6th Circ. Says ‘Pocket Dials’ Aren’t Private

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy if their butts dial people by accident, making butts the gravest threat to privacy since the Patriot Act. Huff is the chairman of the board of directors for the Kenton County Airport Board in Kentucky, US. In 2013, a board member of a Cincinnati airport was discussing replacing the airport’s CEO when he pocket dialed the CEO’s assistant. Spaw stayed on the line for 91 minutes and listened to face-to-face conversations that James Huff had with Larry Savage, James’s colleague, and with Bertha Huff, James’s wife. Spaw allegedly took notes and recorded a portion of the 91-minute conversation on her iPhone, some of which included a personal conversation between Huff and his wife, Bertha. Spaw claims that she thought Huff was discussing a plan to illegally discriminate against the CEO, a woman. Boggs listed numerous preventative measures available to prevent such calls, including “locking the phone, setting up a passcode, and using one of many downloadable applications that prevent pocket-dials calls”, but noted that “James Huff did not employ any of these measures”. The appeal panel said the district court will have to calculate any damages owed by Spaw to Mrs Huff. So while he may have intended his call to be private, he didn’t do enough to show that he had that expectation.

“Under the plain-view doctrine, if a homeowner neglects to cover a window with drapes, he would lose his reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to a viewer looking into the window from outside of his property”, the court said.

Accidentally placing a call may be a permissible mistake in social circles, but it won’t hold up in court. The defendant there claimed the evidence had been gathered in a warrantless search, but a different appeals court said the defendant had failed to demonstrate an expectation of privacy, because he “opened up his download folder to the world”. “[A] person exposes his activities and statements, thereby failing to exhibit an expectation of privacy, if he inadvertently shares his activities and statements through neglectful use of a common telecommunication device”, Boggs continued.

The district court ruled in favor of Spaw, causing the Huffs to file an appeal.

The Sixth Circuit on Tuesday said that someone who inadvertently makes a “pocket dial” while in the middle of a conversation with someone else doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy that the conversation won’t be overheard by the recipient of the call. The Huffs brought suit against Spaw for intentionally intercepting their private conversations, in violation of Title III. To book a meal in a restaurant at the end of the day, Huff called the CEO’s secretary Carol Spaw, who was back in Kentucky.