The NYT Gets It Right - The Gormogons

The New York Times has a good and correct editorial in today’s edition regarding the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in a privacy case.

A California police officer used his government issued text messaging device for numerous communications with his wife and mistress. The officer’s employer had a written policy stating issued equipment its property and that such equipment was subject to search at employer’s will. The employer, in the course of a review of text messaging (over)use by employees generally, asked the service provider for a printout of this specific employee’s text messages. Discovering that the majority of his text messages were not work related, the officer was disciplined. This being America (and specifically the Ninth Circuit), the officer sued the employer claiming the employer’s search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The employee won at the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court reversed unanimously and narrowly the Ninth Circuit’s crappy logic.

‘Puter agrees with both the Supreme Court and the New York Times. An employee ought to have no reasonable expectation of privacy in work issued electronic devices, email or computers generally. However, the New York Times correctly cautions that this exception to civilians’ expectations of privacy ought be narrow. There’s a large difference between a government employer monitoring use of its equipment and that same employer monitoring use of your home equipment. If the government believes it needs to monitor your home or private communications, it should do as it has always done and secure a search warrant.

Good for the Supreme Court, and good for the New York Times.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.