Thaindian News

By Ranjan Bhaduri
Washington, June 18, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Supreme Court in the USA gave its verdict in the Jeff Quon sex text case and one thing was clear from the verdict. The apex court thinks that the employers deserve the right to monitor if employees are using gadgets provided by them for personal use. The Supreme Court judges unanimously upheld the search of police department for a police officer’s sexually explicit messages on what it called government owned pager. It refused to admit his plea that the search by higher authorities violated his fundamental rights.

However, the court did not come up with explicit and broad regulations for electronic communications in offices where technology changes fast these days. However, the verdict points out that the government deserves the right to check if the employees are adhering to the rules or not. Jeff Quon was found to have sent 400 personal messages from the pager in a month after the police department decided to audit text message usage.

The cop sued saying that the search breached his fundamental rights. A number of employers inform their employees that they should not use company provide gadgets to send personal messages, be it the pager or cell phone. The high court gave the verdict in favor of the cop saying even if he did the wrong thing, the search was not appreciable. However, the Supreme Court favored the employer and said the search was not unethical.

Opinions differ on whether employees should be allowed to use official equipments for personal purpose. Some departments ban it altogether where as some companies allow using official gadgets for personal use if the employees are willing to pay an amount for it.