WHO DOES A SERVER ANSWER TO WHEN IT SITS IN NO COUNTRY?
A rack of servers in orbit is American, Chinese or Italian, depending on one line written in a register at the United Nations, not far from here, and that line is picked by whoever launches it. So everything is fine, no? It’s open. No, because the rules are old and they were never written for data living up there.
Stay with me, I explain it. It works like ships. In space, no state can claim sovereignty. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says so, so territory counts for nothing. What counts is registration. Article 6 of the same treaty says the state that enters the object in its own register keeps jurisdiction and control over anyone inside it. The Registration Convention of 1975 then turned that register into a real thing, kept in Vienna, so the satellite has a flag. And when there is more than one launching state, they agree among themselves on who registers it. One state offers itself as the port of registration, and the mechanism is ready. Flags of convenience in orbit.
On data, the story is different. And this is where the idea of space tax haven falls apart. Data law never followed. GDPR in Europe, Article 3, for two reasons. Well, the one processing the data is established, and who the service is offered to. So the machine can sit 500 kilometers up: if there is data of the people, for example, in Europe, inside it, the regulation applies all the same. And moving that data to register states outside the Union is, to all effects, a transfer outside the Union with everything that comes with it.
Then, all sorted. No. A data center on the ground can be inspected. We walk in, we look at the cabinets, we seize a disk. In orbit, that door doesn’t exist. The only point where the system touches the ground is the antenna, the station that transmits, and the country where that antenna is planted. Anyone who wants to check has to go through there, or they do not go through at all. And whoever launches picks both things: the register the server answers to, and the country where the signal lands. So the rules are there, and they are 60 years old, written for objects that orbit, not for data that lives inside them.
What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC #SpaceLaw #DataPrivacy #DigitalSovereignty