The cloud is still a bad idea… keep your user’s personal information off US soil at all costs.

There’s an article in the register today highlighting that American organizations are all bound by the US Patriot act, which essentially allows the US government access to any data it asks for. In this case, it’s Microsoft pro-actively disclosing this to be the truth. This is why if you want to protect the personal information of your users, or citizens, you have to do whatever you can to keep it off US soil and away from access by Americans. Canada is a great place to store this information, as we have the almost opposite legislation called PIPEDA. We also have privacy regulators called privacy commissioners both provincially as well as federally. Mind you, the current Canadian government tried to pass through a Canadian version of the patriot act last year as a minority government, and they now have a majority, so they want to use this chance to implement a more totalitarian regime, we’ll keep you up to date when and if things change!