Thursday, April 22, 2010

No more free ride

Do you or your police officer use an employer-paid cell phone, pager, or computer?  Think again about sending those racy messages!!

The Supreme Court appears likely to rule against public employees who claimed a local government violated their privacy by reading racy text messages they sent on their employers’ account.
Even though officers were told informally that "no one would look further if officers personally paid for charges above a monthly allowance," written policy stated the opposite.  "The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the informal policy was enough to give the officers a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their text messages and establish that their constitutional rights had been violated."

The Obama Administration sides with the Ontario, CA police department, and it appears as though the Supreme Court will concur.  I'm wondering how screwed those officers are that sent the questionable messages.

Read the whole thing on PoliceLink.

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

interesting. Never heard of this so thanks for the heads up. We have our own phones but get a police discount through our provider. Knowing the nature of the beast I'm sure there were a lOT of questionable messages LOL.