06-21-2008, 11:22 AM
Quote:A ruling by a three-judge panel in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has established new privacy rights for employees who use employer-issued cell phones, pagers and computers to send personal text messages.
The judges upheld the verdict in Quon v. Arch Wireless, which determined that if an employer contracts with an outside provider for messaging -- as most do -- it does not have the right to ask the service provider for transcripts of the text messages employees send out. The same concept can be applied to e-mail communications if the employer outsources that service instead of maintaining it on an internal server...
The ruling touched on other points of contention among law enforcement agencies, defense attorneys and Internet service providers. For instance, it determined that the service provider, Arch Wireless, was an electronic communication service, and thus entitled to more privacy protections than a remote computing service under the 1986 Stored Communications Act. That is a distinction that communications service providers will clearly have to master now...
full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/Workplac...63492.html
EFF on the fuling:
Quote:Todays Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in Quon v. Arch Wireless is a victory for the privacy of email and text messages. The holding means that law enforcement needs a probable cause warrant to access stored copies of your electronic messages less than 180 days old, regardless of whether you have already downloaded or read them. It also stops employers from getting the contents of employee emails or text messages from the service provider without employee consent...
full article: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/new...sage-priva