If you're a public employee who uses a work-issued computer or mobile device, pay attention: the Supreme Court yesterday agreed (PDF) that government employers have the right to read transcripts of your e-mails or instant messages if needed for a legitimate work-related reason. So if you're a police officer sending huge volumes of sexually explicit text messages on a work device—as Jeff Quon allegedly was—the Fourth Amendment won't protect you from a government search.

The Quon v. Arch Wireless case began several years ago before finding its way to the Supremes. Jeff Quon was a member of the city of Ontario, California SWAT team. The city provides its officers with access to a wireless text messaging pager provided by Arch Wireless, which came with a monthly character limit. Formally, the announced departmental policy was that the content of the messages sent could be audited at any time. In practice, however, the pagers were handled quite differently. The department never viewed their content, and simply asked users to pay any charges for running over the character limit.

Things proceeded uneventfully until the day when, as an early court decision phrases it, "Lieutenant Duke grew weary of his role as bill collector." The department decided to determine if the character limit was too low for departmental business, so it requested a copy of all messages on its account from Arch Wireless with the intent of determining whether business or personal use was driving the overage charges. With the contents in hand, they discovered many of Quon's messages were both personal and X-rated. An internal investigation ensued, and Quon and the people he exchanged messages with sued the city, its police department, and Arch Wireless.

The Supreme Court ruled, though, that the search was reasonable "because it was motivated by a legitimate work-related purpose, and because it was not excessive in scope... Although Quon had exceeded his monthly allotment a number of times, [Ontario Police Department] requested transcripts for only August and September 2002 in order to obtain a large enough sample to decide the character limits’ efficaciousness, and all the messages that Quon sent while off duty were redacted. And from OPD’s perspective, the fact that Quon likely had only a limited privacy expectation lessened the risk that the review would intrude on highly private details of Quon’s life."

The Court neglected to get into the broader issues of privacy raised by such devices, however. "At present, it is uncertain how workplace norms, and the law’s treatment of them, will evolve," said the justices, who elected to decide the case on narrower grounds.

The EFF had filed a brief in the case, and was pleased that the Court did not issue sweeping privacy guidelines for electronic devices. But the group did say it was time that Congress "stepped in to update and strengthen telephone and Internet privacy laws to reflect new technology."

The case turned on the Fourth Amendment, which covers government searches; private employers have long had broad rights to monitor employee communications.