SupCt 2 Hear TXTing Case IRL :)
April 15, 2010The Supreme Court will soon be hearing an employee texting case to decide if employees have any expectation of privacy when texting on company-issued devices. (A side issue relates to the privacy rights for the non-employees engaged in exchanging those text messages with the employee)
At issue in City of Ontario v. Quon is whether a SWAT officer — a public employee — had a reasonable expectation of privacy when sending personal text messages on a police-department-owned pager. The official policy at the Ontario, Calif., police department had prohibited personal use of things like email and the Internet at work, and employees were explicitly told they should have no expectation of privacy in that regard, but the policy never said anything about text messages.
It will be interesting to see how the High Court addresses this case considering that the technology is changing so fast these days the technology in question could well become obsolete before the ink is dry on the opinion.
