Canada Wants To Keep Federal Data Within National Borders (thestack.com) 104
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."
canada/china (Score:2)
Seems logical (Score:1)
Is somebody trying to make an argument against the idea?
Re:Seems logical (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is a good start, but you also need to be careful that your data doesn't pass through outside networks before getting to your home. For example, when I get a page from slashdot, it may travel around the world and back again to get into my computer. we need ways to keep control of which paths the datas take.
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That might be a bit more difficult, but maybe using traceroute can keep it on a domestic path.
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Specifically for Canada this may well be impossible, reason being is that much of the Canadian population lives within 100Km of the US border and much of the fat pipes that take data between Canadian cities go via carriers in the US.
BTW we talking US here as being the key aggressor of sovereign cybercrime.
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Nobody would store bytes passing through inter-web pipes for free, right?
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It cost $1.5b when built, but this place [wikipedia.org] will store your data for no additional costs.
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They said nothing about "transport", just "storage". Nobody would store bytes passing through inter-web pipes for free, right?
If you can "transport" it, you can "store" it. To prevent storage, the Canadian government would have to employ some sort layer 7 end-to-end security.
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How about creating a new TCP/IP "do not copy" security bit, similar to the evil bit in RFC 3514?
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Will bad actors respect the do not copy bit? Drats! Foiled again!
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How about creating a new TCP/IP "do not copy" security bit, similar to the evil bit in RFC 3514?
That's one hell of an Achilles' heel in that it assumes every single hop (intended or otherwise) will obey it. Without dedicated VPNs or air gaps, you cannot prevent copying. So the only alternative is end-to-end Layer 6/7 confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation (and availability but only if the first three are met.)
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Employing the correct encryption helps a lot.
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I think it is a good start, but you also need to be careful that your data doesn't pass through outside networks before getting to your home. For example, when I get a page from slashdot, it may travel around the world and back again to get into my computer. we need ways to keep control of which paths the datas take.
Without guaranteed air gaps, the required levels confidentiality or access control cannot be achieved by anything present in the OSI/IP model unless we start using VPNs, WS-Security or some other complex mechanism.
That might be the way to go (the only way to go) for the Canadian government if it wants to implement such requirements. Talking about them and making the requirements available to the public is a good start. Better than trying to concoct the requirement in secret and come up with a shitty impl
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I think it is a good start, but you also need to be careful that your data doesn't pass through outside networks before getting to your home. For example, when I get a page from slashdot, it may travel around the world and back again to get into my computer. we need ways to keep control of which paths the datas take.
There is a tool that allows you to explore the travel paths. And from the stats that the tool has gathered so far it appears that most of the local/domestic Canadian traffic gets routed through a few very specific points in US. See here:
https://www.ixmaps.ca/faq.php [ixmaps.ca]
IX maps has been sending request recently through openmedia.ca asking people to download the tool and submit their stats. The tool is here:
https://www.ixmaps.ca/contribu... [ixmaps.ca]
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If I were Canada, I would build a huge beautiful data wall to keep this info out of america's prying hands.
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Don't most countries have this policy? Why are we making news for following the same standard everyone else does
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I don't know the intention behind the cheap shot, but *He who shall not be named* has no place in this thread :-)
Utopia? (Score:2)
Of course people will make excuses for them because they are a socialist utopia.
Whoa,whoa, lets not get carried away now. Sure, our dear Lords do provide us with subsidized Tim Horton's coffee "drink" and provide us with "health care", but they also force us to watch pugilistic hockey matches, won't let us purchase assault rifles all willy-nilly and force us to watch Celine Dion and Justin Bieber specials on CBC. I would hardly call it a utopia.
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If TTP passes, you can rest assured that some foreign company will be crying foul and suing in private court because they weren't given a chance at the business due to unfair "protectionist" laws.
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The person most likely to be the next President is against it in its final form. Nor am I at all sure it would pass a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
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yes. literally EVERY cloud service that hosts data outside of Canada want in on the action, but without having to have a datacenter in Canada to store the data.
This policy has basically given in on the subject, now it will be some bureaucrat with no understanding of how information pieces together deciding whether a given bit of data is "unclassified" or not.
Is it really so hard to just say "Fuck you. You need to store all the data within Canada or you can't be a provider for the Canadian gov't."
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The real problem is storing government and federal data outside the government and federal infrastructure. Why is that? All data should be stored encrypted, even if in a canadian cloud. But I still don't understand why the government need to store it in the cloud and not build its own cloud for this purpose. What are the advantages for the government to store it in the cloud instead of in-house?
In a word, cost. The government can't compete with the likes of AWS.
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Is somebody trying to make an argument against the idea?
Only every cloud provider in the known universe that likes to replicate your data across at least three continents.
I have to control my data under similar restrictions, so I've had quite a lot of experience hearing "Oh, wow. No, I'm afraid we can't do that."
Re: Seems logical (Score:2)
In many ways what the government is doing here is no different from financial organisations. Due to the regulated nature of these organisations, any cloud service provider must be able to limit where the data is being stored or they won't being selected a vendor.
For example, e-mails exchanged between employees in Switzerland may not be stored outside of the country, even if the company is a multinational and has other e-mail archives.
yay patriot act (Score:1)
this is actually a requirement in several Provincial Privacy acts. Nova Scotia for example is not allowed to store any personally identifiable information outside of Canada. The feds arnt bound to follow Provincial acts, but its not surprising they would follow what others are doing already.
Its specifically the Patriot act that led to the NS Clause.
Re:yay patriot act (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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"Couldn't" probably means "don't want to". It seems hard to fathom that Google doesn't have some kind of regional controls in their system that can pin or exclude data or processes to specific geographic regions (transnational) or national regions. It seems like a basic management function for such a large clustered compute environment.
Amazon *sells* regional availability zones as a feature, although I don't know to what extent this creates guarantees of regional isolation or anchoring of data.
My guess is
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Me - "How do I do [X] with our data?"
U.S. - "I can do that for you, just send me a copy of the database."
Me - "No, I can't ship our data to you. It's full of citizen's personal information."
U.S. - "Oh, well we can sign an N.D.A."
Me - "No, that won't work. The USA PATRIOT act allows the US government to compel you to give them that information. Our own privacy legislation prevents me from sharing that personal information with persons
prohibited by TPP (Score:2)
Some governments think this kind of security is a bad thing, and and wrote in a clause of the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty to prohibit it.
See also http://www.canadianunderwriter... [canadianunderwriter.ca]
Good to see they've learned their lesson (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Not filling in your census has always come with penalties. It's nothing new.
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There's no reason not to have a statistics act, same as there's no reason not to have a central registry for births and deaths, or one for drivers and automobiles.
Canadians are the freest people in the Americas, so bite me. :-) And we're not to shabby compared to the rest of the world either. Try not to be so obviously jealous next time.
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No more than you're free to publish any other hate literature. We like our ban on hate literature - we're free to get rid of it, but we don't.
Now, you can deny the holocaust in private all you want, just as you can possess drawings you made of child pornography all you want - you just can't show them to anyone without violating the law (yes, a BC court has held on appeal that kiddie porn drawings made by an individual solely for their own gratification are allowed under those restrictions).
As long as it d
Re: From the summary... (Score:2)
Yes :(
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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 ha
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There are treatments for your condition.
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I saw no reason whatsoever to ask about ANYONE'S ethnicity. Why? Are we going to deprive people of services because of their ethnic background? No? Then why are you asking?
They came up with all sorts of reasons, and I told them flat out it was racist, not needed, and years from now people will be shocked that we ever asked this sort of divisive question.
So the next census, instead of asking for mine, they asked for my parents, which is invasion of their privacy, even if they're dead.
40 years ago the city
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Stats Canada isn't allowed to ask CRA for any information. However if on your tax return you check the appropriate box then you give the CRA permission to share some basic information with Stats Canada. Government departments aren't allowed to share information between themselves. That's why there was a big deal made a few years ago when the government was trying to build a big database with all of our information from as many sources as available.
Re:Start with the census (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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It's good to see a well written and thoughtful response on the requirement for the long form census. The data is instrumental for so many organizations and for governments of all levels (local, provincial, federal) to develop policies and programs to meet the needs of Canadian citizens.
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They would have lost in court. had several legal defenses prepared, one being that it was statistically possible to identify individuals in randomized data by making repeated queries and varying the area covered. Would make it very easy to identify the income of individuals, whether they were adopted, etc. Making the data available for research within 7 years (and sometimes immediately) should be a no-no.
That the census taker violated the census act is just gravy on top. No judge is going to throw someone
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They would have lost in court. had several legal defenses prepared, one being that it was statistically possible to identify individuals in randomized data by making repeated queries and varying the area covered
Clearly you've never actually worked with the census data. As part of one of my university courses, I queried the data set for information related to national origin and religion for a particular neighbourhood. You can not define the area arbitrarily, it's broken up into minimum sized zones to prevent the kinds of attacks that you are talking about.
The folks at Stats Canada are smart. You, clearly, aren't as smart as you think you are.
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The raw, anonymized data can be de-anonymized, Plenty of ways to do it. And no, not all data was anonymized for research purposes. Just like it wasn't being held in confidence for 92 years. They admitted it.
As for school closures, etc., that needs data at the local level on an annual basis. Not something every 5 years that takes another couple of years to compile and release. Schools can easily figure this out by applications for enrollment the next year. Linger-term trends, they already have year-over-yea
Does this mean... (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, it's 'way too busy.
The squirrels in the current one need some to periodically rest.
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The beavers in the current one need some to periodically rest.
FTFY
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Translation: the Canadian government wants to be able to spy on its citizens easily.
Domestically storing the *government* curated data that the *government* already controls doesn't provide much of a spying advantage.
Anyways, Canada doesn't have to spy on its citizens. We let the NSA and the MI5 etc spy on our citizens, just like CSEC and the MI5 etc spy on US citizens in a giant circle jerk including Australia and New Zealand.
BC FIPPA (Score:3)
British Columbia already has this rule; government data (including university data for researchers) must be kept on Canadian servers. There's some wiggle room for opting in to US storage, though.
I think it's important legislation, and it motivates some good duplication of infrastructure within Canada. It makes it harder to abdicate our responsibility to data and makes it just a bit harder for US subpoenas to get a hold of it.
Normal and sensible. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody sane the world over wants their data exposed to the USA.
Hard to protect against for sure, but still a worthwhile goal to shoot for.
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If you're "the world over" and you're not the USA (i.e. Canada), the USA snooping on your data is "another government."
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And as a non-US Person, you have no right to privacy.
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Actually, the US does a decent job of keeping its data relatively secure, when compared to some other countries...granted, you have to allow that the government will snoop on it all, but that might not be as bad as having another government snoop on all your data.
Of course, there are notable exceptions. I'd trust Google with my data, but not Microsoft.
Hillary's e-mail server (no, I'm not a Trump fan.) Security matters shit if processes aren't followed. God knows what other snafus exists that we do not know of.
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Thats a lot of US brands, a lot of data flowing to the US gov and mil.
Not privacy... (Score:2)
This is most likely a question of protectionism (giving contracts to your own data centers) with a privacy smokscreen. It has a coincidental privacy benefit.
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No, it's more likely a point on the state of Canada's privacy laws which are incredibly stringent compared to the US and some parts of Europe. See here in Canada, there's sections in the privacy laws(both federal and provincial) that require storage of personally identifiable information to remain within the government agency. It's so stringent that unless there is written permission from you, one government agency can't transfer it to another.
Re: Not privacy... (Score:2)
Not at all, it is about jurisdiction and laws. A server outside of your country is essentially in the jurisdiction of the country it is hosted in and subjected to the laws of the hosting country. If said hosting country decides to confiscate said servers or make a copy of that data, then there is not much the owner of the data can do. Is it really spying when the data was stored outside the originating country?
By having the data limited to being stored in the territory of the country it belongs to, you are
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https://www.ixmaps.ca/faq.php [ixmaps.ca]
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Doesn't really help if the servers are in Canada but the people accessing them are in Mumbai does it ?
The people in Mumbai won't have the security clearance to access the data in the first place.
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The people in Mumbai won't have the security clearance to access the data in the first place.
They do tend to have the ability to manage the credentials to grant you access to the applications that consume the data. I've seen this approach leave massive holes in healthcare and outsourcing; where there are stipulations about keeping data in the country.
The GP's point is that physical storage/location is only one piece of the puzzle. Separation of duty as you describe is another, regular audits and monitoring
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e.g. a cold call pretending to be a gov official with a limited list of personal information.
http://www.smh.com.au/business... [smh.com.au]
It just makes sense (Score:2)
The US doesn't have a law. It has regulations the amount to the same. So do other countries.
All the big brother conspiracists, please give the rest of us a break.
Re: Haha (Score:2)
You realize we have a population roughly 1/10th of the US, right? That's a fair number of people to datamine.
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And rightfully so (Score:3)
This is the GOVERNMENT's data. For that reason, for you who's attention span is 15 minutes, a year or two ago, the UK government decided against the cloud, because they could not be assured that UK government data would remain on UK government soil.
You disagree? Really? So it's ok if all of the personal and economic data, including your tax returns, winds up in a data center in China, or Russia, or, for those outside the US, in the US? And you're going to tell me that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has login or physical access to *all* the servers and their storage has at least some minimal security clearance from your country?
Give me a break.
mark
sovereign control? (Score:2)
First I've heard of "sovereign control" which sounds like BS to me.
Anyway this issue has been around for a very long time now and isn't really all that complicated. I've looked into a number of cloud based systems as possible solutions for government projects, but they all run into the same problem.
Bottom line is that Canada has quite good Privacy Laws. The Government as custodian of a lot of personal information has a responsibility to ensure that that information is protected.
The issue first came about re
Excellent (Score:1)