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Supreme Court Takes Texting Privacy Case
TaggartAleslayer writes with this excerpt from the NYTimes:
"The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager. The case opens 'a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,' according to a three-judge panel of an appeals court that ruled in favor of the employee, a police sergeant on the Ontario, Calif., SWAT team. ... Members of the department's SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected. The lieutenant eventually changed his mind and ordered transcripts of messages sent and received by Sgt. Jeff Quon. In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 456 of those messages were related to official business. According to the trial judge, many of the messages 'were, to say the least, sexually explicit in nature.'"
An organization has the right to inspect how its resources are being used? Madness!
What the bloody hell is the point of stating a policy if you don't have to stick to it? This happens all the time in all sorts of organizations.
If you have a policy, you should be held to it. If you give reasonable notice of changes, that's acceptable. It is completely unacceptable to make up rules as you go along.
A work phone, paid for by the workplace, should be allowed to be inspected by the workplace. Just like email. Just like web traffic. Any abuse of this system, however, should be punished harshly and swiftly. If you want to sext each other, get your own damn phones. I'm sure evidence logs don't need a whole lot of, "Lol hang on let me beat this black guy for being black" mixed with "Done beating him here's a picture of my dick" when at trials.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Normally I'd agree with you, but the summary says they are explicitly allowed personal use and were told that the messages wouldn't be read.
From the Summary:
The lieutenant eventually changed his mind
And that's all thats required to know they were in the wrong. If they were going to change their mind, they need to inform their employees that the change is occuring, and that his privacy will then be at stake. They should only be able to check pager transcriptions after that day.
You can't say one thing and then do another, even if it's to stop sexually implicit messages. Deceipt cannot be tolerated at any level of government.
I'm sorry, but the guy was a cop, he should know better. It says he was a swat member but still, police know how easily that stuff can be accessed. He shouldn't have put anything stupid like that on his work device.
Browsers with "Stealth" (porn) browsing features, schoolkids sending naked pictures of themselves via cellphone, laptops loaded with porn, and you really expect company pagers not to be used to shmooze with others?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Seems clear to me that the SWAT team expected the pagers to used both for business reasons and for private reasons. Otherwise they should have reimbursed all use of the pager, regardless of amount of characters used, *AND* have had a policy of "no private use allowed".
The percentage of private vs work messages doesn't matter; because even an average of 1 work message a month could completely justify the cost of having the pager.
In any case, the sexual nature of the content shouldn't be relevant. It's private use, doesn't matter if you're sending/recieving "walk the dog" messages vs "fuck me like a dog" messages.
From the article...
The Ontario Police Department had a formal policy reserving the right to monitor “network activity including e-mail and Internet use,” allowing “light personal communications” by employees but cautioning that they “should have no expectation of privacy.” The policy did not, however, directly address text messages.
Ave Molech Setting
Hey, I hate cops as much as the next guy but come on they are people too! They were expressly told they can put personal stuff on there.
Also from the article...
Members of the department’s SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected.
How is this any different than employers reading your e-mail? There's already statements from the Supreme Court that "While police, and even administrative enforcement personnel, conduct searches for the primary purpose of obtaining evidence for use in criminal or other enforcement proceedings, employers most frequently need to enter the offices and desks of their employees for legitimate work-related reasons wholly unrelated to illegal conduct."
It sounds like in this case the employer had a policy regarding 25000 characters per month and they were enforcing a policy. Arch(Pagenet) didn't have much in the way of message security anyway so this seems that
the employer could get access quite easily to the messages, especially if they were the account holder.
Since Text Messages and E-Mails are handled by third parties, wouldn't this also apply to the recent ruling that you don't have a right to privacy?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Except that the work device was expected to be used for personal use as well if you pay your bills.
It'd be like your company buying you and IPhone and paying for a Dataplan. You are perfectly allowed to to put unlimitted Texts, your fav 5, or whatever other plan you want on it so long as you cover the extra Cost.
What seperates this here is that the police force said if you pay the bills you won't get inspected.
He paid the bills. He got inspected.
The Lieutennant had a personnel policy of not reading text messages.
This doesn't affect the official policy of the entire organization which is no expectation of privacy.
Furthermore, the vast majority of usage was personal in nature, not official.
RTFA.
An organization has the right to inspect how its resources are being used? Madness!
Yeah. Unfortunately, I was sued when I wanted to make sure the ladies restroom was being used properly. I did it discretely with a peep hole and I didn't do it personally (I'm not a perv) - I had a video cam taking movies and I put them on the web for others to check for me so I wouldn't be accused of being a peeping Tom - all for a small fee to pay for bandwidth, of course.
God! You just can't please some people!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Again, formal written policy trumps informal policy.
The lieutennant in question didn't have the authority to change formal policy, so his personal assurance should mean jack shit in a legal battle.
"Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant,"
A policy that isn't written down can't be relied upon. It's subject to change at a moment's notice.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
They use pagers? And, more to the point, they *pay* to use pagers? They should have been using SMS on their mobile phones. Personal phones, rather than employer-supplied ones. That way it would be free from employer snooping, and free to use.
Gimme a break. I didn't realise the police were clergy! What law was this guy breaking by sending sexually explicit messages? As for the issue of using police equipment for personal messages, if this was permitted at the time, again what's the problem? If he was breaking a law why isn't this what we're hearing about rather than the fact that he liked to talk dirty?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
well to be more accurate "Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected." emphasis mine.
So it wasn't in writing. i.e. it didn't exist. Not fun, not cool on the part of the Lt. but they have zip to stand on IMO. I'm amazed SCOTUS upheld this. All it would take is a promotion or retirement and that Lt. is no longer there to uphold the 'informal policy'.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This only matters if the official policy was applied evenly and there was an expectation of enforcement.
IANAL, but RTFLaw
Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected.
And was it the police lieutenant who read the messages or someone higher up? If department policy says that messages can be read, I don't think a sole lieutenant has the authority to change that policy, and he certainly can't speak for his bosses.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You are confusing formal policy with written policy.
A contract is a contract, regardless of whether it is written down. The writing is nothing more than evidence of a contract, it is not the contract itself.
We don't know whether the lieutenant's policy was official or "formal" or not.
were told that the messages wouldn't be read
Verbally? Or in writing?
Interesting that there is no mention of the police union stepping in here - the union stewards are usually the first on the scene when a cop-versus-management dispute arises.
He's a cop, he must know rule number 2:
2. Never believe a word a cop says.
Almost as important as rule number 1:
1. Never talk to the police.
I think it would if the defense got the right lawyer.
Example:
Your direct supervisor tells you, you can go home early, no need for you today.
You leave.
For one reason or another, HIS supervisor felt you shouldn't have left and fires you.
I'm pretty sure with the right lawyer one can argue, you had a reasonable expectation that it was okay for you to leave and not suffer the consequences, despite what the policy and your supe's supe said.
This isn't really any different, if your superior says its okay for you to do something, and someone over his head comes down on you for it, you have a defense.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
You're really trying to put a mis-informative spin on this. The organization clearly indicated that you could use the pagers for personal use, and if you used them heavily for personal use, you would pay out of your own pocket for the privilege.
So now that he's paying for the service out of his own pocket, and using it for personal use (never mind what kind of personal use), the organization changes it's policy. It decides that simply owning the hardware in question supersedes all prior agreement and they can change their policy retroactively and inspect that which they agreed to not care about.
If you're for the police department on this one, then basically you are for an organization not being bound to its word on agreements of how resources are to be used, but employees being bound to their word on how those same resources are to be used. Such a position is clearly an invitation for an organization to abuse any resource bound agreement. Considering that the police department could have avoided this entire issue by either denying personal use, by outlining what kinds of personal use were acceptable, by changing their agreement non-retroactively, or by not changing their agreement, it's hard to side with them (even if they bought the pager).
...sexually explicit in nature.
Mosquitoes can be a problem.
THL phish sticks
If it was really a work device then what business does the company have sticking them with the bill?
Also, there was an exchange of consideration "you pay the overage and we won't snoop" so privacy in this case seems to be guaranteed simply by contract.
According to the trial judge, many of the messages 'were, to say the least, sexually explicit in nature.'
...and, what? Is there a policy against it? Was the other party a co-worker? Why is this remotely relevant?
The policy states:
The use of inappropriate, derogatory, obscene, suggestive, defamatory, or harassing language in the e-mail system will not be tolerated.
So if I were to exchange sexually explicit messages with my wife, for example, how does the policy apply? It would then be appropriate, favorable, natural, explicit, complimentary, and welcome. What happens now?
“[u]sers should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using these resources.”
And likewise, people peeking in my bedroom window should expect to see my hairy butt from time to time. Don't want to see, don't look. Look, you get what you asked for...
The closest thing I can find is this:
Chief Scharf referred the matter to internal affairs “to determine if someone was wasting . . . City time not doing work when they should be.”
Hey, Chief, they were. Investigation over. Chances are, you were, too, unless you somehow work your entire shift without periods of non-work time. That includes your bathroom time, sir. The salient question should be, were any dollars actually wasted? Was there any SWAT not getting done because of the excessive pager use?
I think You're the first person in this thread who's made a good analogy, and a logical arguement.
I'd mod you up if I weren't already involved in the discussion elsewhere.
I still think the search should hold up as "not a violation of fourth amendment rights" - but it's a good arguement.
A police department asking a telecom company to turn over transcripts of messages is a somewhat different position, though. Does a telecom company really treat those requests exactly as any other customer asking for transcripts of messages? Or does it treat it like a police request for transcripts?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Anybody who knew of rule 1 wouldn't have been able to tell him then would they?
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
I heard this on NPR this morning and the fact that they were using the phrase "grey area" astounded me.
Look, it's simple: if your employer owns a device, and allows you to use it, you are not to ever use it for personal reasons, nor should you ever expect even the slightest amount of privacy for communications using the device. Even (and probably especially) if they give you permission for personal use. That goes for cell phones, pagers, computers, slide rules, everything. That means you do not log into personal Facebook, Google, or Hotmail at work. You do not use the company phone to call home. If you do any of these, you've 1) probably violated the terms of your employment and 2) have given the company/government permission to peer into all personal communications made with your employer's equipment.
You have explicit rights (in most cases) to privacy and use of the property that you actually own. That's it, the line is drawn there. I can't believe there is any controversy over this.
1. The official policy of the organization, that there was no expectation of privacy, has never been in question, and has never changed.
2. A middle manager (The Lieutenant) made an unofficial policy that the text messages wouldn't be inspected.
3. The inspection was not made simply because it was an organizational resource, it was made because the officer in sergeant in question was overusing his phone, and they wanted to find out why.
The policy department as a whole never made any statements or policy that this was acceptable. The organization is not going back on it's word. The lieutenant in question is kind of an asshole for this, but he's not in the wrong legally.
So the fact that you know that your data can easily be accessed gives people the right to circumvent the Fourth Amendment against you?
An organization has the right to inspect how its resources are being used? Madness!
But isn't this the same government that doesn't need a warrant to look at email & text messages?
Why should a SWAT officer have more rights than other citizens? Oh, right, they have guns.
Remind me to renew my gun permit.
that it doesn't make sense to believe such an obviously-likely-to-change promise and do risky stuff. Even though it was completely wrong (and in my opinion actionable) that they changed their policy and then acted upon that change without warning anyone....it is *also* stupid to have not seen this coming.
I prefer to preemptively protect myself from abuse even when the abusers promise not to abuse me.
Ummm...it's employer property! A few times in the past, I've made personal calls on my work cell phone [I did not yet have a cell phone myself], and I understood that my employer had the right to [1] make me pay for it, and [2] ask me what the hell I was doing--they wound up doing neither, since we didn't exceed the monthly minute allocation.
I've thought of an interesting one though:
My employer sends me on travel and gets me a hotel room for a week. I use the hotel's Internet connection to surf porn from my work laptop. At the time, I am NOT logged into the company VPN or using a company aircard. I keep Firefox in porn mode. Or I just bring my own laptop with me and surf porn from that.
I'd side with the employee in this case. Just like a workplace bathroom, when an employee is in their hotel room after a day of work, they're off the clock and have an expectation of privacy.
"Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected."
This case will probably set no clear precedent.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I had foolishly assumed he wasn't born a cop.
> Verbally? Or in writing?
Verbal agreements are binding.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Too dumb to be a cop! Only 12 percent were work related messages. You might as well txt the media with your resignation and a report on wasting police resources.
Well aren't you silly, don't you know that every so often an angel descends from heaven and grants a baby the power to be simultaneously an asshole and a "hero" of the community AND grant them a position of power?
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Article doesn't say it wasn't in writing. It's pretty vague about the form of the "informal policy."
How did this get modded up? This is a troll, and people are modding it Informative? Are you kidding me?
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
It's California. IANAL but standard practice trumps ANY policy or writing in a workplace.
If he can get affidavits of officers stating that they all understood the policy the same way, the written policy has been rendered irrelevant.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Depends. I don't believe that would hold up for a second under an at-will employment scheme. Under those you can be fired for no reason at all, or any legal reason. That would include your direct supe screwing up and his supe taking it out on you.
The only few reasons you can't be fired under work for hire are prohibited are things like racial, sexual, religious bias, and a few other limited categories.
SCOTUS has not upheld anything, they have agreed to hear the case. We shall see what they say when they say it.
Cops are outside of the average slashdoters monkeysphere.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Not all states have active or powerful unions. Here in VA, the attitude is union smunion...they does not have any power, at best, they might be able to fund an atty.
Did you know that many government agencies, as well as private businesses, charge employees for the "free" business phones and devices they use? Under the tax law in the United States, employees are to be taxed a certain amount of the bill for their business lines. When I was in law enforcement, we were charged taxes on our Nextel lines and we had to pay for any personal use. Short of us trying to engage in criminal activities or attempting to choke someone with the phone itself, we were never bothered with how we used the phones.
My girlfriend, who is now my wife, sent me numerous sexually explicit text messages. Other than one incident, when the, then captain of our unit, decided to have a little fun and post a conversation of ours in a break room, nothing was ever said about how we used the phones. We had to pay for all incidental use, outside of normal police function, which meant that we were protected under the fourth amendment like a private citizen. You may disagree, but the law does not really care what you think.
Some citizens tried to argue that the government owned the phones, but they were dead wrong. Along with paying non-job related use, the officers had to pay for the device. It was only if the device was damage in the course of duty that the government would pay for the device. I know that many people dilude themselves into thinking that law enforcement officers are robots that only behave a certain way and never have fun. In reality, those in law enforcement enjoy sex, alcohol, and fun(wait, those are essentially the same thing).
Sorry kids, but cops, just like your parents, do have sex and enjoy it.
It might have been in writing, just not from someone with the authority to set formal policy. I can easily see an email saying if you go over the limit, expect to pay the overage charge. Otherwise, be prepared to have the messages reviewed to make sure its truly business related.
How many offices have an "unwritten" policy that you can use your deskphone for personal during lunch, maybe even going so far as to say use a calling card for personal long dist? How does that change your expectation of privacy? Can they fire you for using the phone during lunch and talking dirty to your girlfriend (assumes you're not creating a hostile workplace)?
Besides, wouldn't the issue be the person _sending_ these questionable text pages?
RTFA: the official policy was different from the informal policy.
$ make available
How can he be overusing it, since they explicitely said you can pay for your own usage, being considered that in excess of 25000 characters? If it all had to be work usage, then they should pay the whole thing regardless, and do some checks if it seems excessive.
"In one month in 2002, only 57 of more than 456 of those messages were related to official business" ... since the employer paid for the first 25k of characters that means this employee would have had to have averaged slightly over 438 characters per-message to claim that the employer wasn't paying for any of the messages the employer looked at. NOT BLOODLY LIKELY.
So since the business (government actually) *did* foot the bill for this cop's sexting, why *shouldn't* they be allowed to monitor his sexting?
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide...." Sound familiar?
Normally, I'd agree with you, but the summary says they were told that the messages wouldn't be read if they paid the excess charges themselves.
Don't mind me; just being a little pedantic.... Pointing out that, even under the informal arrangement, they could have had their messages read.
And I'm pretty sure it's pointed out elsewhere in this thread that, according to TFA, the company's formal policy explicitly said not to expect privacy.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Normally I'd agree with you, but the summary says they are explicitly allowed personal use and were told that the messages wouldn't be read.
Exactly. This isn't about the government reading messages sent to government property. This is about the government lying to its employees. They are two very very different things.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
How is it a troll?
I take it this is a huge troll then: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912, note 12:30 and 19:40 where we have blatant "I lie through my teeth" statements.
Note, the reason you don't talk to the police is because they lie to you - which happens to also be why you don't believe a word they say. They're job is to put people in jail, I am a person, hence they aren't on my side.
This article is about someone who was told by a cop he could do something when in fact he wasn't allowed to. So surprise surprise, a cop lied.
And two members of my family are cops, so no they aren't outside my "monkeysphere".
IANAL, but it's not as simple as you make it out to be. While the idea that you should never use an employer-provided advice for personal reasons is a good one to guard your privacy, that doesn't mean there's no law surrounding what the employer can do to its employees. When the employer is the government, the case is especially complex because the government must follow the fourth amendment, which guarantees the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. (This is applicable to the state governments because of the 14th Amendment.) But what does unreasonable mean, and what constitutes a search? The Constitution is vague (deliberately, and probably to our benefit), so the meanings change over time as social expectations change, and the Courts have to try to figure out the answers not to the theoretical world where nobody uses a device provided by an employer with an expectation of privacy, but to the actual world where people do have expectations of privacy in private communications made at work--even if nobody in the tech community would consider that expectation reasonable. This is all complicated more by a separate statutory basis for giving the employee an expectation of privacy in his communication--the Court of Appeals held that a statute provided an extra protection in this case, at least potentially (we'll have to wait for the SCT to rule to hear the last word).
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
In most "at will" states, the reasons for discharge also become a major factor in how the unemployment compensation if any will be paid. Also, there is a reputation thing that comes along to some of the more senior staff members where a firing can severely damage the ability for a rehire. Some jobs are only available to people with good job records and a firing like that could really screw someone unjustly.
So even though it would be meaningless in keeping your job, there may still be recourse available if not just qualifying for unemployment compensation. In my state, the employer has to kick in a portion of the unemployment compensation and they also pay premiums to the state which can go up if too many unjustified dismissals happen. Sadly, they do not consider temporary layoffs when the worker never gets called back as a dismissal. This makes is easy for companies to clean house by laying off a bunch of workers and only calling back the ones they want for whatever reason without any retribution.
In most states that I am aware of, "at will" means any reason but there are safeguards in place to help employees for bad reasons. How this effects the company sort of varies.
The government enforcement of unnatural constructs like "intellectual property" and the FCC drastically limits media competition, where content providers would be forced to find a way to attract viewers on the basis of viewer experience. Instead the government is all but forcing you to watch commercials A Clockwork Orange style by outlawing distribution alternatives like The Pirate Bay. And now they want to gain your loyalty by slapping this little bandaid on your viewing experience, while violating the rights of the broadcasters in the process... Ridiculous...
In TFA, it was the lieutenant that read the messages, so there was the agreement that he would not read the messages. That is why there is a case.
If it was one of the lieutenant's superiors then there would be no real case, but that is not apparently what happened here.
"Read the Article. Read the other responses in this thread. Hell, Read the goddamn summary. Idiot. "
I did. The article did not say the original policy was "written", just that it was formal. It then went on to mention an informal policy on the part of the lieutenant, again not mentioning whether it was written or not.
Further, the court of appeals agreed with me. So... who's the idiot?
When was the last time you heard of a police force in anything larger than a tiny town that was "at will"? More likely, they are completely unionized.
The summary implies it was the same police lieutenant who read the messages.
The Lieutenant may have committed no crime, but (while IANAL) I believe it may be possible to argue that The Lieutenant did violate a verbal contract, which could leave him open to be sued to recover all damages.
Remember that any time somebody would answer yes to "So, do we have an understanding?" a verbal contract exists. The question of if the contract is valid or binding is another matter, one which I know far less about.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Your comment is illogical given that what they meant by "formal policy" was that it was written down (such as in an employee handbook) and that "informal policy" meant it was spoken by the boss.
Legal yes... but try proving a verbal contract. It's not easy. Thus explains the general consensus that spoken contracts are worth jack shit because it boils down to he-said/she-said in court.
Who said he had power to amend the policy anyway? If he said "Hey man, don't worry about Article III Paragraph 15 in your handbook, it's OK to have sex in the police vans", do you think it would hold? How about doubling employees PTO time? Eliminating severance on termination? (The answer is no to all of those.)
Camping on quad since 1996.
This seems to me (IANAL) grounds for 'estoppel': the cop relied on the statements of his superior who then then reneged on them without notice.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Logical != legal defense
Remember which website you're on, and the innumerable bad laws which defy logic. The qualifier GP missed was "IANAL"
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The word "including" means that there are more items than those listed. However, they must come from the same group.
(At least in the parent) There is no mention of monitoring telecoms, only Internet communication types. The actual policy may list telecoms and mobile devices, but I can't be bothered to look. If it's not there, I'd start there as a defense.
IANAL, did a little law studying.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's perfectly ok and legal for your employer to change their mind on a policy and expect you to comply.
Since he was using employer provided equipment. Yes, there was (and is) a policy of not using employer provided equipment to send sexually explicit messages. To anyone. Even your wife.
Best Slashdot Co
The city most likely has an acceptable use policy for all company property, including a "No Expectation of Privacy" section that applies to computers, phones and the like that belong to the city. The lieutenant's policy was "informal," which basically means nothing. The policy of the department and the city override anything that comes out of the Lt's mouth. He may slide with a warning at work, but I don't see any way this guy could win a rights violation lawsuit.
Then the analogy no longer corresponds to the story.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The written policy is only enforceable if it is done consistently. Showing that it was not consistently enforced – e.g. sworn testimony by other officers that “you pay for the overage, we don’t read your messages” was the agreement as understood by all – and was only enforced in your case indicates that you were singled out, which implies discrimination of some sort, which is a direction that management definitely doesn’t want the issue to move in.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Any policy has to be consistently enforced or else it loses any credibility. If you suddenly decide to enforce a policy that you haven’t been enforcing until now, you can expect a discrimination case to be filed by the person you’re enforcing it against. You singled them out for harsher treatment after routinely treating everyone else differently. This sort of thing can and will come back to bite you, as evidenced by this article.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
There is no specific company policy in writing for e-mails or text messages on a company phone, but there are policies about what my company sees as appropriate behavior and inappropriate behavior.
If you are caught having inappropriate behavior be it through talking, e-mails, text messages, you will get the same penalty.
I do not see the difference here. There are also policies at my company where, lets say I am at a bar and see a guy I work with that I do not like, if I walk up to him and punch him in the face, I could still lose my job.
Even if he is doing personal stuff, he has to maintain some type of role as a leader of the community whether we like it or not, whether he does it or not, whether he likes it or not. That is what he is supposed to do.
Maybe he should not be using company property to do stuff that is not work related.
The world is how you make it
The key is consistency. Although I do not manage anyone, I have heard from my own boss about enough labour/management disputes that I know this to be true.
A policy cannot be enforced willy-nilly. You can’t just reserve the right to do something, consistently not do it, and then do it one day out of the blue for no apparent reason at all. Either it must be enforced consistently to everyone, or it must be enforced to a random sampling of employees with no bias or discrimination as to who is selected.
For instance, my workplace has a drug & alcohol testing policy. If my boss one day smelled pot on my clothes, he could have me sent in for a test “for cause”. If a random test is sent down from the HR department, which randomly selects employees for testing from the employee pool, I have no way to weasel out of that either. However, my boss could not just randomly have me tested at a whim without any justification for doing so – I’d have a discrimination case if he tried.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
2. A middle manager (The Lieutenant) made an unofficial policy that the text messages wouldn't be inspected.
3. The inspection was not made simply because it was an organizational resource, it was made because the officer in sergeant in question was overusing his phone, and they wanted to find out why.
Yes – but if the employee in question can substantiate his claims of #2, he has a case for discrimination, and management has to prove that either (a) the check was random and unbiased or (b) his case warranted special attention.
It’s clear that (a) holds no water in this case – a true random selection would be designed so that bias could not be introduced, and having humans in the decision-making process almost by definition introduces bias. With respect to (b), assuming he paid for the excess text messages as informal policy decreed, there is very little justification to claim that his particular case warranted reading his messages.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
They should handle it as they would handle it for any other customer. The police are their customers, nothing more... unless they have a court order, which they didn’t.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's amazing I unhid every message in this thread and see no other mention of how company phones are taxable. I always figured slashdot was chock full of IT professionals (who freuqently get put on call), this thread is inconsistent with that thinking.
You:
"We don't know whether the lieutenant's policy was official or "formal" or not."
Summary:
"Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant"
This is why you're an idiot.
It's called a fringe benefit.. valued employees who aren't shit people doing shit jobs get them. And under the tax law you have to pay for them on your taxes.. Company autos and phones (for me it's $60/year for phone and a free rental car anywhere I am as long as there is one available for a few bucks per use.. which is a good deal).
You did your best to sound intelligent, but like the other slashpies on here.. your efforts to look as smart as you think you are is undermined by your limited exposre to the world 300 feet or more from your access point.
And what defines "formal" vs "informal" here? Do you know? And are you sure the article got it right?
Once again, I'll simply say that the appeals court agreed with me, not with you. Are those judges idiots?
I'd be careful if I were you, before throwing around words like "idiot".
The arguement presented to the Appeals court is that yes, there was both a formal policy and an informal policy, and that the informal policy should have trumped the formal policy in regards to the Sergeant's privacy rights. The appeals court agreed with your conclusions, that this was a breach of privacy in violation of the Sergeant's fourth amendment rights. This is a position I'm academically comfortable with, it's worthy of debate whether they're right or wrong, and it's eventually going to be decided by the supreme court.
Meanwhile, your arguement, is that there's a confusion as to whether or not there's a formal policy or not. This contradicts all available information on the subject, and is why you're an idiot.
Your lack of reading comprehension isn't helping your case much either.
While /. has had some pretty dodgey summaries in the past, suggesting that the New York Times has described something so integral to the story using a word with the complete opposite meaning is ridiculous.
"Meanwhile, your arguement, is that there's a confusion as to whether or not there's a formal policy or not. This contradicts all available information on the subject, and is why you're an idiot."
No, the information that I had (OP and the article) did not contain that particular tidbit. If you wanted to research the actual court case in order to prove your point that's fine, but that doesn't make me an idiot, nor does it reflect on my level of comprehension. Nor, for that matter, did it prove your point. I am aware of at least one court case in my own state that decided: since business policy is a part of the employment contract, if there is sufficient evidence of a spoken promise on the part of a superior it is generally considered binding.
My original statement was: "A contract is a contract, regardless of whether it is written down. The writing is nothing more than evidence of a contract, it is not the contract itself."
You can argue with yourself all day about which constitutes "formal" and which "informal", but that does nothing but muddy the issue. The central issue all along has been whether the company's written policy should override the lieutenant's spoken policy, or vice versa.
That is very simple logic. Otherwise, you could have two written policies, one "formal" and one "informal"... but that would be pointless, because according to GP's argument the formal policy would always prevail, so there would be no reason for the existence of an informal policy in the first place. The same if they were both spoken. Therefore, the only difference that actually mattered was whether the policy was written. And the court decided that the spoken policy, since it was actually observed, was the one that trumped the other.
"... suggesting that the New York Times has described something so integral to the story using a word with the complete opposite meaning is ridiculous."
And perhaps it would be, if that is what I had done. I suspect your own comprehension is not as thorough as you would like to believe.
As I have pointed out, the difference between "formal" and "informal" is actually totally irrelevant to the story... unless they are being used as nothing more than synonyms for "written" and "unwritten". Further, if you feel that the particular wording in a York Times article constitutes "formal" authority in the matter... well, all I can do is laugh.
Personally, I'd record it or get it in writing. Always CYA
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
The difference between formal and informal only matters because you directly contradicted the summary with a statement you made earlier in this thread.
Yes, I did. But I also stated elsewhere that it was quite possible that the summary was wrong. And in fact it was.
You seem to keep missing the essential point that I was, in fact, correct.
Not an idiot.
Delusional.
Gotcha.
A police department asking a telecom company to turn over transcripts of messages is a somewhat different position, though. Does a telecom company really treat those requests exactly as any other customer asking for transcripts of messages? Or does it treat it like a police request for transcripts?
Larger telecoms have well-established protocols for responding to official requests from LE for records. This would not fall within that unless the Department had submitted the proper paperwork for a subpoena. I don't see the need for them to do this, the telecom would likely be willing to comply since it is their account, after all.
Oh, for Christ's sake. Go back and read the whole thing. You were saying that I am wrong because I contradicted the article. But neglected the fact that I was correct in contradicting the article. You don't like simple logic? Fine. Go back to the school of 2 + 2 = 5. It appears that is where you belong.
To me, 4 is not delusional.
I was correct in contradicting the article.
and
the information that I had (OP and the article)
Delusional.
Again, you have completely ignored the logical argument that I clearly spelled out for you. You don't have to pay attention to logic if you don't want to, but that doesn't mean that people who do are delusional. A = true, B = true, A x B = false Incorrect.
Asserting that the article (your only source of information) is incorrect is not a logical argument.
That wasn't my only source of information. There were 2 sources at hand, but I identified 3. Maybe you should go back and read again.