If the British Columbia government succeeds in its arguments to keep parts of a contract with IBM secret, it will be a major change to how freedom of information law is interpreted in the province, says Vincent Gogolek, executive director of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

The government was in B.C. Supreme Court two days last week fighting a ruling by the independent Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to make the full contract public. FIPA requested the contract in 2004.

While the government released much of the contract, it has withheld parts of it under section 15 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which allows them to protect information that may be harmful to law enforcement if it's released.

In the past public bodies have had to demonstrate a clear threat to security to withhold records under section 15, but the government's lawyer argued in court last week that even if there's a tiny theoretical risk it should be enough to prevent release of records, said Gogolek.

"That's changing the interpretation of the law," he said. "Hopefully that argument won't be accepted."

That interpretation would significantly lower the bar, making it possible for the government to keep more records secret, he said. "This could be a much bigger problem than just this case or just section 15 if that argument is accepted."

The government would likely want to extend the precedent to other sections of the act as well, he said.

It's not a matter of setting a precedent, said a spokesperson for the ministry of labour, citizens' services and open government. "The argument being put forward was that the Commissioner's Office erred in their interpretation of [section 15] as it relates to the records at issue," he said in an emailed statement.

"The OIPC based the decision on whether or not release of the information would directly lead to a security breach, whereas government’s position was that to release the information would lead to well targeted attacks against the system thereby causing harm to our system security," he said.

Also, section 30 of the act requires public bodies to do what they can to protect personal information in their custody and that needs to be weighed against section 15, he said.

Labour, Citizens' Services and Open Government Minister Margaret MacDiarmid told The Tyee in January that the records include the names and locations of government computer servers. "The concern is if that was made publicly available our government servers could be vulnerable to hackers," she said at the time. "There is a concern about people's personal privacy."

FIPA's Gogolek said he doesn't buy the minister's argument that the risk is real and not speculative, and nor did the OIPC adjudicator who considered the case before it went to court.

The contract with IBM is worth $300 million and ends in two years.

Update, 10:55 a.m., March 13, 2012: While the government did raise section 30 of the FOIPPA at the supreme court, that was not part of it's argument during the hearing with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, said FIPA's Vincent Gogolek. It makes it hard for the government to argue the adjudicator made a "reviewable error" by not considering section 30, when they failed to mention it in their own submissions, he said.

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. Find him on Twitter or reach him here.