I was not aware of this case until I stumbled across this article and thought it worth sharing ...


Should Personal Texts From Work Devices Be Private?

by Nina Totenberg
NPR

April 15, 2010


Next week the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a question near and dear to digitally proficient texters: whether their personal messages are private when transmitted over an electronic device supplied by an employer.

The basic facts of City of Ontario v. Quon are not in dispute. When the Ontario, Calif., police department issued pagers to its SWAT team, the lieutenant in charge first told team members that the pagers would be covered like computer e-mail -- in short, that there was a no-privacy rule.

But the lieutenant later told his subordinates that as long as they paid for any personal messages beyond the 25,000-character limit per month, the department would consider the messages private and would not review them.

* * *

Quon paid for those messages, but he was subsequently reprimanded for using the pager for personal purposes on the job, and for using obscene language on the pager -- a violation of department rules.

After that, Quon and three people with whom he had exchanged e-mails sued the department for violating their privacy.

A federal appeals court ruled that the department had violated the texters' reasonable expectation of privacy because a supervisor had led the officers to believe that they could use their pagers privately, for personal use.

A federal appeals court ruled that the department had violated the texters' reasonable expectation of privacy.

The police department appealed to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in the case next week.

The eventual decision could have huge repercussions -- it is the first case testing privacy rights in the Internet age. And while this particular case involves text messages, its reasoning is likely to apply to e-mail, Facebook messages, maybe even surfing the Web.


Full article (plus audio) available here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125998549

This issue has been discussed at the NDAA Office Management conference. The privacy rights of an employee get very complicated when you include modern technology and maintain an office manual that has not evolved with that technology.