Textual Representation

              The Supreme Court is tackling a case involving claims made by telecommunications giant AT&T to keep secret the information gathered by the FCC during an investigation. AT&T wants the FCC to keep secret all the information it gathered from the company during an investigation into its participation in the federal E-Rate program.
             The Supreme Court is getting involved in an unusual freedom of information dispute over whether corporations may assert personal privacy interests to prevent the government from releasing documents about them. The court on Tuesday agreed to a request from the Obama administration to take up a case involving claims made by telecommunications giant AT&T to keep secret the information gathered by the Federal Communications Commission during an investigation.
              The administration wants the high court to rule that corporations may not claim a personal privacy exception contained in the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The exception may be used only by individuals, the administration said in a brief signed by Elena Kagan, the newest justice who served in the Justice Department until last month.
Kagan will not take part in the case, which will be argued early next year.
AT&T wants the FCC to keep secret all the information it gathered from the company during an investigation into its participation in the federal E-Rate program, which helps schools and libraries get Internet access.
              The FCC had released some of the information under an open records request, but withheld some, citing FOIA exemptions that cover trade secrets and humans' right to privacy. A federal appeals court sided with AT&T.
              COMPTEL, a trade group representing some AT&T competitors, filed the FOIA request that led to the court ruling. The trade association and several groups that support transparency in government backed the administration's plea to the court to hear the case.
              WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a police department violated the constitutional privacy rights of an employee when it inspected personal text messages sent and received on a government pager.

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               Times The case opens “a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” according to a three-judge panel of an appeals court that ruled in favor of the employee, a police sergeant on the Ontario, Calif., SWAT team. Orin S. Kerr, an authority on the Fourth Amendment at George Washington University’s law school, said the case was simultaneously significant and idiosyncratic. “This is the first case on Fourth Amendment protection in data networks,” Mr. Kerr said. But the case arose from unusual circumstances, making it fairly likely that the eventual Supreme Court ruling will be narrow.

              The Supreme Court has given public employers wide latitude to search their employees’ offices and files. But it has also said that the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable government searches, has a role to play in any analysis of that latitude.               The Ontario Police Department had a formal policy reserving the right to monitor “network activity including e-mail and Internet use,” allowing “light personal communications” by employees but cautioning that they “should have no expectation of privacy.” It did not directly address text messages.
              Members of the department’s SWAT team were given pagers and told they were responsible for charges in excess of 25,000 characters a month. Under an informal policy adopted by a police lieutenant, those who paid the excess charges themselves would not have their messages inspected.