People, we have a new conflict. And I do love a good rumble.
This one’s between the regulatory requirements mandating employers maintain its employees email for a certain number of years, versus the 4th Amendment and the Stored Communications Act (which nobody has bothered to pay attention to anyway), which says that no one but the receiver or sender of the email can access it without permission of the sender.
In Quon vs. Arch Wireliness, the Ninth Circuit has ruled that an employee’s emails and text messages are off limits to the employer if stored on a third-party’s server.
Does this mean that today’s employer can pay to archive its employees’ email in order to remain in compliance with regulatory laws, but never be able to see or access those messages afterwards? Just keep paying the bills until the time clock runs out on the statute requiring their keep? Are emails off limits for discovery purposes in general for civil litigation?
This is sort of analogous to a garbage barge that is always out at sea, with no port to land in. Oooh.
Or the cost of storage is going to go up. I can see a spike in demand here.
Julie Wade