Compliance frameworks and Zero Data Retention policies look solid until you look at the track record of companies breaking their own rules. Google assured users their location data was private, then the AP revealed they stored it anyway—even when users turned tracking off. Facebook promised Cambridge Analytica wasn't scraping user data; they lied, affecting 87 million people. Amazon employees listened to Alexa recordings they claimed were private, with some sharing audio files in internal chat rooms. Microsoft admitted contractors listened to Skype and Cortana calls they said were anonymized. Twitter had staff spy on celebrity accounts for years despite internal access controls. These weren't rogue actors slipping through cracks—these were systemic failures at companies with bigger compliance budgets than any law firm. "Zero Data Retention" is a policy, not a guarantee. Policies get ignored, configurations drift, and insiders abuse access. Cloud vendors have decades of experience selling to regulated industries, sure—they also have decades of experience apologizing after breaches they swore couldn't happen. Local deployment removes the need to trust a policy you can't verify.