Federal court makes it harder for bosses to snoop into text messages

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

A federal appeals court strengthened privacy rights Wednesday for workers who send text messages from devices supplied by their employer, ruling that the companies transmitting those messages can't disclose their contents without the recipient's consent.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a wireless company violated a Southern California police officer's rights by revealing the messages he sent to co-workers, and that the police department where the officer worked also violated his rights by reading them.

... "Employees nowadays don't have an expectation of privacy in their work computers," said attorney Dieter Dammeier, who represented the police officer and the recipients of his messages. "But with a device that transmits their communications, they do."

The difference, he said, is that e-mails are stored on the employer's computer system, but text messages are stored by the wireless company that transmits them. Dammeier said workers should be entitled to the same privacy for their text messages as for their phone calls.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/0...

[truedelphi]

1. Good to know. n/t

[pleah]

2. K&R for a bit of good news.