Cell Phone Privacy Breaches: Forgiven – For Now

Courts continue to assert the high privacy interest in cell phones, following the pronouncements of the highest courts in both Canada and the US. A recent decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal continues this trend, but also allows some leeway for privacy infringements while the law develops. Employers should take note of the former without counting on the latter.

Decision

In R. v. Adeshina, the court allowed evidence of text messages that had been obtained from an indiscriminate "data dump" of a cell phone, even though those texts were obtained by way of a "very significant" breach of the accused's Charter-protected interests.

The cell phone had been seized in connection with the accused's arrest for drug trafficking. The text messages turned out to be the essential evidence connecting the accused to the crime. However, the search of the phone and review of the incriminating text messages did not occur until a month after the initial arrest.