Worried about US surveillance, Internet Archive announces mirror in Canada

In a Tuesday blog post, Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, announced plans to mirror the entire massive repository in Canada—largely over fear of the incoming Trump administration.

“On November 9 in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," he wrote. “It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private, and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions.”

He continued, warning that government surveillance “looks like it will increase.” As such, the Internet Archive is “fighting to protect our readers’ privacy in the digital world.”

Currently, the Internet Archive physically hosts all of its materials in data centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, with some materials mirrored offsite in Egypt and the Netherlands. However, there is no fully complete mirror as of now. "If we had five or six copies, I think I could sleep," Kahle said in a talk in 2011. The Internet Archive currently hosts not only webpages, but books, movies, pieces of audio, software, and more.

The organization has not announced when or where the “Internet Archive of Canada” would come online. Kahle did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.