School District Considers Social Media Policy for Teachers & Other Employees

Daniel Schwartz has an interesting post over at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog, pointing to a Connecticut school district considering a social media policy for its teachers:  School Board Considers Social Media Usage Policy for Teachers, Other Employees.

Schwartz also mentions a list of sample policies I've perused a number of times myself and have found to be a great resource:  the "Social Media Policies Database" made available over at the Compliance Building blog.  Of course, I encourage my readers to hearken back to my earlier cautions about relying on sample policies, as the public/private employer distinction raises another reason to thoughtfully and carefully approach sample policies. Remember that a school district, as a public employer, has First Amendment issues to worry about that private employers generally don't need to consider when drafting employment policies. Public employers may also want to consider, for example, Fourth Amendment implications of conducting online searches or monitoring use of technology, whether some level of due process might be owed before disciplining an employee, and so on.  Remember that a policy drafted for a private employer won't address First Amendment or other issues only relevant to a public employer . . . and a policy drafted for a public employer probably won't be a great fit for a private employer. Still, employers may find some helpful nuggets of information in the MANY samples out there!

US Supreme Court Issues Opinion in Quon Sexting Case

The United States Supreme Court ruled today that a public employer’s search of sexually explicit text messages on a police officer’s employer-issued pager did not constitute an illegal invasion of privacy.  The Court overturned the Ninth Circuit, which had determined the employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages and that the city’s search was not reasonable.

The city argued its employees had no reasonable expectation of privacy in communications made on employer-provided devices.  The Court explained:

The record does establish that OPD, at the outset, made it clear that pager messages were not considered private. The City’s Computer Policy stated that “[u]sers should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using” City computers. . . . Chief Scharf’s memo and Duke’s statements made clear that this official policy extended to text messaging.

The disagreement over the expectation of privacy question arose as a result of later communications by the officer responsible for the city's contract with Arch Wireless, and whether these later representations overrode the city's official policy.  The Court, however, avoided deciding that question -- resting its decision on narrower grounds.  The Court advised, "Prudence counsels caution before the facts in the instant case are used to establish far-reaching premises that define the existence, and extent, of privacy expectations enjoyed by employees when using employer-provided communication devices." 

The Court acknowledged that "[r]apid changes in the dynamics of communication and information transmission are evident not just in the technology itself but in what society accepts as proper behavior" and concluded that "[a]t present, it is uncertain how workplace norms, and the law’s treatment of them, will evolve."  The Court said a broad holding on the question of employee privacy expectations vis-à-vis employer-provided equipment may well have implications for future cases that can't be predicted.  The Court essentially moved on to simply assume without deciding that even if Quon had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages, the city did not violate the Fourth Amendment by obtaining and reviewing the transcripts in this case.

Stay tuned for further analysis and comment on this important case!  More posts on this case will come after I've had more time to review the details more closely.

School Faces Class Action Lawsuit for Secretly Spying on Kids at Home Via Remote-Controlled Webcams

Let's say a school administrator crawled into your kid's backpack to sneak into your home. 

Creepy McCreeperson?  A Pennsylvania family sure thought so when they experienced the functional equivalent.

The Robbins family filed a federal class action lawsuit against a school district after learning the district used a webcam in a school-issued laptop to secretly spy on their 15-year-old son when he was at home. They've sued for invasion of privacy under state law, violation of the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, and violations of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Computer Fraud Abuse Act, Stored Communications Act, and the Fourth Amendment.

According to the complaint (which Philly.com posted online), the school surreptitiously spied on students by remotely activating the webcams installed on the laptops the Lower Merion School District issued to them.

The family learned about the remote spying in November of 2009, when an assistant prinicipal told their son, Blake, that she believed he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the Webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the School District.”

The school posted a response on its website, essentially admitting the laptops' webcams can be remotely activated, but saying it was meant to be used for security purposes -- to track down a lost or stolen piece of equipment.

(Thanks to Bret D. for the tip on this story!)