No Right To Privacy When You Butt Dial Someone

Not only is it embarrassing to butt dial someone, the courts have ruled that you also have no reasonable expectation of privacy during that call either. You learn something new everyday.

Today in issues we never thought a court would weigh in on: if you accidentally pocket dial someone, pulling the move we all know as “butt dialing,” don’t expect anything you say during the call you don’t know you’re making to stay private. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Kentucky ruled yesterday [PDF] that a person who butt dials another party during a conversation doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Wait, what??... that doesn't make any sense, how can you not expect privacy when you don't even know that the call is being made?

Revdarian said:

Wait, what??... that doesn't make any sense, how can you not expect privacy when you don't even know that the call is being made?

Click to expand...

Agreed. Thinking that there are no other parties to the conversation is an exact expectation of privacy. But I'm sure there's a more relevant, legal argument to be made here.

Before reading the reasoning in the decision, I'm going to assume it has to do with being overheard when someone isn't aware that someone else is around. For example, a person speaking loud enough for a bystander to hear around a corner. It's not reasonable to say that the bystander has no right to do a basic function like hearing when someone else is talking, whether the speaker knows the bystander is there or not.

Revdarian said:

Wait, what??... that doesn't make any sense, how can you not expect privacy when you don't even know that the call is being made?

Click to expand...

The argument made by the judges was,

“…[E]xposure need not be deliberate and instead can be the inadvertent product of neglect,” he wrote in the ruling. “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 doctrine applies to auditory as well as visual information.”

Click to expand...

Basically they said that if he had taken adequate and simple precautions to prevent butt dialing (password his phone, download an app that prevents inadvertent calls, etc) this would not have occurred ... by failing to do so it was the equivalent of leaving your window open while you did something (you would have no expectation that someone wasn't watching you) ... since he admitted he was aware of butt dialing and had done that previously as well, it worked against him

Actually I can see both sides of this argument but I generally side that you are responsible for your own preventable screw up ... he made the call and failed to take precautions to prevent the call so he gave up his rights to privacy because of that

Reason number 12345678 to put a pin, pattern, password1, or fingerprint lock on your phone.

This required a court ruling?

no hope for the human race....

I didn't read the article, but is this the case where the burglar accidentally activated the emergency call feature on his phone (you just press and hold without having to unlock the phone, so easy to do if you're sitting on it) and the 911 dispatcher heard him bragging about everything he just stole? I could image he'd try to argue that his conversation should not be admissible.

SBSuperfly said:

I didn't read the article, but is this the case where the burglar accidentally activated the emergency call feature on his phone (you just press and hold without having to unlock the phone, so easy to do if you're sitting on it) and the 911 dispatcher heard him bragging about everything he just stole? I could image he'd try to argue that his conversation should not be admissible.

Click to expand...

While that is an interesting story, that is not what this one was/is about:

...He put the phone into his suit pocket, and then accidentally called the right number...she “believed that she heard James Huff and Savage engaged in a discussion to discriminate unlawfully against McGraw and felt that it was her responsibility to record the conversation and report it through appropriate channels"

Click to expand...

So basically, a higher-up was having a conversation with another higher-up about unethical and potentially illegal behavior after having accidentally dialed his assistant. The reasoning behind the ruling makes some sense, as they have stated it, so I guess the only other question is whether or not she (the assistant) should have hung up the phone when she heard something unethical/illegal going on. The moral of the story is don't be a shady jackass engaging in questionable behavior because sooner or later it will come back to bite you.

I like how quickly people can record things these days lol...

"Uh oh, I got a call from someone by mistake.... better record just incase."

auntjemima said:

I like how quickly people can record things these days lol...

"Uh oh, I got a call from someone by mistake.... better record just incase."

Click to expand...

One of the downsides of Smartphones ... affects many aspects of life now ... it used to be that when there was a disaster or something then people would run away or run to help ... now they whip out their smartphones and start recording the whole thing

Honestly, if you butt dial anyone there should be no expectation of privacy because you were too damn stupid to NOT butt dial someone in the first place.

Butt dial? Nah, that's just my cock getting in the way. The curse of having a huge penis.

Honestly if you call someone else you should have no expectation of privacy with the person you're calling.

sfsuphysics said:

Honestly if you call someone else you should have no expectation of privacy with the person you're calling.

Click to expand...

True and this is the basis of one-party consent/awareness in states that have that rule, but in this situation, he butt-dialed his assistant, while having a conversation in-person with a co-worker. The fact that he butt-dialed her is what separates it from eavesdropping, since he had to take an action to get her to listen in to the conversation in the first place, but you do have to wonder about someone who is butt-dialed, recognizes that they've been butt-dialed, then consciously decides to listen in for funsies...

MrCaffeineX said:

True and this is the basis of one-party consent/awareness in states that have that rule, but in this situation, he butt-dialed his assistant, while having a conversation in-person with a co-worker. The fact that he butt-dialed her is what separates it from eavesdropping, since he had to take an action to get her to listen in to the conversation in the first place, but you do have to wonder about someone who is butt-dialed, recognizes that they've been butt-dialed, then consciously decides to listen in for funsies...

Click to expand...

She did claim that she was confused and tried saying "Hello" several times ... it was when she was listening to try and decide what happened that she overheard the conversation that concerned her

MrCaffeineX said:

True and this is the basis of one-party consent/awareness in states that have that rule, but in this situation, he butt-dialed his assistant, while having a conversation in-person with a co-worker. The fact that he butt-dialed her is what separates it from eavesdropping, since he had to take an action to get her to listen in to the conversation in the first place, but you do have to wonder about someone who is butt-dialed, recognizes that they've been butt-dialed, then consciously decides to listen in for funsies...

Click to expand...

I've been that person who received a butt dialed call.

One of my co-workers with a holier than thou (I do no wrong because I walk with God) attitude took vacation and then accidentally butt-dialed my work phone as he was driving through the Wendy's drive-through in Nashville.

I put it on speaker phone for the rest of the office to hear, and for the rest of the day the office could hear him disciplining his adoptive kids during the trip by slapping them around. Hard. All the while, treating his Bio kid like a little princess who can do no wrong.

Needless to say everyone in the office was able to get a glimpse of his true nature. At the end of the day I just left the phone on speaker so he burned up all his minutes until he realized he butt dialed me.

No one in the office treated him the same way after that and he left shortly thereafter.

2 Morals of the story; Don't butt dial. (and, I'm a dick sometimes)

kbrickley said:

She did claim that she was confused and tried saying "Hello" several times ... it was when she was listening to try and decide what happened that she overheard the conversation that concerned her

Click to expand...

On my previous post I talked about receiving a butt dialed call.

Our whole office was shouting things like "I want a Frosty, too!", "Make mine a chocolate!", "Baconator! Baconator!", and stuff like, Cheeburger, Cheeburger, Pepsi, Pepsi" (from the old SNL skit) that and the guy couldn't hear.

Evidently, the mouthpiece does not pick up sounds at all when butt dialing...weird

To me this all makes perfect sense that this is how it works.

notarat said:

On my previous post I talked about receiving a butt dialed call.

Our whole office was shouting things like "I want a Frosty, too!", "Make mine a chocolate!", "Baconator! Baconator!", and stuff like, Cheeburger, Cheeburger, Pepsi, Pepsi" (from the old SNL skit) that and the guy couldn't hear.

Evidently, the mouthpiece does not pick up sounds at all when butt dialing...weird

Click to expand...

the phone is in a place where he accidently dialed it, not really surprised he couldn't hear you. Probably heard some faint sounds, but couldn't figure where it came from.

This seems like one of the rare times the court gets something right.

Revdarian said:

Wait, what??... that doesn't make any sense, how can you not expect privacy when you don't even know that the call is being made?

Click to expand...

The expectation when you make a call to number X is that the person on the end of number X receives the call and can hear any sound going into the mic. This is the expected operation of the phone by all parties involved. When you butt dial someone, you activate the phone unexpectedly, but you still activated the phone, and there is no way for the person at number X to immediately discern if you did this intentionally or not.

While the scenario described in the article where Person A butt dialed person B while talking to person C, person A has nobody to blame but themselves, and person C really has no reason to have a lowered expectation of privacy. However, person C also did not break any wiretapping laws (certainly not in a one party state, probably not in a two party state), as they took no active action to intercept the call.

My take is that in a one party state, nobody would be chargeable as person A was the one responsible for breeching the privacy of the conversation, and was an active party. In an all parties state, I'd argue that the only person you could charge was person A as there was no conspiracy between them and person C, and person C took no active action to breech the privacy of the conversation as it was handed to them by person A.