data retention which originate from early drafts of the data retention, and is in <br>all regards equivalent to the Data Retention Directive. Therefore, transposition is a formality. <br>Data retention will be discussed further in the later section on electronic surveillance.<br> +Also according to the opinion, while “the legislative and administrative structure is similar to <br>most EU Member States” the appointment procedures for the national regulatory authority <br>(the post and telecoms administration, <i>póst- og fjarskiptastofnun</i>) have to be revisited to <br>ensure transparency, objectivity, and high standards regarding security of tenure.<br> +It goes on to say that “in the field of information society services, the main directives have <br>been transposed into the Icelandic legal order, i.e. the Directives on electronic signatures, e-<br>commerce and conditional access.” <br> +<b>Intermediary Liability Limitations</b><br> +Law 30/2002 on e-commerce and electronic services implements the e-commerce directive <br>(2000/31/EC), which provides indemnity for "mere conduits", such as telecommunications <br>networks and Internet hosting providers.<br> +There are few and mostly well defined exceptions to this indemnity: <br> +●<br> +an injunction from a sheriff or court order<br> +●<br> +an notice-and-takedown procedure regarding copyright infringement<br> +●<br> +knowledge of child pornography<br> + <br>The exception for general court orders without further definition is worrying, due to the <br>remnants of an magistrate system mostly abolished in 1991. Prior to this, the district “sheriff” <br>(<i>sýslumaður</i>) also served as magistrate and had the ability to, amongst other things, enact <br>injunctions. When their magisterial rights were revoked with the 1991 law, they retained <br>their ability to enact injunctions. Although this has not caused problems in terms of Internet <br>hosting, a sheriff’s injunction was used in 2009 to prevent the state broadcaster, RÚV, <br>from airing a story pertaining to a leaked large loan book from the bank Kaupþing. As the <br>injunction was revoked when the injunction had failed, it was never taken to court, so its <br>veracity under the constitution was not tested.<br> <br>The exceptions should probably be improved by clarifying which exact circumstances can <br>trigger such exceptions, as well as restricting the injunction measures to actual courts.<br> +<b>Surveillance</b><br> +The Telecommunications Act (Law 81/2003) was amended in 2005 to include provisions <br>for data retention. It applies to telecommunication providers and its current implementation <br>mandates the retention of records of all connection data for 6 months. It states that <br>communications companies may only deliver information on telecommunications in criminal <br> +8 <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2010/is_opinion_analytical-report.pdf">http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2010/is_opinion_analytical-report.pdf</a><br> +20<br> +<hr> +<A name=21></a>cases or on matters of public safety. It also states that such information may not be given to <br>others than police and public prosecution.<br> +According to COM(2010) 62, an analytical report accompanying the communication from <br>the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council containing the Commission <br>Opinion on Iceland’s application for membership to the European Union, Iceland has <br>not currently implemented the Data Retention Directive. This directive is currently being <br>discussed (December 2011) in the Icelandic Parliament, however there are complications <br>owing to the fact that the Data Retention Directive, 2006/24/EC, came into effect one year <br>after the Icelandic Data Retention provisions, which have not since been overturned or <br>amended. However, the 2005 law which established data retention in Iceland was made <br>at the request of the Icelandic police chief (<i>Ríkislögreglustjóri</i>), making use of the current <br>discussions that were then ongoing in the European Commission about the issue. Therefore, <br>the implementation of data retention is structurally equivalent to the data retention directive, <br>although formally the EU directive has not been implemented. <br> <br>During discussions in the Icelandic parliament about the (formal) implementation of <br>the data retention directive, some parliamentarians were surprised to find that such a <br>broad surveillance law already existed in the telecommunications act. There have been <br>discussions, both public and within the parliament, about the potential abolition of data <br>retention. However, this would impede the EU membership process and is therefore unlikely <br>to gain traction without any political support from within the EU.<br> <br>There is an ongoing discussion about granting police enhanced surveillance rights, in <br>the form of proactive investigative measures aimed at counteracting organized crime and <br>terrorism. Although these measures have not yet been implemented, there is currently a <br>resolution proposal being processed in the parliament. The interior minister, Ögmundur <br>Jónasson, has independently stated that he is preparing proposals for such a law. The <br>scope of such a law is unknown, but it is clear that proactive investigation measures would <br>necessarily have to include expanded rights for telecommunications surveillance.<br> <br>Wiretapping and other electronic surveillance is regulated under the Telecommunications <br>Act (81/2003) and further defined in Rules no. 837/2006 on Electronic Surveillance9.<br> <br>Both data retention and surveillance support add to operating costs and jurisdictional <br>uncertainty for cloud hosting providers, especially given the complexity of unsettled <br>international cross-jurisdictional issues.<br> <br>A new bill has been proposed in the Parliament, by the Interior Minister, for the <br>establishment of a CERT team. The proposal as it stands contains provisions for allowing <br>the CERT team to perform limited surveillance of a computer network, having been granted <br>permission to do so by the network operator. It also gives the CERT team the right to report <br>illegal activities on the network to the police. This combination could potentially be abused <br>as a gateway to blanket surveillance, as has been noted in a memo issued by the Icelandic <br> +9 <a href="http://www.personuvernd.is/information-in-english/greinar//nr/610">http://www.personuvernd.is/information-in-english/greinar//nr/610</a><br> +21<br> +<hr> +<A name=22></a>Digital Freedoms Society10, but with greater restrictions (such as a ban on deep packet <br>inspection and identification of individual users or network analysis that could compromise a <br>user’s identity), it could serve to improve network security.<br> +<b>Censorship</b><br> +No state censorship is currently practiced in Iceland. <br> +Corporate censorship has been employed by telecoms providers in a few cases, at request <br>of police and child protection authorities. Most notable was the anonymous forum site <br><i>Ringulreið</i>, which was accused of being a center for cyber-bullying. After the major telecoms <br>providers, Síminn and Vodafone, voluntarily censored access to the site from its users, the <br>site was shut down by its operators. <br> +Some ISPs, most notably Síminn, the largest ISP in Iceland (formerly the state telecoms <br>company) offer parental filtering services to their customers on an opt-in basis. Such <br>blocking software is largely controlled by end-users, although it is somewhat unclear by <br>which criteria websites are added to these filter lists. However, no anti-competitive, political <br>or religious censorship has been noticed in these systems.<br> +Over the last year, it can be argued that abuse of libel law has been on the rise. Journalists <br>and commentators have been increasingly found guilty of libel for comments made on online <br>media. In particular, one journalist has been found guilty for directly quoting an interviewee, <br>whose statement was considered to be libelous by the court. In another case, an elderly <br>woman was found guilty of libel for a Facebook comment wherein she made a value <br>judgement on the characters of the claimants. Of course, in each of these cases there are <br>competing interests and some uncertainty left to the courts, but many have commented on <br>the potential chilling effects associated with such lawsuits and have called for reform.<br> +<b>Data Protection</b><br> +Data protection is regulated under law 77/2000, which implements EU Directive 95/46/EC <br>(Data Protection Directive) and parts of EU Directive 97/7/EC (Equal Treatment in Social <br>Security Directive). The day-to-day management of compliance is managed by the Data <br>Protection Authority.<br> +Various rules and regulations apply with regards to data protection that might have <br>relevance to data centers and information hosting, specifically:<br> +●<br> +<a href="http://www.personuvernd.is/information-in-english/greinar//nr/610">Rules no. 837/2006 on Electronic Surveillance.</a><br> +●<br> +<a href="http://www.personuvernd.is/information-in-english/greinar//nr/441">Rules no. 698/2004 on The Obligation to Notify and Processing which requires a <br>Permit.</a><br> +●<br> +<a href="http://www.personuvernd.is/information-in-english/greinar//nr/442">Rules no. 299/2001 on security of personal data</a><br> +●<br> +<a href="http://eng.domsmalaraduneyti.is/laws-and-regulations/nr/1042">Regulation no. 322/2001 on Management of Personal Information by the Police</a><br> +10 Full disclosure: one of the authors of this report, Smári McCarthy, co-signed the memo <br>in question and is a board member of the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society at the time of <br>writing.<br> +22<br> +<hr> +<A name=23></a><IMG src="Greens-IslandsofResilience-23.png"><br> +<b>Human Resources</b><br> +Iceland is a highly educated country. Out of a workforce of 181,000 people, 33.3% have <br>primary education, 38.2% have vocational education, and 28.1% have university education.<br> +After the financial crisis started in 2008, unemployment rose from 1.01% in 2007 to 8.13% <br>in 2010. Recent reports suggest that the unemployment rate is going down, but that has not <br>been confirmed by publicly available statistics.<br> +A 2006 OECD report showed that the number of scientific and engineering publications <br>in internationally recognised journals had increased at an average annual growth rate of <br>5.7% since 1998 and that between 1991 and 2001, the number of publications per million <br>population increased by 50%, from 403 to 610, compared to averages of 416 and 556 in <br>those same years in the EU15. At that time, Iceland ranked eighth in the number of <br>citations per paper (worldwide). The financial crisis caused some reductions in innovation <br>and research & development funding, but this primarily had the effect of shifting researchers <br>further into private sector research operations and startup companies. On the other hand, <br>the Icelandic Innovation Center has started a number of seed labs where startup companies <br>and small proprietors can rent inexpensive office space.<br> <br> +Bala Kamallakharan has noted11 that 2011 was a record year for insolvencies in Iceland, <br>while the number of new company registrations has dropped significantly. This could <br>perhaps be attributed to unavailability of capital available to startups, or perhaps deflation <br>of the last decade’s bubble. Without suitable employment for its highly skilled labor force to <br>absorb, Icelanders will either resort to leaving for better opportunities abroad or remain idle <br>domestically letting their considerable talent go to waste. <br> +11 <a href="http://www.startupiceland.com/2012/01/2011-has-been-record-year-in-iceland.html">http://www.startupiceland.com/2012/01/2011-has-been-record-year-in-iceland.html</a><br> +23<br> +<hr> +<A name=24></a> <br>Either way, the combination of experienced researchers, high unemployment rate, low rate <br>of startup and high insolvency rate suggests that unless Iceland continues to experience an <br>increase in “brain drain”, where well educated people seek employment outside the country, <br>a significant underemployed or unemployed workforce will exist in Iceland.<br> <br> +<b>Icelandic Modern Media Initiative<br></b>On July 16th 2010, the Icelandic Parliament, Alþingi, unanimously adopted a parliamentary <br>resolution to develop in Iceland advanced legislation for the protection of the rights to <br>information and free speech. Since then, the <i>Icelandic Modern Media Initiative</i>, or IMMI, as it <br>was called, has been in development, both inside the government ministries and institutions, <br>and within Icelandic civil society. The originators of the IMMI initiative founded, in 2011, the <br>International Modern Media Institute, a synacronymous civil society organization working <br>towards ensuring that the goals and spirit of IMMI are met in Iceland, and sharing the ideas <br>and developments with the world at large.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> +<b>Subject area</b><br> +<b>Status</b><br> +<b>Notes</b><br> +<b>Source Protection</b><br> +<b>Complete</b><br> +<b>Media law + constitution</b><br> +<b>Freedom of Information Act</b><br> +<b>Pending </b><br> +<b>New law replacing older law + </b><br> +<b>ratification</b><br> +<b>constitution</b><br> +<b>Communications Protection</b><br> +<b>Pending </b><br> +<b>Changes to law + constitution</b><br> +<b>ratification</b><br> +<b>Intermediary Liability </b><br> +<b>In development</b><br> +<b>Changes to law + constitution</b><br> +<b>Limitations</b><br> +<b>Publishing Liability Limitations</b><br> +<b>In development</b><br> +<b>Changes to law</b><br> +<b>Whistleblower Protection</b><br> +<b>In development</b><br> +<b>Changes to law + constitution</b><br> +<b>Prior Restraint Limitations</b><br> +<b>Pending </b><br> +<b>Constitution + regulatory changes</b><br> +<b>ratification +<br>In Development</b><br> +<b>Judicial Process Protections</b><br> +<b>On hiatus</b><br> + <br> +<b>Network Neutrality</b><br> +<b>Pending </b><br> +<b>Constitution</b><br> +<b>ratification</b><br> +<b>Virtual Limited Liability </b><br> +<b>On hiatus</b><br> + <br> +<b>Companies</b><br> +<b>Freedom of Expression Prize</b><br> +<b>On hiatus</b><br> + <br> +24<br> +<hr> +<A name=25></a><b>Source Protection<br></b>The protection of sources refers to measures which forbid journalists from exposing the <br>identity of their sources without the source’s permission. The purpose of such measures is <br>to increase the willingness and security of sources who consider themselves to be at risk, <br>when providing information of criminal wrongdoing, corruption, negligence or other socially <br>unacceptable behavior to journalists.<br> <br>Journalistic source protection was implemented in Icelandic law 38/2011 (the media act). <br>The source protection clause is defined in article 25., which states:<br> <br> +Employees of media organizations which have been licensed or registered with the media committee <br>are forbidden to expose the identity of source for articles, books, retellings, announcements or other <br>material, regardless of whether it has been published, if the source or the author requested anonymity. <br>Employees of the media organization are also forbidden to release data which contain information <br>regarding the source or author in such circumstances.<br>The rule in the 1st paragraph also applies to those who, due to connections to the media organization <br>or the production of the material has gained knowledge of the identity of the source or author, or has <br>attained data to that effect.<br>Source protection under paragraphs 1 and 2 can only be relieved with the permission of the source or <br>the author, or on the basis of article 119 of the law on the prosecution of criminal cases, no. 88/2008.12<br> + <br> <br>In addition to the stipulation in the new media law, the proposed constitution for Iceland <br>contains, in article 16, the statement:<br> <br> +The protection of journalists, their sources of information and whistle-blowers shall be ensured by law. <br>It is not permitted to breach confidentiality without the consent of the person providing the information <br>except in the process of criminal proceedings and pursuant to a court order.<br> + <br>This provides equivalent protection under the constitution, if ratified, ensuring that the source <br>protection clause would not be removed from law without referendum.<br> <br><b>Status: Complete.<br> </b><br> +<b>Freedom of Information Act<br></b>Access to government documents and records is mandated in Iceland by law 50/1996, (the <br>information act). The current Icelandic FOI law does not conform to CoE convention, and it <br>does not match the standards set in the Aarhus convention for environmental information.13<br> <br>An updated information act was proposed at Alþingi in 2011, however, due to end of term <br>in late September 2011, the bill did not complete the third reading in parliament and was <br>therefore dropped. It has since been reintroduced with many of the changes merged in and <br>multiple improvements made, however, the newly proposed version does not meet the high <br>standard the bill had previously achieved.<br> <br>IMMI submitted an 8 page report and a 84 page change comparison of the two bills to <br>the constitutional and regulatory committee of Alþingi in February 2012#, criticizing the <br>government’s backpedaling against the changes that had previously been proposed in <br> +12 The exception in article 119 of law 88/2008 applies to the case where criminal proceedings for serious offences cannot be <br>resolved without the identity of the source or author being exposed. In such cases, it has been recommended although it is not <br>stipulated in statutes, that the identity first be exposed to the judge <i>in camera</i>, so that the judge can appropriately measure the <br>potential risk to the source against the benefit of the source’s exposure. This is generally considered an acceptable limitation to <br>the otherwise absolute source protection clause.<br>13 The Aarhus convention was ratified by law 131/2011.<br> +25<br> +<hr> +<A name=26></a>parliamentary committee. At the moment, the committee work is proceeding.<br> <br>Cautious optimism suggests that the committee will once again restore the bill to its former <br>state and that it will be accepted. If this is the case, the norm for access to information <br>in Iceland will be altered from being a ‘publish on request’ regime to ‘publish by default’ <br>regime.14 Then, any documents which are not published can be at least listed along with <br>information about why it has been held back and FOI requests can be made for those <br>documents specifically. This change is the most important alteration of many.<br> <br>In the meantime, the new proposed constitution of Iceland has guaranteed a substantial <br>improvement of information rights.15<br> <br><b>Status: Pending ratification</b><br> +<b>Network Neutrality<br></b>Network neutrality is a very broad concept, but generally refers to the idea that each node <br>operating on the network should be considered equal to all others in terms of access. <br>Numerous governments and corporations have instantiated various forms of censorship and <br>containerization#. Due to technical limitations of the IPv4 space, almost every end-user of <br>the Internet can be considered in an aberration of the end-to-end principle often from NAT <br>(Network Address Translation), this makes their nodes second class citizens of the Internet. <br>There is a lot to be done in terms of network neutrality.<br> <br>This is going to be a topic for many years, but for now IMMI has decided to take the first <br>steps. Article 14 of the proposed constitution creates an obligation for the government to <br>protect the Internet, with the same constraints as those on free speech in general. Although <br>those limitations should definitely be questioned, this must be considered a substantial <br>victory, as no country currently even mentions the Internet in its constitution, let alone <br>defends it:<br> <br> +The government shall guarantee conditions that are conducive to open and informed public discussion. <br>Access to the Internet and information technology shall not be curtailed except by a decision of a court <br>of law and on the same substantive conditions that apply to restrictions on the freedom of expression.<br> + <br><b>Status: Pending Ratification</b><br> +<b>Communications Protection and Communications Data Retention<br></b>In the interests of protecting privacy and source confidentiality, protection of communications <br>is a vital ingredient to any coherent information regulation strategy.<br> <br>The protection of communications is a wide project that can be roughly split into two tasks. <br>On the one hand, removing existing threats to communications protection from law, and on <br>the other hand establishing new protections for communications.<br> <br>In January 2012, as Alþingi was debating the adoption of the European Union’s Data <br>Retention Directive, IMMI produced a report outlining the dangers of blanket data retention. <br>In committee, IMMI’s views got the support of the Privacy Directorate, and this led to the <br>parliamentary committee requesting that the directive be postponed indefinitely and that <br>the foreign minister inform the European Union that Iceland would not be implementing the <br> +14 meaning that instead of FOI requests having to be made for each document individually in order to obtain a private copy for <br>dissemination, which is a slow and complicated process, the rule will become that government publishes all documents publicly <br>by default, for instance in an online database.<br>15<a href="http://www.stjornlagarad.is/english/"> http://www.stjornlagarad.is/english/ Articile 15 (English PDF available from the website)</a><br> +26<br> +<hr> +<A name=27></a>directive.<br> <br>This however was not enough, as Iceland has in law a data retention clause (paragraph <br>3, article 42, of the telecommunications act, 81/2003, amended in 2005), which predates <br>the EU’s Data Retention Directive by a year. IMMI has argued against this clause, both in <br>newspapers and in opinions to parliament, and has drafted a bill for the removal of the act.<br> <br>More recently, IMMI was asked to submit proposals for improvement of certain articles of <br>the telecommunications act being added to introduce a Computer Emergency Response <br>Team (CERT) in Icelandic law, so as to better balance against privacy concerns. In these <br>proposals, IMMI included the following proposal:<br> <br> +Paragraph 3 of article 42, requiring the retention of telecommunication data, is dropped.<br> +Appended to article 42 is a new paragraph:<br>Parties other than the sender and the receiver of electronic packet-switched communications are <br>forbidden to inspect or electronically process the payload of the packets. Headers and metadata of <br>packet-switched communications shall only be stored for the period needed to resolve the routing of the <br>communications and security measures as per article 47. a.<br> <br> +This would effectively remove the data retention provisions from law, if adopted, and <br>simultaneously improve the communications protection by making it a criminal offense to <br>intercept and inspect communications, by methods such as Deep Packet Inspection. It is our <br>hope that this provision be adopted in law.<br> <br>In addition to this development, the proposed constitution of Iceland contains a clause in <br>article 11 expressly forbidding the search of communications, except with a valid court <br>order.16<br> <br> <br><b>Status: Pending ratification & in further development</b><br> +<b>Intermediary Liability Limitations<br></b>The original idea for limited liability for telecommunications intermediaries comes from the <br>development of the Communications Decency Act in the United States around 1996. Since <br>then, the European Union has adopted the e-Commerce Directive, which implements similar <br>limitations. The directive is implemented in Iceland as the electronic commerce and other <br>electronic services act (30/2002), and has equivalent measures.<br> <br>Immediately on exploring the intermediary liability limitations (ILLs) in the Icelandic law, a <br>striking flaw presents itself in the form of “general court orders”. This phrasing is very vague <br>and more importantly lends itself to being understood that district sheriffs, who in Iceland <br>have injunctive powers, can issue takedown orders. IMMI has an interest in tightening this <br>language, and intends to make proposals to do so in the coming months.<br> <br>More importantly though, ILLs have been under attack globally in recent years. A great many <br>changes in strategies relating to intellectual monopoly enforcement, protection of official <br>secrets and political attempts at opening doors for corruption have revolved around eroding <br>ILLs. In order to counteract this trend, IMMI has partnered with several organizations to <br>explore what can be done to define a legal and technical defense of both Internet endpoints <br>and intermediaries that can better withstand political attempts at erosion. This work is in <br>early stages, but some results are scheduled for July 2012.<br> <br><b>Status: In development</b><br> +16 <a href="http://www.stjornlagarad.is/english/">http://www.stjornlagarad.is/english/ Articile 11</a><br> +27<br> +<hr> +<A name=28></a><b>Libel Tourism Protection<br></b>Libel tourism is the act of a company or individual choosing to pursue lawsuits against <br>individuals or companies in a country with a low threshold for libel lawsuits. Legal extortion <br>schemes have been perpetuated with companies being tried in countries such as England <br>and Wales even if the defendant resides elsewhere in the world. This is a form of forum <br>shopping. Implementing laws that prevent or diminish the effects of libel tourism in Iceland <br>will protect Icelandic citizens and residents from this kind of forum shopping. It’s fairly <br>important that people can predict with some certainty where, if anywhere, they will be <br>taken to court. This also applies to companies, who base a lot of their operational security <br>on knowing the legal environment. In this way, ending libel tourism will encourage foreign <br>investment and provide financial security for companies operating here already.<br> <br>For now, Iceland has a mechanism. As a signatory of the Lugano treaty, Icelandic courts <br>can decide not to uphold foreign court verdicts which go against the rule of law in Iceland. <br>This means that a libel verdict from a foreign country can be challenged in an Icelandic court <br>on the basis of article 34 of the Lugano treaty if it comes from a country with a substantially <br>different burden of proof for libel than Iceland does. This has not been tested, but is currently <br>our best bet.<br> <br>In the meantime, British libel reform efforts are going well, and coupled with a well written <br>libel law in Iceland, may be sufficient to put an end to libel tourism - at least in Iceland. When <br>that is finished, the bigger issue of International Forum Shopping remains.<br> <br><b>Status: Complete / Untested solution</b><br> +<b>Libel Reform and Publishing Liability Limitations<br></b>The media law from 2011 introduced new rules regarding media liability. However, since its <br>adoption, a number of court cases have been heard in Reykjavík which cast a shadow on <br>the reform and point at a deeper structural fault in the current libel regime.<br> <br>Although media liability is defined in the print law and superseded by the media law, the <br>terms of libel itself are defined in chapter XXV of the criminal act, which treats violations <br>of privacy and libel as equal criminal offenses. Under the criminal act, it is illegal to make <br>truthful accusations, to offend somebody publicly or privately, or to make unfavorable <br>comments about deceased persons. As these are criminal offenses, they have assigned <br>imprisonment penalties from 1 to 4 years, as well as fines, although imprisonment is rarely <br>used in practice.<br> <br>The global trend in libel law is to move it away from criminal sanctions and into tort law, <br>making it a civil offense, punishable only by fines. Alongside this, the scope of libel is to be <br>narrowed, making the truth a valid defense and ensuring that people cannot be brought to <br>charge for making value judgements against another’s character. It should be legal to call a <br>person a jerk, although it is questionable whether you can call somebody a murderous jerk <br>without backing it up with evidence.<br> <br>IMMI has completed the basic research needed to implement these changes and drafted <br>a bill which aim to alleviate at least most of the existing concerns. Due to parliamentary <br>scheduling rules, it cannot be introduced until the autumn of 2012.<br> <br><b>Status: Pending</b><br> +28<br> +<hr> +<A name=29></a><b>Whistleblower Protection<br></b>A whistleblower is a person that tries to disclose or report information on situations affecting <br>the public that may evidence of criminal activity. Protection for individuals reporting <br>institutionalized corruption is paramount. They may be providing relevant information <br>to the public record, such as data or testimony about relevant matters like public health, <br>passed incidents, crime, government biases, democracy undermining practices, violations of <br>constitutional rights, corruption and bribery.<br> <br>Threats to whistleblowers come from corporate interests, governmental interests, criminal <br>activities, biases inherent in legal and judicial officials and systems. Whistleblower <br>protections must include a right to anonymity, physical, financial and social security.<br> <br>As the threat models, institutional settings and personal complexities of whistleblowing vary <br>widely, this is perhaps the most complicated of IMMI’s tasks. While a lot of development <br>work has been put into this issue already, we feel that the adequate protection of <br>whistleblowers cannot be completed without deep investigation.<br> <br>As one core issue, the idea of corporate personhood must be challenged. Disregarding <br>other arguments for doing so, it is very important that it not be decided that companies and <br>other corporate vehicles have a right to privacy, as this would pit whistleblower activities up <br>against privacy and data protection law, the sanctity of which is of equal importance. It’s a <br>fight nobody should have to fight. That said, there has been no such ruling in Iceland and it <br>is not foreseeable that that will change; it’s merely one issue of many that must be monitored <br>and pro-actively taken action on.17<br> <br><b>Status: In development</b><br> +<b>Prior Restraint Limitations<br></b>Prior restraint is banned under article 73 of the Icelandic constitution. A slightly stronger <br>implementation of prior restraint limitations are introduced in the new constitution, which is <br>pending ratification.<br> <br>Outside of constitutional guarantees, IMMI also has an interest in protecting against abuse <br>of injunctions by sheriffs, who still have injunctive authorities as a holdover from their now <br>abolished tribunal role. This fits in with the discussion of Intermediary Liability Limitations <br>stated above, and IMMI expects to be able to address these two concerns jointly.<br> <br><b>Status: Pending ratification<br> </b><br> +<b>Virtual Limited Liability Companies<br></b>Icelandic corporate law is currently somewhat hostile to foreign ownership from outside the <br>European Economic Area (EEA). The idea of Virtual Limited Liability Companies is to allow <br>for virtually defined corporate entities, whereby the ownership is somewhat ephemeral, as <br>long as the owners adhere to certain Icelandic transparency requirements. In that way, a <br>virtually operated commpany would have tax obligations and operational safe harbor rights <br>in Iceland like any other company, but gets to operate virtually in exchange for some strict <br>guarantees of transparency and such.<br> <br> +17 For more detail see:: <a href="http://immi.is/Press_Release:_IMMI_Status_Update,_April_2012">http://immi.is/Press_Release:_IMMI_Status_Update,_April_2012 </a><br> +29<br> +<hr> +<A name=30></a>This issue has more to do with creating a pleasant investment environment than explicitly <br>improving the information regime in Iceland. For that reason, it has been relegated to the set <br>of the last things we aim to accomplish in this set, and is therefore on hiatus for now.<br> <br><b>Status: On hiatus.<br></b> <br> <br> +<b>Selected Bibliography</b><br> +●<br> +Orkustefna fyrir Ísland; Stýrihópur um mótun heildstæðrar orkustefnu; <a href="http://www.nea.is/media/gagnasofn/Orkustefna-fyrir-Island.pdf">http://<br>www.nea.is/media/gagnasofn/Orkustefna-fyrir-Island.pdf<br></a> <br> +●<br> +Iceland. What a Great Place to Put a Data Center; Verne Global / Martin Hannigan; <br><a href="http://www.uknof.org.uk/uknof12/Hanningan-Undersea.pdf">http://www.uknof.org.uk/uknof12/Hanningan-Undersea.pdf</a><br> + <br> +●<br> +<a href="http://www.os.is/gogn/Skyrslur/OS-2010/OS-2010-07.pdf">Orkuspá fyrir Ísland 2010-2050; Orkustofnun; http://www.os.is/gogn/Skyrslur/OS-<br>2010/OS-2010-07.pdf<br></a> <br> +●<br> +Benchmarking Study on Iceland as a Location for Data Centre Activity; Invest in <br><a href="http://www.invest.is/resources/files/invest.is/BDC%20Report.pdf">Iceland Agency; http://www.invest.is/resources/files/invest.is/BDC%20Report.pdf<br></a> <br> +●<br> +Mikil arðsemi af raforkusölu til stóriðju; Vísir; <a href="http://www.visir.is/mikil-ardsemi-af-raforkusolu-til-storidju/article/2011712209851">http://www.visir.is/mikil-ardsemi-af-<br>raforkusolu-til-storidju/article/2011712209851<br></a> <br> +●<br> +<a href="http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/62/36648108.pdf">Policy Mix for Innovation in Iceland; OECD; http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/62/<br>36648108.pdf</a><br> +30<br> +<hr> + <!-- <script> --> + <!-- $(document.body).annotator() --> + <!-- $(document.body).annotator() --> + <!-- .annotator('addPlugin', 'Store') --> + + <!-- </script> --> +</BODY> +</HTML> |