The Washington State Supreme Court is expected to hear two cases next month involving the privacy of text messages in criminal proceedings. In both cases, alleged drug users were arrested after police intercepted their text messages without a warrant. An earlier appellate court case ruled the expectation of privacy of text messages “terminates upon delivery,” Courthouse News Service reports. Calling text messaging “the 21st-century phone call” in an amicus brief, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued the lower court’s decision to uphold the warrantless case “ignored the technological realities of text messaging and threatened to erode privacy protection to a ubiquitous form of communication in the United States.” The high court will hear arguments on May 7. Meanwhile, customers suing Apple for privacy violations are seeking monetary sanctions in a pretrial discovery dispute, Bloomberg reports.
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