Phase 1 Instrument · Cloud Commons Canada
LEON is the first tool Cloud Commons Canada is building to help Canadians understand their digital exposure: which apps they use, who owns them, where their data goes, and what legal rights they have over it. That individual picture, shared by thousands of Canadians with consent, becomes the national evidence base.
What LEON Does
A user selects the apps they use. LEON cross-references each one against a structured database of public information, then returns a plain-language picture of what that means for their data: who owns it, where it lives, and what rights they have.
LEON cross-references each app against a structured database of publicly available information: who owns the app, where its servers are located, under what legal jurisdiction data is held, what third-party data ecosystems the app connects to, and what data portability rights the user actually has.
The user receives a plain-language Exposure Report. Not a score. Not a warning. A clear picture: here are the apps on your device, here is who ultimately controls them, here is where your data likely lives, here are the sovereignty and portability implications, and here are practical alternatives where they exist.
That report has immediate personal value. It answers questions people didn't know they could ask.
01 · Select
Tell LEON which apps and digital services you use. No account access required. You're selecting from a list, not granting permissions.
02 · Cross-reference
LEON queries a curated database: app ownership, server locations, legal jurisdiction, third-party SDK connections, and your portability rights.
03 · Report
A plain-language Exposure Report. Who owns your apps. Where your data lives. What foreign jurisdiction risk looks like for your specific stack.
04 · Contribute
Opt in to share your anonymized structural profile. No personal data retained. Your participation becomes one more data point in Canada's picture.
Data Principle
No packet inspection. No behavioural tracking. Structural metadata only, always in service of the individual.
Consent Model
Participation voluntary. Aggregation requires explicit opt-in. Withdrawal is immediate and complete.
Publication
All national findings published open-access. No licensing fees. No proprietary hold on public data.
The Aggregate
After receiving their report, LEON asks a second question: would you like to contribute your anonymized profile to a national picture of Canada's app infrastructure?
If yes, no personal data is retained. What gets contributed is structural metadata only: which apps are present, who owns them, where they operate, and under what law. No messages, no location, no behaviour.
Aggregated across thousands of participants, that becomes a public dataset: which apps Canadians rely on, which corporations own that infrastructure, where data is held and under what legal jurisdiction. Published openly, with no paywall or embargo, available to researchers, journalists, and policymakers who currently have no equivalent source.
This is the evidence base that Canadian policy institutions currently lack. The most detailed data on how Canadian personal data moves comes from the corporations doing the collecting. LEON builds the independent, public-interest counterpart from the bottom up.
Scope and Limits
LEON looks at structure: what apps are present and who owns them. Not content. It never reads your messages, tracks your location, or monitors your behaviour. That constraint is the design, not a shortcoming.
LEON does not inspect the content of your activity. It does not read your messages, track your location, monitor your behaviour, or access your accounts. It looks at structure only.
In phase one, LEON is a structured lookup tool backed by a manually curated database. That is not a limitation. It is what makes the tool auditable, credible, and privacy-safe. You can verify every claim LEON makes about any app because every claim is derived from publicly available information, assembled transparently, and subject to correction.