A U.S. Supreme Court texting case will be heard in the 2010 session that will decide some interesting questions of emerging technologies law. Read about the case and tell us what you think in the comments about a reasonable expectation of privacy on company mobile devices.
The case docket is officially known as City of Ontario v. Quon, docket number 08-1332. Sgt. Jeff Quon was an officer in the Ontario Police Department in Southern California. The general facts of the case are that he along with other SWAT Team members were issued an official police department pager in 2002 to use for official business and light personal use.
The department reviewed the text messages sent from the pager and discovered (they say) that most of them were sexually explicit. The trial judge inferred that they were terribly graphic. This was well before “sexting” entered the public lexicon as a term to define sexual messages sent by mobile device.
Quon and other SWAT team members sued the department for infringing on their reasonable expectation to privacy by reviewing the text messages. They won in the lower court. An appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals went nowhere, but now what will be a landmark Supreme Court texting case will be heard by those technologically brilliant justices of the upper court.
The case puts employee interests against private interests, which is nothing new in case law but is new when it comes to electronic devices. Generally courts have found that there is no expectation of privacy in a workplace environment.
But will that same principle apply to mobile devices which are commonly used both inside and outside of the workplace? That is a far different issue than an immobile workplace computer sitting in an office cubicle.
Or is it? That is the real question behind this case. It’s a difficult call to predict where the Supreme Court texting case will go. My guess, however, is they will side on the right to privacy by a 5-4 decision.
View the video and then tell us what you think.
The Dangers of Texting (Video)
April 17th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
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April 17th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
A police department interfaces with the public in so many boundry crossing intimate ways, they need to have a strong squeaky clean image, even in the net sphere. Mixed use is just plain trouble if you ask me. Let them spend the $80 a month for their own cell phone. I don’t think they should have a total right to privacy as clearly one bad apple can damage both the public and the community. Adults should know better as well and I would wonder if this officer is mature and competent enough for his position. I wouldn’t want an officer like this under my command as it shows disrepect for the public we are to serve, and possibly instability/potential behavioral problems as well. I think to prosecute private people for a first innappropriate offense is a mistake as well and should be handled a lot like an anger management class in teaching them the appropriate and safe use of modern net devices. That would establish they were educated and warned, then repeat offenses could then escalate to criminal charges. But to punish some kids over their first cell phone hijinx is overdoing it. In south korea they put in some serious effort early in school to teach kids how to safely use the net and how to be a good net citizen. I do think it has to be taught and not assume everyone is going to automatically understand all that is involved in what they think is a simple joke to someone. This officers sense of entitlement is really emblematic of a bigger problem in thinking he can simply do whatever he wants with city property. The payor of his net device bills should have some implicit rights to what goes out on its dime.