To follow up on my post of April 16th about a police officer, Jeff Quon, in Ontario, CCalifornia who was suing his employer for reviewing his personal texts on a company-owned and issued pager, The Supreme Court, amazingly, ruled 9-0 in favor of the Ontario Police chief, claiming that because there was reason to believe a work policy was being violated, his search of Quon’s texts did not violate Quon’s 4th amendment right against illegal search and seizure; the court ruled that the search was reasonable. Did I mention that the texts were sexually explicit? And were to his girlfriend, ex-wife, and another colleague?! (Women must love a man in uniform.)
This case is interesting for two reasons: secondarily, it is reportedly the first case on record to involve privacy issues regarding texting at work on a company-issue device.
But the main reason this case strikes me as revolutionary is that I don't think people realize just how close to Armageddon we really were if the decision had gone the other way...can you imagine the nightmare for IT, and for Legal if they had to try and perform discovery on company-owned devices that were constitutionally protected? This is the very model of privacy that Europe has today where the employee's privacy takes precedence, as opposed to the U.S. where there is no expectation of privacy in the workplace (usually). If the decision were for Quon than we would have seen a slew of other cases that would have fundamentally changed the way IT and Legal administer hardware and access in the workplace.
I feel like Earth just dodged a huge asteroid, but most people were distracted watching World Cup....
