The Supreme Court and Mobile Devices - Privacy Wins

Yesterday (June 25, 2014), in a rare unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “the police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.”  The key phrase in this initial sentence from the opinion is “without a warrant.”  That is, in most cases, cell phones and other wireless devices may be searched for content from an arrested individual only once a warrant has been properly obtained.

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Wireless SLAs Are About Marketing, Not Service

While SLAs make sense in the landline and operational worlds, what purpose do they serve in the more unreliable wireless services world?

Recently, a consultant for whom I have a great deal of respect asked me what I thought about wireless SLAs. I said it seemed like a strange concept to me, although I'm certainly familiar with SLAs in the landline and operational worlds. But the consultant who asked knows his stuff, so I decided that it was worth a deeper dive.

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911? 9911?

On December 1, 2013, Kari Rene Hunt was murdered by her estranged husband. The murder took place in a hotel room in Marshall, Texas. One of the many tragic elements of this brutal crime was the fact that the attack on Ms. Hunt was witnessed by her young children. Seeing their mother in grave danger, the kids tried to call 9-1-1. But they had no luck reaching first responders, because the way that the hotel’s phone system was set up, an extra “9” needed to be dialed before a caller could reach an outside line.  This is something that Kari Hunt’s young kids would not have known.

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Mobility Policies

For the uninitiated, the acronym “BYOD” looks like a typo. But in the telecommunications context—and in the employment context, it stands for “bring your own device,” and it’s what’s happening all over as individuals opt to use their own devices rather than company-provided mobile phones or tablets.  The number of issues created when individuals bring their own devices into the enterprise is significant, particularly when the devices have at least two distinct uses/purposes/personalities—business and personal.  How should the enterprise reconcile these very different roles played by a single device?  Very, very carefully.

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Legal Considerations in DAS Deployment

Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) are increasingly being deployed across communities—particularly in college and university communities. With this increased attention to the merits of DAS, it seemed timely to present a view of items for consideration, planning and ultimate deployment of DAS with particular attention to legal obligations and strategies for successful implementation.

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