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In its first case on whether employees have any right of privacy in the text messages they send on company devices, the Supreme Court unanimously found that even if there is one, employers can read the contents when they have a reasonable need to do so.
"Cell phone and text message communications are so pervasive that some persons may consider them to be essential means or necessary instruments for self-expression, even self-identification," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the court.
"On the other hand, the ubiquity of those devices has made them generally affordable, so one could counter that employees who need cell phones for similar devices for personal matters can purchase and pay for their own," he said.
The case came from Ontario, Calif., where a member of the SWAT team used a city-provided texting pager for both business and personal reasons. To see whether the excess charges his texting was producing were based on personal or business reasons, the police department audited his texting and found he was sending sexually explicit messages to a mistress. He sued, claiming the audit violated his privacy. But today's ruling unanimously said the city had a reasonable purpose for checking into why his texting was going over the normal limit, incurring additional fees.
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People should know this already.
Anytime you are using company equipment for personal use, it is and SHOULD be their right to police you!! Grow up and use your own!!!!
Since you already have a phone in your hand why not just call whom ever it is that you wish to communicate with?
W Bush
He's married, the spouse would have seen the number of texts and to which number they we're sent. He's a moron anyway
How about we do away with texting and just CALL SOMEONE
If the phone is property of the company you work for then, I agree.
If you want to discuss personal business, do it on your own phone. The company has a right to dictate what its' property is used for and to monitor it.
brawndo- Not everyone wants to follow a certain guideline for communication. If you don't like texting, then don't, but don't push others to follow your beliefs. There are situations, after all, when texting is more convenient. It must get tiring to constantly think the rest of the world is wrong just because they aren't exactly like you.
Trite-how about this. Company time-no personal phone or email....Simple.
This is a device provided by the employer for official use. They pay the bill. Personal use that exceeds short important or emergency uses should be made on personal devices. Any excessive costs should be charged back to the employee. This guy is more than a moron for texting sexually explicite messages to his mistress on an employer provided device. The only reason he did so was so his wife wouldn't catch him. Well, hello idiot...your employer audited your device because you were incurring excessive fees...now your wife knows and hopefully, she will take your a** to the cleaners. Scumbag.
Tweeting, IMSing, etc is not a right. It is a lifestyle choice. If the company purchase the equipment/program they own it, you use it for the completion of your job. The company has every right to inspect the useage of their appliances/equipment and investigate whether it is being utilized for work-related or personal use.
The officer should be shame faced for his actions and had a lot of nerve suing over his misuse of department equipment for phone-sex.
Agreed, if the company supplies the equipment and the account, of course they can look.
I wonder, does the SC feel that the company has a similar right if they provide a stipend to cover company usage of a personal phone?
The correct answer should be no.
Off Topic - but it's nice to see the WH didn't waste anytime firing back @ Congressman Joe Barton!
Republican'ts = treasonous b@stards!
And the racist dinosaur known as Pat Buchanon REALLY needs to be put out to pasture once and for all by MSNBC! Political courage? Really?
Are You On Drugs ?????
Fiesty?, psychotic perhaps, miss your meds did you...
wow thanks-that definitely settles the subject matter!
Do you need someone to call in your refills?
Feisty there is a proper thread for your comment.
Why are you posting that one here?
Oh... I dunno Eris... maybe because when I posted this the thread wasn't up yet? Ya think?
Check the time stamps moron!
LOL
The first comment for that thread was at 8am. Yours is stamped 9:53am.
You were saying?
Back atcha, feisty.
You never have anything on topic to post.
This only makes sense. I did not understand why the officer assumed he had a right to abuse public property, paid for by the taxes that support the police swat team. What has happened to common sense? This type of lawsuit costs everyone! It should never have been filed, and the officer should have been fired.
maggie if you would pay attention to some of the pols comments you will see them saying MY seat and MY people and other such comments that show that they feel a right or ownership of the elected office
Maggie - Congrats! You seem to be one of the only posters who seems to realize that this decision was drafted by the Court specifically to apply to the circumstances of this case, as opposed to being a broader directive, and one of those specific conditions to which this decision applies is the fact that the guy worked for a PUBLIC agency. Another specific condition to which this decision applies is the fact that as a condition of use of the phone, he was made aware of the fact that the possibility of an audit existed, as well as that certain things, like exceeding the use limits imposed by the provider, would spark an audit.
How about some posts on what Congress is up to? How the Financial Reform Bill no longer includes "too big to fail" or most of the other key elements it was supposed to, or maybe how Congress is taking the tax increases for wealthy investors out of the jobs bill while simultaneously reducing unemployment benefits, I mean any day of the week our esteemed Congress people are hard at work enriching the already rich while making the poor just a bit poorer, post some stuff about that, maybe GE won't be watching.
Use your own device for personal communication. Of course, your employer might not allow you to keep your job if you want to use your own equipment, alot like BP won't allow clean-up workers to use their own safety equipment and respirators, nor supply them to employees. Fascists!
I am surprised a lawyer even took up this case on behalf of the employee who texted on work equipment...you don't need a law degree to know that your employer has every right to look at what you text on company issued equipment.
In any event, all this texting nonsense has led to a generation that has lost the art of verbal communication. People don't know how to have verbal conversations anymore.
"all this texting nonsense has led to a generation that has lost the art of verbal communication"
Says enough about what generation you must be stuck in . . are you implying we have a young generation of mutes?
SuperWolfie
pat is exactly right. People now avoid direct contact - they text rather than call or speak face-to-face. It's a shame. Conversation is becoming a lost art.
And your comment about "what generation you must be stuck in" is ridiculous. I was using computers and the like before you were born and take full advantage of technology. And yes - this is becoming the mute/avoidance generation.
People who wouldn't assume such privacy using a friend's computer or phone, somehow think there's a zone of protection around their work computer.
Except that the government (that police department) was searching their employee's phone records without a warrant, there seems very little new legal ground to cover. Now that I think of it, the government searches phone records without a warrant all the time.
it's easy. don't use private peripherals i.e. work cell phones, work email for personal. use your own!
Hah hah are you serious? Is this really an issue? I keep forgetting that people are really dumb like a rock. Seriously science needs to find a way to turn off the stupid gene and switch on the common sense gene in people. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Wake up people, You do have a chunk of meat between your ears. Its time to dust it off and start using it.
"Stupid is as stupid does."
...dumb AS rocks
...brains are more "fatty tissue" than "meat"
Since this was already established with e-mail communications on a work computer, it certainly isn't much of a "legal leap" to figure out it would extend to texting on a work phone.
I can see the company taking the phone away, making him pay the overages or other disciplinary measures. As far as reading the text's, I'm not so sure that this is right and not sure it doesn't violate privacy. I'm surprised the court desicion was unaminous. I wonder if that was based on law or just that everyone hates texting so much.....
If its not your personal cell that you paid from your own pocket, its not a violation. Your work owns the phone anything you do on that phone they have the right to monitor.
If you use MY phone, I have every right to see what you are using it for unless I explicitly (!) state otherwise. This guy was ABUSING his privilege.
Gofins
since you don't know if it is a violation of privacy the SC just helped you out - unanimously they said it wasn't.
and of course the SC wouldn't base this decision on "law"...they probably polled everyone at the Courthouse....via text....good grief.
In the workplace using your company provided technology, a person should not have the expectation of privacy. Where I work, we even sign agreements stating such. When we are given access to the computer system or issued a laptop or blackberry, we are given terms of use that state the technology is to be used for company use, with limited private use (such as checking out the news headlines while on a break) but that the devices are subject to monitoring and inspection at any time. Seems like a no brainer to me.
For those of us with brains who actually utilize the brains cells we have into cohesive thought processes this is a no brainer.
For those whose brain cells are on permanent hiatus no such luck.
Didn't this same issue arise with the onset of computers in the work place? There are many people today who just feel the rules don't apply to them and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want and to whomever they want. This guy should have gotten a personal phone for his ah, "personal" calls, what an idiot!!
I agree with Shipup Mom!
If it's the company's cellphone, pager or blackberry that they issued to you, then sure they have a right to monitor it. If it's YOUR OWN personal device, they completely OMG-totally, do not!
i agree Brawndo. why text when you can call. this has never made sense to me and probably never will. much easier talking than hitting keys. do that all day at work.....that's enough. AND talk about no common sense. What was he thinking?
A corporation has every right to oversee how their property is being used, over charges or not. Just as my orginization has every right to view this message, as it is being sent from their property / computer (on my personal lunch time though).
I don't think that anyone has a 'right to privacy' or even a reasonable expectation of privacy when using a corporations property. It just seems like common sense. On the other hand, if they're looking in om my home computer or my cell phone, we have issues:)
Both this statement and the one in the graphic above are an inaccurate interpretation of the ruling. The ruling is VERY LIMITED in scope as drafted by the Court. There are some very specific circumstances underlying this scenario that predicated the Court's decision. A few of those circumstances are: he was a public employee, using a device provided by his public agency; he was made aware that the possibility of an audit existed under certain circumstances; one of those circumstances was if he exceeded the terms of use under the agency's provider's plan, which is exactly what prompted the audit; the audit was conducted under the auspices of whether his over-use was due to using the device for work-related business, or for personal matters.
Just to be clear: the Court specifically drafted their ruling so as not to set any precedent other than to cases that are substantially similar to this one, including the fact that he worked for a PUBLIC agency, not a private corporation. Most corporations that provide various devices for employee use draft specific policies for that use that would supersede this ruling anyway. As it relates to the private sector, this ruling actually has very little bearing on employer-employee interactions.
Now, if we could extend this precedent to auditing the taxpayer-paid devices of other government employees, say legislators, then we will all have won in a big way in this case. Given the kind of people that get into politics, I believe that the public has a deep-seeded interest in knowing exactly what these less-than-honorable people who claim to serve us are actually doing with the technology we provide for their use.
Its sad to know we have morons on the SWAT force.
Really is kind of a no brainer. Kind of petty though. Does this mean that tax payers have a right to read text messages of elected officials using work phones? Is there a law on the books regarding that?
Good idea! Although I am sure that it would only reinforce what we already know: the majority of the politicians are corrupt and possibly sexually-deviant. (OK, the latter part was uncalled for, I admit) Why does the American public keep voting these kinds of people to office??? We need some term limits and politicians should be paid minimum wage and have the same kind of health benefits that run-of-the-mill part-time employees get (which is basically none since we don`t have national health care).
brawndo- Not everyone wants to follow a certain guideline for communication. If you don't like texting, then don't, but don't push others to follow your beliefs. There are situations, after all, when texting is more convenient. It must get tiring to constantly think the rest of the world is wrong just because they aren't exactly like you.
blakrose -
It must get tiring to constantly think the rest of the world is wrong just because they aren't exactly like you.
It must get tiring repeating posts, too.
This is a no-brainer here, and an expected ruling. If you don't know that this could happen to you, then you might not have as good a grasp on technology as you probably should. Technology or other resources including data owned by your employer are not private in any way, and I don't think they should be, either.
This is interesting....the IRS has ruled that private use of a company issued cell phone can be taxed as income. To avoid this dilema some companies require that employees with company issued cell phones pay a portion of the monthly fee to offset this taxable income. So, in essence these employees should have a reasonable expectation of privacy.