Following from my previous post regarding privacy afforded to convicted killers, Alberta shows a slightly different situation. Alberta’s Privacy Commissioner has found that police violated Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The violation was in spreading too much personal information about suspects of serious offences in order to find them (called Operation Warrant Execution), trying to clear a backlog of outstanding warrants. Information included names, ages, photographs, heights and weights. One disclosure was of a 16 year old without a court order. While some of the information was valid to spread, the Commissioner found too much was spread. This to me highlights the difficulty of balancing the competing rights of public safety with privacy, and to be honest I am having difficulty distinguishing what was “too much” from what was enough, although I do understand that laws do protect minors and were violated.
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