Pocket-dialing and the Law: It’s Public

Pocket-dialing and the Law: It’s Public July 27, 2015

Lindsey Bever:

It’s the primal fear of the cellphone age.

You’re having what you believe is a private conversation at a restaurant or perhaps a hotel suite. Maybe you’re talking about someone back at the office you’d like to get rid of. You go on for hours, maybe longer, confident that since you’re miles away, they’ll never know what you’re plotting.

But they’re hearing every word you say. Why? You pocket-dialed them….

The problem is that “oral communications” aren’t necessarily protected from being “intercepted.” If you sit in a crowded restaurant or on the train and talk business, you have displayed no “reasonable expectation of privacy” and therefore deserve none. It’s open season on your chit-chat. You should have known. Similarly, if you leave your drapes open at home while you undress, you’ll have a hard time prosecuting the passerby who peered in at you.

So the question for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit was whether Huff showed a reasonable expectation of privacy with his pocket-dial. The answer from the court earlier this week was no.


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