The recent Supreme Court decision in the case City of Ontario v. Quon provides guidance on how CIOs must approach data privacy when managing company-provided mobile devices.
The case arose from the monitoring of employee communications by the Ontario, Calif., police department on cell phones it provided. The employees-police officers-used department-provided cell phones for work, and also allegedly for personal use. The police department had a policy of monitoring email and other forms of communications-just as many private-sector employers do-and banned personal use of the systems. The policy did not explicitly cover text messaging, however.
After issuing the policy, officials held meetings where they reportedly said that text messages were not allowed under the no-personal-use policy. However, there was evidence of an informal policy not to monitor the text messages, establishing the conditions that resulted in a lawsuit by police officers who charged their privacy was violated when the city obtained copies of their texts.
Mixed Messages from Managers
The City of Ontario had negotiated a wireless service package with a vendor, Arch Wireless, that included a certain number of text messages that officials thought would be enough to cover the work-related needs of the officers. Managers within the department apparently told employees that if they sent more texts than the package allowed, there would be no questions asked as long as the employee paid for the overage.
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Source: networkworld.com
By: Matt Karlyn and Peter Mclaughlin
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