[LINK] US Supreme Court Rules Police Dept. Within Rights to Read Employees' Texts

[Stilgherrian]

>From the latest SANS NewsBites:


--Supreme Court Rules Police Dept. Within Rights to Read Employees' Texts
(June 17, 2010)
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Ontario, California Police
department did not violate a police sergeant's rights when it read
transcripts of messages from his work-issued pager.  The high court said
that even if the police sergeant had a reasonable expectation of
privacy, a departmental audit of messages on the work-issued device was
not unreasonable.  The issue was whether or not Sgt. Jeff Quon could sue
the police chief, the police department and the city for reading
personal messages that he sent and received on his work-issued pager.
An unwritten policy within the department indicated that employees'
messages would not be read if they paid for any overages, which Quon had
done regularly.  The audit of employee messages was conducted to see if
the limit of 25,000 characters per month was adequate for employees to
conduct official business.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0617/Supreme-Court-backs-police-department-that-read-employee-s-texts
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/texting-privacy/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37760958/ns/business-careers/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178199/Supreme_Court_ruling_lets_employers_view_worker_text_messages_with_reason
[Editor's Note (Schultz): This is a landmark ruling. The Ontario police
department left itself wide open legally by not having a written terms
of use (acceptable use) policy. The fact that the US Supreme Court ruled
in favor of the defendent anyway helps establish the precedent that
implied policies may, at least under some circumstances, be adequate.]


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Stil


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