No, I don’t think this is incredibly likely to happen. But like how some disaster prep agencies model zombie outbreaks to get people thinking about hurricanes and earthquakes, it’s a good thought experiment.
Let’s say out of the blue there’s an executive order that prevents US tech companies from servicing Canadian customers.
How hosed are you? Would you have access to backups of family photos not on Apple or Google? Does your email still work? Can you access your password manager? If you have a domain registered, is it still pointable to your servers?
I ask this because I’m trying to train myself to look for Can/EU alternatives in my tech stack for work and personal life.
I know for a fact that a lot of our banking IT infrastructure is in the cloud. So that would be a problem right there. I don’t think the government uses any of the big cloud services though. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Also, some of those cloud services have data centers in Canada for various reasons including legal ones. Would they still work? I mean Google and Amazon have offices in Canada and data centers. How would that work in this scenario?
The Canadian banks (and other companies like canadiantire, Air Canada and others) have their own data centers on Canadian soil, and they are connected using fiber leased from Rogers, Telus and BCE. The telecom companies also have their own data centers here as well, both for their own purposes and with rackspace leasing to 3rd parties.
All 3 fiber operators have diverse fiber coast-to- coast in Canada (with one exception where the diversity path passes through Minnesota and Wisconsin, but the other path remains in Canada).
And those fiber companies all have overseas links that launch from Canadian soil.
If the US cut off the connections going south, Canada’s internet wouldn’t become an island.
Infrastructure wise maybe not. That’s just how internet is.
But having worked for the companies that actually support those companies, I can attest that they definitely are on Azure and AWS.
Oof you’re very wrong here. The government of Canada spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year on M365 cloud services.
And AWS
Fuck.
Ok, but those have got to be hosted in Canada though. So they have to abide by Canadian law.
It doesn’t actually matter. The US can compel American companies to provide all data even if the data residency is outside of America.
to complement this comment, Microsoft has already acknowledged this in court
https://www.cyberincontext.ca/p/microsoft-admits-us-law-supersedes
And as we all know, Microsoft will definitely stand up to the us government and refuse to hand over customer data to their final regime.
/s?