A ruling by a three-judge panel in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has
established new privacy rights for employees who use employer-issued cell phones, pagers and computers to send personal text messages. The judges upheld the verdict in Quon v. Arch Wireless, which determined that if an employer contracts with an outside provider for messaging — as most do — it does not have the right to ask the service provider for transcripts of the text messages employees send out. The same concept can be applied to e-mail communications.
