Parts of Alberta's personal information protection law ruled unconstitutional

Jack Farrell · The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 14, 2025 8:03 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Parts of Alberta's idiosyncratic accusation extortion authorities person been ruled unconstitutional.

But the ruling from Court of King's Bench Justice Colin Feasby besides upheld an bid to halt an American facial designation institution from collecting images of Albertans.

Clearview AI scrapes the net and societal media for images of radical and adds them to a database, which it markets to instrumentality enforcement agencies arsenic a facial designation tool.

Canada's privateness commissioner, on with commissioners from Alberta, B.C. and Quebec, issued an bid successful 2021 for Clearview AI to halt operating successful the state and delete images of Canadians collected without their consent.

Police utilized the company's services connected a proceedings ground earlier commissioners launched an investigation.

Clearview AI, which has not operated successful Alberta since 2020, applied for a judicial reappraisal of the bid arsenic good arsenic a ruling connected the constitutionality of Alberta's idiosyncratic accusation extortion legislation.

Feasby, successful a determination released past week, says the bid stands, but parts of Alberta's authorities are unconstitutional.

Clearview AI did not respond to a petition for comment.

WATCH | 2021 study shows Clearview AI broke Canada's privateness laws

The judge's determination says regulations nether Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act don't decently code privateness considerations posed by the net and its restrictions for requiring consent are excessively broad.

It says the institution argued that Alberta's privateness commissioner misinterpreted what "publicly available" means nether that act, arsenic the authorities permits entities to cod idiosyncratic accusation without consent from publically disposable sources.

"The nationalist availability objection to the consent request is truly a source-based exception," Feasby writes, adding that the internet, fto unsocial societal media, isn't specifically listed arsenic a publically disposable root of information.

Instead, Alberta's rules accidental publically disposable idiosyncratic accusation includes that which is "contained successful a publication, including, but not constricted to, a magazine, publication oregon newspaper, whether successful printed oregon physics form."

Since societal media isn't listed, Clearview argued that Alberta's commissioner didn't instrumentality the operation "but not constricted to" acold capable by not including societal media, the determination says.

The institution cited lawsuit instrumentality "where it is established that an idiosyncratic 'can person nary tenable anticipation of privateness successful what helium oregon she knowingly exposes to the public'."

However, the enactment has an objection connected the postulation of publically disposable accusation without consent, based connected "reasonable use."

The commissioners antecedently decided Clearview's web scraping for a facial designation database wasn't a tenable usage of publically disposable information.

Feasby agreed, saying Alberta has a "substantial involvement successful protecting idiosyncratic accusation from being utilized successful a facial designation database," since radical apt don't expect their societal media posts to upwind up successful a "potentially harmful" database.

But the justice besides ruled successful the company's favour. He says the publically disposable objection was excessively broad, arsenic it allows the privateness commissioner to take who it enforces the rules against, noting Alberta hasn't penalized different web scraping companies similar Google.

"The commissioner's determination to instrumentality enforcement enactment against Clearview and not others who collect, usage and disclose idiosyncratic accusation publically disposable connected the net suggests that immoderate collection, usage and disclosure of idiosyncratic accusation publically disposable connected the net is not problematic," the justice writes.

To remedy the issue, the justice says the "including, but not constricted to, a magazine, publication oregon newspaper" clause of the objection should beryllium struck and simply replaced with "publication."

Act retired of date, curate says

"This leaves the connection 'publication' to instrumentality its mean meaning, which I qualify arsenic 'something that has been intentionally made public,"' helium says.

Technology Minister Nate Glubish, the curate liable for the legislation, said Wednesday helium wasn't amazed by the ruling, adding the enactment is "badly retired of date."

He said a committee was struck past twelvemonth to reappraisal the authorities and submitted recommendations for updates.

"We're reviewing those recommendations, and we're looking guardant to moving implicit the coming summertime to guarantee that we're acceptable to bring guardant immoderate modernizations to PIPA successful the precise adjacent future," said Glubish.

"Our extremity is to marque definite that Alberta has the strongest privateness protections successful the country, and we're assured we're going to beryllium capable to present connected that."

Since the bid is upheld, Clearview is inactive required to cease collecting images of Albertans and delete those already collected.

The institution argued its bundle prevented it from deleting images, due to the fact that it's not wide which images were collected from and taken successful Alberta. But the justice recovered that wasn't a valid reason.

Feasby ordered the institution to study wrong 50 days connected steps it has taken to comply.

Last year, a B.C. justice besides upheld the bid delivered by that province's privateness commissioner.