Butt dials are not just embarrassing — according to a federal appeals court in Cincinnati, they can also be legally used against you.
The court ruled that privacy rights do not protect someone who makes an unintentional call — meaning that whatever the person who answers the phone hears on their end is very much on the record. That's right: your butt could be working against you when it comes to privacy.
"A person who knowingly operates a device that is capable of inadvertently exposing his conversations to third-party listeners and fails to take simple precautions to prevent such exposure does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy," said Judge Danny Boggs.
According to reports, this is only the second time that a court has dealt with a case of butt dialing. The first time involved a man violating a protective order by calling a woman and leaving her voicemail. The man claimed that this call was an accident. Similar situations have occurred with people inadvertently sending faxes to a wrong number, however in these cases, courts have generally been more sympathetic to the side that makes the mistake.
This second butt-dial case has a pretty interesting story. Two members of the board for the Cincinnati International Airport were traveling in Italy. One of them, the now ex-chairman of the board James Huff, called Carol Spaw, the assistant to the CEO of the airport, requesting that she book them a dinner reservation. The call ended and the man put his phone in his suit pocket.
Huff then accidentally called Spaw back, and the two board members started discussing how they were going to replace Spaw's boss. Spaw immediately began taking notes on what the two men said during the marathon 91-minute call. At one point, she pulled out her iPhone, put the other phone on speaker, and began recording the conversation.
Toward the end of the call, Huff returned to his hotel room and recapped the whole conversation with his wife. Spaw then shared the notes and recordings with other members of the board.
Huff, of course, sued Spaw shortly after, suggesting that she had violated anti-wiretapping laws. The court ruled for Spaw, after which Huff appealed the decision and the court once again ruled in Spaw's favor.
The judges did however state that Huff's wife had a reasonable expectation of privacy in talking to her husband in a hotel room. The case has been sent back down to the district court to determine whether Spaw was liable for intercepting a conversation involving Bertha Huff, James Huff's wife.
Image: Jeremy Jenum | Flickr
Via: Bloomberg
