Canada Wants To Keep Federal Data Within National Borders (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Canada has released its latest federal cloud adoption strategy, now available for public comment, which includes policy concerning the storing of sensitive government information on Canadian citizens within national borders. The newly-published [Government of Canada Cloud Adoption Strategy] requires that only data which the government has categorized as "unclassified," or harmless to national and personal security, will be allowed outside of the country. This information will still be subject to strict encryption rules. The new strategy, which has been in development over the last year, stipulates that all personal data stored by the government on Canadian citizens, such as social insurance numbers and critical federal information, must be stored in Canada-based data centers in order to retain "sovereign control."

Comments

Good to see they've learned their lesson

[BarbaraHudson]

Before the census was cancelled, the contract was given to Lockheed.

During the 2011 census, for instance, 89-year-old Ontario resident Audrey Tobias said she would not fill out the questionnaire because an information technology contract linked to it had been awarded to an American company, Lockheed Martin. Tobias was charged with violating the Statistics Act, but eventually acquitted.

Now that it's back, time to make sure that your data stays your data.

Re:Seems logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't most countries have this policy? Why are we making news for following the same standard everyone else does

Re:yay patriot act

[MightyMartian]

I work for a contractor for a Provincial government, with a significant amount of the money for that contract actually flowing from the Federal government, and the contract language is explicit; no confidential or personal data is to be stored, or even accessed, outside of Canada.

I actually talked to Google about three years ago and asked if they could guarantee the Google Docs (now Google Drive) cloud could be located on Canadian servers, and they said that couldn't and that they had no plans to. It's my understanding that Microsoft, on the other hand, has conceded to this for OneDrive, so I expect that if Google hasn't already moved in that direction, they will soon.

As it is, we're getting requests from a lot of staff for some sort of Cloud solution, as usage scenarios grow beyond VPNs and RDP.

Re:Start with the census

[tlhIngan]

The government was also able to jail you for refusing to fill in previous long-form census. I refused in writing in both 2006 and 2011, on the grounds that in 2006 some of the questions were inappropriate, and in 2011 because some of the questions required information on your parent's ethnicity, which if they want it, they can ask them directly. Long distance charges will definitely apply since they were long dead.

Threats disappeared after I told them that the census taker had violated the census act by having one of her children along when trying to con me into filling it in. And keeping info stored on an insecure laptop. I also told them that I could prove that the "92 year non-disclosure policy" was a total lie, that researchers are given access to the raw data after a mere 7 years, so please take me to court.

Yes, they are able to jail you. But - over the entire history of the law, there were about 11 people actually charged, and they were just fined - $1000 or so.

The census is important. In fact, there was no long form in 2011 because the Conservative government changed it from mandatory to voluntary. This had the unfortunate side effect that there is no usable data to be mined from the 2011 census.

As for the release of raw data - it's collective data, not individual forms. The 92 year rule is for individual forms - so in 92 years, the complete form is released how you filled it in. But the census data is of importance to many people, groups and organizations, and that's aggregated. After 7 years, the aggregated data is available to researchers who want a snapshot of the Canadian population to study what they need to study. But they don't have access to the individual forms you fill out, only the aggregated data. And only subsets of it - what they need for their research. No one other than Statistics Canada can see the full data set, and once the forms are tallied, no one can see the raw forms or individual data either (until 92 years later).

Before it was gutted by the Harper Conservatives, Statistics Canada is/was one of the most premier data collecting and analysis organizations. It's why the chief statistician resigned after elimination of the long form - he knew that the law would render the 2011 data completely worthless. It's partly why we're in the situation we're in with school closures in one city, school overcrowding in others, etc. Because the only usable data dates back to 2006.