If you work for the government and use a government provided Blackberry, can the government read your text messages? The 9th Circuit says “no”, and the Supreme Court today granted certiorari.

The case revolves around a police officer who used his government provided Blackberry to send hundreds of personal messages to his wife, his girlfriend and another officer, many of which were sexually explicit. The police department, during a review of officers that routinely exceeded their monthly character limit on the devices, obtained copies of the text messages from the service provider. The 9th Circuit called it an unreasonable search under the the 4th amendment. The Court now has to decide whether or not the officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the messages.