Question: A police department supplied its officers with pagers for text-messaging. The department did not have...

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Question: A police department supplied its officers with pagers for text-messaging. The department did not have an official policy on text-messaging, but its e-mail policy stated that: "The use of department-owned computers and all associated equipment, software, programs, networks, Internet, e-mail, and other systems operating on these computers is limited to departmental business. Users should have no expectation of privacy or con- fidentiality." Quon signed the policy and attended a meeting during which his lieutenant announced that text messages were the same as e-mail and would be considered public information. In practice, the department had a different, informal, policy on the pagers. As long as anyone who exceeded the number of free messages each month paid the overages