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Supreme Court Says Gov't Employee Texts Not Private
e9th writes "The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling, has decided that government employers are entitled to examine all text messages sent with government-provided devices, even if the employee has agreed to pay for any excess message charges out of his own pocket. While the ruling only applies to government employees (at all levels), it may give private sector employees something to think about when using employer-provided devices."
The ruling was for devices provided by the government, did you expect anything less? If it was for your own personal phone, that would be different.
Your employer having access to things you do with IT equipment they furnish is pretty much standard operating procedure, and has been for some time now. I'm having some trouble understanding how this even got to the Supreme Court. The fact that the government allowed them to use the devices for personal messaging doesn't mean that it gave up the right to see what they were doing with them.
My wife’s job wanted her to use her personal Blackberry for work emails and such. I told her that you always have to keep it separate because: - what if you leave? - what if we go over our data? Are they going to pay the overage? can we prove it was because of work stuff? - what if you accidently send work things to personal contacts and vice versa? It opens too many issues. If work wants you to have a device for work, they provide and pay for it and you use it ONLY for work. Simple.
K Man
it may give private sector employees something to think about when using employer-provided devices
Not really, I've always assumed nothing is private on employer provided devices, no matter who my employer.
Now why would you go and do something silly like pay for your own phone service when you can get the taxpayers to pick up the tab instead?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That'd seem to make sense.
When I was working for companies (oohh, I need a job), I carried my work phone and private phone. Personal calls and texts were on the personal phone. Work calls and texts were on the work phone.
There was such a huge difference in the texts.
On the work phone, about 1000 texts/day saying things were up, down, or 999 other bogus status messages. And people wondered why "emergency" texts were missed. Of course they were. After the first 10k status messages, you learn to tune out the beep, or mute 'em.
On the personal phone, about 3 texts/month saying my friends network had problems. The remainder of the texts were the occasional "are you available", "yes" and "call me", being sent in both directions.
I don't really want my employer having access to my texts, nor the list of people I talk to. My friends are none of their business. And for the sake of the business, personal calls on the personal phone don't cost the company anything. :) I burnt up enough minutes on the work phone from remote datacenters, sitting in on hour long conference calls to talk about what we were already doing. "Yup, we're here. We're doing it. We'll be done in a few hours if we don't have to sit in on yet another conference call."
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Now why would you go and do something silly like pay for your own phone service when you can get the taxpayers to pick up the tab instead?
I know what you're saying, but there may be some good reasons. We have employer issued phones at our workplace with unlimited plans. Making personal calls or sending texts during non-work hours does nothing to change the final bill, so we've been told to use them for our own personal use as well. We're required to have the phones & be "on call." Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'm in the exact same boat, but I've never considered giving up my personal phone, and the why seems obvious to me. I pay for a second phone so that my employer has no say in or knowledge of what I do with it. You obviously don't have to have your own phone, but you can't have it both ways. If you use your employers phone, it's their phone, not yours, and they'll do what they want when it comes to monitoring usage. It's not your phone, you have no right to complain about it.
So you can send private texts and calls that your employer isn't allowed to see.
So you can deal drugs with it.
So you can buy drugs with it.
So you can watch porn on it.
So you can make your own porn with it.
So you can sext your girlfriend and MMS pictures of your cock to her.
So you can text your best friend the lurid details of your latest sexual conquest.
I can think of lots of reasons someone would want a second phone not financed by their employer. Most of these reasons involve stuff you don't want your employer to know about or see.
If you are straight edged AND boring, there is no reason. If you like to live dangerously on the fringe or are sexually adventurous, get your own phone. It's a necessity if you regularly have unprotected textual intercourse.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?
Easy to answer: Use it all you want, but assume that your employer will see everything you do. If you want to do something without them knowing, then use your own device. It isn't YOURS. Go ahead and call mom, order that pizza, call a cab, use it for anything that you are fine with it being public, but nothing else.
My experience is that you are better off if you act like everything you do is completely public, be it on any phone, computer, device. Even with the best proxies and encryption, it still *almost* is. If you need to do something that requires no one knowing, then expect that you will have to take extraordinary steps. Simply texting on your company phone is NOT "extraordinary steps".
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
They seem to think this is a positive ruling, which is at odds with this slashdot post.
It's not at odds. It only seems that way:
"Today's S. Ct. decision in Quon v Ontario at http://eff.org/r.4mq (pdf) assumes w/o deciding that 4th am protects privacy of txt msgs (yay!)"
That's completely accurate. The opinion holds that it is assumed but not decided that Quon had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages (see e.g. III-A [p. 9]).
A REOP doesn't mean you can't be searched. It means that searches have to comply with the Fourth Amendment. This search did comply, given the workplace exception, pp. 15-16, and therefore the city is entitled to conduct such audits of the equipment it pays for.
You could try working during work.
You get a work phone, it's work's property. Don't do shit with it you don't want your employer to see.
If you work in public sector, don't do or say things on it you don't want the public to know.
The ability to have multiple lines on a single SIM has existed for years, and such SIMs, operator support and phone support is fairly commonplace in the rest of the world for exactly this kind of issue -- have one line for work, one for personal calls, but only carry one phone.