I'll Be Watching You

If you don't know Jeff Quon by name, you've probably heard about his case before the Supreme Court. He's the guy busted for sexting both his wife and girlfriend on the pager issued by his employer.. The Ontario California Police, where he was a SWAT sergeant.

Quon sued the city for violating his privacy. New communication methods always raise issues about who in authority can look at what, when & why. The state of the law trails behind what's state of the art.

For example, the 1986 Stored Communications Act allows the government to obtain emails hosted on the internet more easily than they would those stored on your computer. Ryan Singel, blogger for wired.com, talks about how this law came to exist, and why it has advocacy groups and mail hosts like Google and Yahoo up-in-arms.

Audio: WNYC's On The Media 4/24/10, Host: Bob Garfield. Illustration from WordLab (2007).

An Improvisation by Colin Parrish