FC: UK immigration authorities take first action against HavenCo

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Part of the allure of HavenCo is that it is based on Sealand, an 
ostensibly independent nation. But that concept is based on the thinnest of 
legal foundations: A 1968 court decision that said Sealand was outside of 
Britain's territorial waters: 
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36756,00.html Since then London 
has extended its territorial claim, which means Sealand -- recognized, I 
believe, by no country in the world -- is no more independent than a 
rowboat anchored 10 feet out in the Thames. --Declan]


http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=002549632124328&rtmo=wAMlAseb&atmo=hhhhhMbe&pg=/et/00/6/22/ecnseal22.html

        Sealand runs foul of UK immigration
        By David Cohen

        HAVENCO, the controversial data haven based six miles off the 
coast of Essex, will host its first website next week, despite intervention 
by the government.

        Immigration officials at Heathrow turned away a HavenCo engineer, 
Andrew Marsh, who arrived from the United States last Friday, but the 
company insists that he will start work tomorrow morning.

        HavenCo said the company's schedule was not seriously affected by 
the setback. "Andrew will start work in Sealand on Friday morning, but I'd 
rather not discuss how he will get here," a spokesman said.

        Mr Marsh, a 25-year-old computer systems engineer employed by 
HavenCo, was stopped and questioned by immigration officers at the airport. 
He announced that he was going to work on Sealand, the offshore Second 
World War fortress, which claims to be independent of the UK.

        Mr Marsh assumed that he would not need a British work permit to 
go to Sealand, but a spokesman for the Home Office said: "We consider 
Sealand to be part of the UK and therefore anyone working there who is not 
a citizen of a European Union country would require a work permit."

[...]

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