Supreme Court Allows Employer to Read Employees' Personal Text Messages

In the long awaited case of City of Ontario v Quon, the Supreme Court has ruled that city officials could search the personal text messages sent on text devices owned by the city and provided to certain employees for business use. As explained here, although the city is a government employer and the Court was able to resolve the case on fairly narrow Fourth Amendment grounds, the decision may well reflect the Court's inclination to give public and private employers alike broad discretion to monitor even personal communications made using a computer, pager or other device supplied by the employer.

Supreme Court decides City of Ontario v Quon

See this interesting write-up of the Supreme Court's decision in the text message privacy case, City of Ontario v Quon.

Time running Out for Massachusetts Employers to Comply with Data Security Regs

If you own, license, maintain, store or process the “personal information” of a Massachusetts resident – including that of your own employees – time is getting short for compliance with the Massachusetts data security regulations.  Our colleagues in our Privacy and Security group have published a Privacy and Security Alert regarding the upcoming March 1 deadline.  Also, check the link in the right navigation column of Mintz Levin's Privacy and Security Topics Blog for updates and additional compliance information.