Filed under “really, did we need the Supreme Court to tell us this?” we have the case of Quon v. Arch Wireless. This guy, Jeff Quon, was (still is?) on the SWAT team in Ontario, California. All members of the SWAT team get a mobile device, and a certain allowance of text messages and minutes. Jeff, being the 14 teenage girl that he is, went way over his SMS limit and his boss asked Arch Wireless, the company providing the mobile devices and mobile service, for a record of all text messages sent to find out who was costing his city all these damn overage charges.
Now as a government employee, hell as an employee of any company, if you use equipment given to you by your employer, then it’s not your stuff. Seriously, how hard can this be? Jeff’s boss discovered that Jeff was the one sending too many texts, and not only were his texts numerous, but they were nasty too, as in the sexually nasty variety. Jeff thought this violated his privacy, and because Jeff is a dumb ass, he sued the city.
This all happened several years ago. You know how these things work, appeals and what not, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of Law and Order. This case made it all the way up to the supreme court, and the ruling went in favor of Jeff’s boss “because it was motivated by a legitimate work-related purpose, and because it was not excessive in scope … Although Quon had exceeded his monthly allotment a number of times, [Ontario Police Department] requested transcripts for only August and September 2002 in order to obtain a large enough sample to decide the character limits’ efficaciousness, and all the messages that Quon sent while off duty were redacted. And from OPD’s perspective, the fact that Quon likely had only a limited privacy expectation lessened the risk that the review would intrude on highly private details of Quon’s life.”
Let this be a lesson kids. If you want to send a picture of your privates to your lover, use your own mobile phone. Seriously, shouldn’t the Supreme Court be doing other, more important things?
[Via: Ars.Technica]