Supreme Court: Are text messages private?

The Supreme Court is joining the digital age in what could be a major decision for 21st century technology. It's agreed to decide whether an employer violated a worker's constitutional rights to privacy by inspecting his personal text messages.

"This is the first case on Fourth Amendment protection in data networks," Orin Kerr, an authority on the Fourth Amendment at George Washington University's law school, told the New York Times.

Although there is no precedent, the Supreme Court has given public employers wide latitude to search their employees' offices and files. But it has also said that the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable government searches, has a role to play in any analysis of that latitude, the newspaper reported.

The case involves the police department of Ontario, Calif., which has a formal policy reserving the right to monitor "network activity including email and Internet use," allowing "light personal communications" by employees but cautioning that they "should have no expectation of privacy." It did not directly address text messages.

This case could open a crack into a seemingly endless array of issues regarding enterprise technology that have not yet been settled.

Although it is expected to address the issue regarding public employees, the legal questions will ultimately fall into the private sector as well. And it could ultimately affect every IT shop and its policy regarding privacy and texting. For the moment, make sure you review your policies to stay out of any kind of hot water in dealing with privacy and a worker's text messages on a work-owned device.

For more on privacy and text messaging:
- see this New York Times article

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