Supreme Court rules against police officer in "sexting" case (controversial, invasion)

[DC at the Ridge]

Supreme Court handed down their decision today in the case of a SWAT police officer's expectation of privacy in messages on his department-provided pager.

Supreme Court backs police department that read employee's texts - CSMonitor.com

[ovcatto]

Is this surprising or controversial?

[AeroGuyDC]

This one's kind of fuzzy to me, but you'd have to be a hair-brain to use company/government issued equipment to engage in sexual activity of sorts. Porn has long been a no-no, I don't see why "sexting" wouldn't be a no-no either. Afterall, explicit pictures are sent via text message all the time. That seems to be a form of porn if you ask me. But a pager with just text, that's where the lines get blurry in my opinion.

I can see how the court ruled in this direction. Especially if he was capable of having both his work-issued pager as well as his own personal pager on his person at the same time. Why use the work pager for your dirty work?

[DC at the Ridge]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Is this surprising or controversial?

Surprising? No, I don't think it's surprising that this court sided with the police department. I think it's surprising that the decision was unanimous, given that the justices seem very split on so many issues.

Controversial? At least somewhat. The police officer was told that he could use the pager for personal communications as well as professional communications, and that his privacy would be respected as long as he paid for any overage charges that were incurred. And he always did. So he did have some reasonable expectation of privacy, which is why the 9th Circuit sided with the police officer.

SCOTUS ruled against the police officer, but refused to expand on an explanation of "reasonable expectation of privacy", because they don't know yet where the technology is going. That's kind of weasel-y. I agree with their decision, but I think this court is establishing a tendency to shy away from making rulings that have any clarity.

Their decision in the New Haven firefighters was to shy away from actually defining for businesses when the Civil Rights Acts would apply and when they wouldn't. Their decision in the Corporate Campaign Funding was to shy away from defining when government could limit corporate involvement in campaigns. And in this decision they have shied away from actually clarifying when an employee can expect privacy, and when an employee cannot.

[Lariat]

You shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff at your job, regardless whose smartphone it belongs to.

I will agree that it's an invasion of privacy, yes, but do you really have any privacy to begin with when it's not yours to begin with?

[DC at the Ridge]

Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC

This one's kind of fuzzy to me, but you'd have to be a hair-brain to use company/government issued equipment to engage in sexual activity of sorts. Porn has long been a no-no, I don't see why "sexting" wouldn't be a no-no either. Afterall, explicit pictures are sent via text message all the time. That seems to be a form of porn if you ask me. But a pager with just text, that's where the lines get blurry in my opinion.

I can see how the court ruled in this direction. Especially if he was capable of having both his work-issued pager as well as his own personal pager on his person at the same time. Why use the work pager for your dirty work?

He didn't use a personal pager, because the police department policy at the time permitted him to use the pager for both personal use and professional use, as long as he paid any overage charges that were incurred. Which he did. The compromising messages were exchanged when this policy was in full force. The police department didn't audit his pager use or anyone else's with the intention of discovering how officers were using the pagers. The audit was simply conducted for efficacy purposes, and his "sexting" and other private messages were revealed only collaterally.