My name's Jeff B and I'm here to say: Canada's getting an AWS region around the way If you're looking for somewhere to run your computing instances outside the Land of the FreeTM, then Amazon Web Services has an option for the Americas with its first Canada cloud computing region. Amazon claims the region has a minimum 9ms network latency to Toronto and New York, 14ms to Ottawa, and 60ms to Vancouver. The …
So you can stash your data on Canadian servers in hopes of hiding it from the NSA, but Canada is still a part of Five Eyes. And we know how well each member state cooperates with the others (very well, in fact). And now you have to worry about CSIS on top of everything.
I can see no reason for a US or Canadian citizen (or legal resident, at least in the US) to be either more or less worried about either NSA or CSIS (or GCHQ, for that matter). Those who have a need for worry, or otherwise wish to do so, should do irrespective of where their AWS or other processing and storage is located.
The US government's ability to demand Canada-resident data may be changed some by the recent New York decision concerning a Microsoft email account in Ireland, but it is a good be that the US is, or soon will be, working with other governments to smooth procedures for exercising mutual legal assistance treaties that exist (I expect there is one between Canada and the US) and negotiate them to the extent possible where they do not exist. In view of the proximity of the US and Canada, it seems likely that the procedures are fairly well established in both directions.
There probably is not much of interest here except marketing.
@tom dial
I can see no reason for a US or Canadian citizen (or legal resident, at least in the US) to be either more or less worried about either NSA or CSIS (or GCHQ, for that matter), today.
FTFY
Tomorrow, as history has repeatedly shown, some groups of people may very well be targeted for the simple reason that they exist.
Don't let your lack of imagination restrict what these control freaks ultimately want to be capable of. Clue: it's not allowing you freedoms or rights.
Perhaps. But there is no obvious reason that the possibility (or even probability) of changes to targeting procedures would have any effect on my claim. A number of populations or organizations are targeted, now, simply because they exist. There is no reason to wait for tomorrow.
US tax authorities snoop around in Canada, and Canadian banks comply. US citizens or computers on US territory may have a degree of protection from US Government snooping as afforded by the US Constitution. Anybody else and anywhere else is prey, 24 / 7 / 365. And the Snowden revelations showed that they aren't shy. And they understand German. But if it's site raiding that one fears, then, yes, you'd rather have an RCMP mediated raid than stand face-to-face with a bellowing foaming heavily-armed cyber-SWAT. "Take your hands off the keyboards. Put your passwords on post-its. Peg your post-its to the screen. Just like you do anyway. Put your hands on the ground. NOW!" But getting away from the apart I'm enjoying too much, location outside the US, on its own, is no boost to digital privacy.
Always. Not often; Always.
If you're in Toronto, and accessing a Toronto server, (unless it's a dedicated line) the fastest path is through the US. In the 1990's we were trying to build a fiber backbone coast-to-coast-to-coast (which would have been the largest in the world). In the early naughts that plan was scrapped.
I'll leave it to the erstwhile members to google our respective leader's political leanings for the appropriate times.
use green energy, the company reports that its data centers in Canada are 99 per cent powered by locally sourced hydroelectric power
Also no doubt uses the freshest high quality Northern air for cooling. And I expect vitamin E will help keep my data from ageing. Seriously, I'm probably not alone in wondering what the real product is here.
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