We have written about electronic discovery and Pennsylvania’s wiretapping law on this blog before. For family law attorneys, they are issues which can be critical to your case, but also present a minefield of ethical and evidentiary issues. How information may be collected and in what manner can be unclear; similarly, it can be ambiguous to counsel and the courts how to weigh evidence collected electronically and presented to the court in a manner which makes it difficult to authenticate (i.e. text messages).
The criminal courts are, as always, the great laboratory of evidentiary law and last June the Superior Court issued a ruling in a case involving text messages from an iPad. Specifically, whether the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act was violated by police when had an informant relay text messages to them from the defendant in a drug deal. The trial court in Commonwealth v. Diego suppressed the text message evidence.
The Wiretapping Act was originally passed in 1978 and has been periodically updated to address evolving technology, though probably not quickly enough. This case presents iPad communication as a case of first impression. The Superior Court cited a 2001 case (Commonwealth v. Proetto) which found that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in sending emails or chat-room messages to third parties. Basically, using email and text services renders moot any expectation of privacy. Not unlike arguments used with social media; once released, an email or text may be forwarded, modified, and read by anyone the recipient chooses to disclose it to. Knowledge that the message was being recorded by text or email was sufficient notice to keep it from within a protected category of communication.
An iPad is not a telephone under the common understanding of the relevant term, the Superior Court reasoned, and no one would misidentify an iPad for a telephone. The Superior Court’s decision, however, did not ultimately hinge on the type of device more so the method of intercept. The informant cooperated with police and relayed to them the contents of the text messages he received from Diego. Rather than observing them before the informant received them – which the Court identified as being a separate and distinct legal issue – the informant was voluntarily disclosing them to the police after he received them. Accordingly, the evidence collected which lead to Diego’s arrest was legally obtained.
The take-away, as always, is that anything placed in a digital format poses a threat of being repurposed, passed along, or disclosed to unintended third parties. Maintaining solid “e-security” is difficult, if not overwhelming, but as this case indicates, you cannot be certain that texts and emails are not going to be discoverable or accessible to third parties; you can never be sure the recipient’s eyes are the only ones on them.
(Photo Credit: 123rf.com; Dirk Ercken).
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Aaron Weems is an attorney and editor of the Pennsylvania Family Law Blog. Aaron is a partner in Fox Rothschild’s Blue Bell, Pennsylvania office and practices throughout the greater Philadelphia region. Aaron can be reached at 610-397-7989; aweems@foxrothschild.com, and on Twitter@AaronWeemsAtty.