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Alberta Court of Appeal Decision Potentially Affects On-Line Privacy
A recent decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal involving driver’s licences holds that information about property, as distinguished from information about persons, does not fall within the definition of personal information. Leon’s Furniture Limited v. Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner), which could see its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, is a new and important decision in the struggle to define personal information.
In 2006, Sharon Curtis purchased a table from Leon’s Furniture Store and arranged to have her mother drive out to the store to pick it up. When Sharon’s mother arrived, an employee told her to fill out and sign an acknowledgment that contained, amongst other things, the licence plate number of her car. Sharon’s mother complied, but later filed a complaint with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta. In Order P2008-004, the Commissioner ordered Leon’s to cease recording licence plate numbers and destroy all licence plate numbers already in its possession.
Leon’s appealed the order to the Alberta Court of Appeal and won. In a 2-1 decision, Justice Frans Slatter ruled that it was “contrary to common sense to hold that a vehicle licence number is in any respect private.” In his view, the licence plate number was not “about” a person; rather, it was “about” the vehicle and therefore could not constitute personal information. He reasoned:
Information that relates to an object or property does not become information “about” an individual, just because some individual may own or use that property. Since virtually every object or property is connected in some way with an individual, that approach would make all identifiers “personal” identifiers.
The problem with the reasoning, as pointed out by Michael Geist in an article for The Toronto Star, is that it may affect the treatment of IP addresses. Like a licence plate number, an IP address is technically “about” a device, not a person. Other more frightening examples abound. One could make a convincing argument, for instance, that a credit card number is more “about” the card than its holder.
It will be interesting to see whether or not Leon’s Furniture will be appealed.
For additional information, please visit:
http://tinyurl.com/Leon-s-Furniture-Privacy