The nation’s largest employer, the federal government, is still pretty good at keeping secrets, even after the WikiLeaks scandal. The question is: To what extent does its employees and contractors have a right to workplace privacy? In the past six months, some notable developments have occurred in this area, especially related to employee use of government electronic media. From the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2010 holding in City of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619 (June 17, 2010), which allowed the government to search and punish a government employee for “sext” messaging on government-issued smart phones, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s seemingly contrary decision in U.S. v. Warshak, nos. 08-3997 et al. (6th Cir. Dec. 14, 2010), which held that government searches of e-mail in-boxes require a search warrant, the federal government is wading into uncharted waters in the area of workplace privacy.
To keep up, one needs to understand from where a federal employee’s expectations of workplace privacy originate and the extent to which those sources are evolving with the common workplace use of electronic media. Finally, as the federal government serves as the nation’s model employer, the status of government-employee privacy has a significant impact on the overall status of workplace privacy in the United States.
