Court Privacy Ruling Establishes New Privacy Rights For Employee Text Messages

[Kristijntje]

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:

Today’s 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

[freebieman]

Wow, employers can be tough, little bit too much probing...

[xwpopper]

Sorry, but this is going a little too far in protecting freedoms. I can see a court saying that an employee's communication on their own phones or computers on the job are private, if outside the employer's network. But if I am going to pay someone to use a computer and phone in my office, own and operate the office network, pay for the ISP and phone service, and the excess personal activity on the services I pay for is causing inflation of costs for these services, I will monitor the use. It's called loss prevention, not invasion of privacy. If an employee is wasting my payroll dollars, my service dollars, and my utility dollars to do it, then they will be monitored and won't work for me long.
If employees abuse what is given to them by their employer, they deserve "disciplinary action up to and including termination."
What is not said in this article though, is most employers and government agencies require new employees to sign that they agree to have all communications monitored by the employer for any reason, and also an acceptable use standard and policy that a violation of will result in termination. And, once an employee signs that agreement, there goes any chance of taking it to court.
But, It's still ridiculous. Every dollar counts in this global recession, and if a business can't monitor employee activity to control costs it only sinks them deeper in this economy.
JMO

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=xwpopper link=topic=18025.msg73259#msg73259 date=1226640877]
Sorry, but this is going a little too far in protecting freedoms. I can see a court saying that an employee's communication on their own phones or computers on the job are private, if outside the employer's network. But if I am going to pay someone to use a computer and phone in my office, own and operate the office network, pay for the ISP and phone service, and the excess personal activity on the services I pay for is causing inflation of costs for these services, I will monitor the use. It's called loss prevention, not invasion of privacy. If an employee is wasting my payroll dollars, my service dollars, and my utility dollars to do it, then they will be monitored and won't work for me long.
If employees abuse what is given to them by their employer, they deserve "disciplinary action up to and including termination."
What is not said in this article though, is most employers and government agencies require new employees to sign that they agree to have all communications monitored by the employer for any reason, and also an acceptable use standard and policy that a violation of will result in termination. And, once an employee signs that agreement, there goes any chance of taking it to court.
But, It's still ridiculous. Every dollar counts in this global recession, and if a business can't monitor employee activity to control costs it only sinks them deeper in this economy.
JMO
[/quote]

I agree.