Icelanders hope to host controversial data from around world

Iceland may become a haven for publishing controversial information, protected by the world's best laws on press freedom

Whistleblower site Wikileaks is helping to create a project that could make Iceland an offshore center for the publication of leaked documents. Wikileaks has worked with parliamentarians, lawyers and other organizations to develop a draft law that will be presented to Iceland's parliament, the Althingi, on Feb. 16.

If the law is passed, then data centers powered by Iceland's renewable energy sources could, in future, make the country a haven for defending freedom and transparency of information, rather than a tax haven for concealing financial secrets.

Icelanders are playing a key role in this process, hoping to do away with the recent past and change society into something better as their country recovers from the global financial crisis.

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Whistleblower site Wikileaks is helping to create a project that could make Iceland an offshore center for the publication of leaked documents. Wikileaks has worked with parliamentarians, lawyers and other organizations to develop a draft law that will be presented to Iceland's parliament, the Althingi, on Feb. 16.

If the law is passed, then data centers powered by Iceland's renewable energy sources could, in future, make the country a haven for defending freedom and transparency of information, rather than a tax haven for concealing financial secrets.

Icelanders are playing a key role in this process, hoping to do away with the recent past and change society into something better as their country recovers from the global financial crisis.

"One of the things the nation has been calling for is honesty and transparency. We feel that it is important to have a vision for the future," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, who as an artist, Internet pioneer and activist was elected to parliament almost as a symbol of the political transition.

"I probably would never have tried to get into parliament or have any chances to get into parliament with my rather radical activist background before the collapse. So people want members of parliament to represent something different than before," said Jonsdottir.

The aftermath of the financial meltdown has nurtured a rebellious public mood in the country, where street demonstrations and protests against nepotism and corruption have led to the first left-wing government in Iceland's history.

"We not only had a complete financial meltdown, we had to re-evaluate our moral codes," said Jonsdottir.

"Icelanders, after the collapse, feel ashamed of belonging to this society they're living in. Often, when they go abroad, they do not even want to say that they are from Iceland, because of the pictures that have been drawn up of Icelanders, that they're all driving in Land Rovers with plasma screens and so forth," she said.

In order to fulfill this need for transformation in society, the idea was born of creating a law to give Iceland the best protection in the world for freedom of information and freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression and freedom of information are being thrown out all over the world, but people do not even realize it, so it is important that at least some countries can serve as protectors of the world's free information, Jonsdottir said.

The hope is that a new law can create a legal sanctuary, to protect people so they can publish information without being chased by lawyers and courts, while information and sources are secured, she said.

She described the project as the opposite of a tax haven. Tax adopts regulations from other countries to protect secrecy, while Iceland will adopt regulations from countries that protect transparency, she said.

Jonsdottir does not think that it will be a problem to convince the country's conservative forces to support the bill, which is conceived as a joint proposal from parliament to the government.