A majority of the members of the AMS-IX is behind the controversial expansion of the national internet exchange to the United States itself. The organization will investigate how Dutch members against interception activities of the US can be protected.
At the extraordinary General Meeting of members on Friday voted by a majority of the members for the plan, report, AMS-IX, which is now the required support to the setting up of a legal entity in the US. The AMS-IX has defined the possible risks for the AMS-IX members and customers of the association AMS-IX to minimize.
The mood was through the internet, because around 80 percent of the AMS-IX members is established abroad. Eventually voted 123 AMS-IX-members. The members voted 102 against while 14 chose not to vote, writes Nu.nl.
The initiative is set in motion by the US-based data centers, contentaanbieders and telecommunications providers, including many AMS-IX-members and the aim is to ‘stimulate the development of neutral and distributed Internet exchanges and reduce the complexity of ip-interconnection and costs in the USA. The project would also be in line with the Long Term Commercial Strategy of AMS-IX.
Tweakers spoke in recent days, both supporters and opponents of the initiative. It was LeaseWeb behind the expansion into the US. “If you look at two other major exchanges, LINX and DE-CIX, which will also go to the United States,” says Alex de Joode of Leaseweb. “We think it’s important, certainly for the Netherlands, the AMS-IX service. The risks are fairly limited if you do it the correct legal way of doing things. When I the board to hear, it is that also of plan. There is only a commercial risk, and also that you can minimize it.”
Also of, among others, Akamai, and Netflix, there were indications that they were going to vote. Among others, A2B Internet, Ziggo and Xs4all were against, like Surfnet. “We do not understand what the added value of this proposal for the members is,” ordered the spokesman of Surfnet Thursday to Tweakers know, “while there are clear risks.”
Those risks made the initiative the last week controversial, which is also the politics with the case did not involve. The U.s. Patriot Act is applicable to it companies within the U.S. are active. The Amsterdam AMS-IX would be forced by American intelligence or security services, for example, a tap, by which the Us government effortlessly at Dutch internet data could. How the internet exchange thinks its members against interception activities to be able to protect is not known. In an internal legal advice to the AMS-IX, that is in the hands of Tweakers, writes a lawyer of the organization, Ferdinand Mason, that there is a construction is that the privacy issues as a result of the addition ‘potentially’ could happen, but he found that difficult to estimate.