Government Employee's Plea of Privacy

The Supreme Court has recently held that the search by the government of an employee's office computer in connection with an investigation into work-related misconduct does not violate the employees constitutional right to privacy. 

The search was occasioned by an anonymous letter-complaint to the Civil Service Commission accusing the petitioner of lawyering for the parties with pending cases with the Civil Service Commission. The CSC Chairperson issued a Memorandum directing the Investigating Team to conduct investigation and specifically "to back up all the files in the computers found in the Mamayan Muna and Legal Divisions." It was found out that most files copied from the computer assigned to and being used by the petitioner were draft pleadings or letters in connection with administrative cases in the Civil Service Commission and other tribunals. The Supreme Court found tenable the CSC's argument that the warrantless search of the computers was justified since "these furnished the easiest means for the employee to encode and store documents. Concomitantly, the ephemeral nature of computer files, that is, they could easily be destroyed at a click of a button, necessitated drastic and immediate action." The Court further held that there was no violation of petitioner's right to privacy as this was negated by the CSC's policy regulating the use of office computers in its Memorandum No. 10, series of 2002 that put its employees on notice that they have no expectation of privacy in anything they create, store, send or receive on the office computers (Pollo v. David, G.R. No. 181881. October 18, 2011).