Money Matters, Simplified.
Supreme Court to Review Employers’ Right to Access Workers Messages
The United States Supreme Court agreed to look into the matter concerning the employee’s the right to privacy, when they send text messages through company-owned phones.
by Priyanka - December 15, 2009 - comments
The SC on Monday, decided to get involved in the case filed by Sgt. Jeff Quon along with three other police officers, where they have sued Ontario Police Department, for snooping into their personal e-mails messages---some reported to be containing sexually explicit content.
Many employers usually tell their employees beforehand that there is no guarantee of privacy of messages sent or received via company or government provided pagers, cellphones or computers.
According to this policy, employers "reserves the right to monitor and log all network activity including e-mail and Internet use, with or without notice."
Start of text message privacy war
According to Jeff Quon, a police officer told them that their text messages won’t be subject to audit if the officers personally paid for over-charges of their devices.
The police chief wanted to check how the official devices provided are being used. So, he asked the company responsible for providing the service (in this case Arch Wireless) to hand over the transcripts.
The records show that there are officers who use devices largely to send messages of personal nature.
When Sgt. Quon found out about it, he sued the department for snooping into his personal messages.
Court's attitude on the issue
The court agreed that chief’s decision to read messages violated the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and inspections.
The court also reviewed the transcripts and found out that in one month, only 57 out of Quon’s 450 messages were work related.
The ruling given by the panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is first of its kind. Judges acknowledged and said, "recently minted standard of electronic communication via e-mails, text messages, and other means opens a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that has been little explored."
A statement written by Judge Kim McLean Wardlaw who supports Quon said, "extent to which the Fourth Amendment provides protection for the contents of electronic communications in the Internet age is an open question."
Adding further Judge Wardlaw and three other judges agreed that the messages of personal nature were allowed on the office devices and Quon "had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages."
Meanwhile, there are people who say that employers have every right to check how employees are using the office devices during office hours.