Use of Personal Cell-Phones for Official Government Business

It is estimated that more than 90% of adults in America own a cell-phone. While we use our cell-phones for personal communication, should we also use our personal cell-phones for official government business?

Some individuals don't have access to a business / government cell-phone and sometimes use their personal cell-phone to conduct official business. That shouldn't happen, but if you are using your personal cell-phone for government business, here are some things that you should consider:

Although Federal law is unclear on this issue  the California Second District Court of Appeal held in Cochran v. Schwan’s Home Serv., Inc., Cal. Ct. App. No. B247160, (August 12, 2014) that California Labor Code section 2802 requires employers always to reimburse employees who are required to use personal cell phones for work-related calls for a reasonable percentage of their cell phone bills, even when employees have cell phone plans with unlimited minutes or the plans are paid for by third parties. - While your employer probably should reimburse you for using your personal cell-phone for work, outside of California they may not have to do so.

If you use your personal cell-phone for government business, the government can require that you provide access to your phone to government investigators.

If you use your personal cell-phone for official business, the content of your phone may be subject to release under FOIA. The Arizona Court of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, and the Washington State Supreme Court have all held that a public employee’s private cell-phone records can be considered public records if the employee used the cell-phone for a public purpose.

In addition to the reimbursement questions raised by Cochran, employers need to be concerned about data security and IP issues when employees use their own devices.

Employees often have less sophisticated anti-hacking, anti-virus and encryption software on their personal devices. There is a risk of those devices being lost without the employee informing the employer. Employees also tend to be less than rigorous in backing up the data on personal devices. All of this means that data is more vulnerable to loss and systems are more vulnerable to damage when employers allow or require employees to use their own devices.

Equally important is what happens to important and sensitive information when the employee leaves. If the information is on a personal device, getting control of that device in order to transfer or delete the information is often much more difficult than it would be if the employer owns the device and the service contract. This increases the difficulty or preventing intentional misappropriation of sensitive information or simply loss of valuable information that sits on the ex-employee’s device.
 

From a data privacy and personal security viewpoint, using your personal cell-phone to conduct government business is a very bad idea.

Even government issued cell-phones should not be used in place of wired / landline telephones.

Army: AR 25-1, Army Knowledge Management and Information Technology, paragraph 6-4u - Portable, mobile, cellular, and wireless telephones and devices states:
* These types of telephones will not be used in lieu of established ‘wired’ telephones.
* These devices are to be used for official business and authorized use only.
* Authorized personal use of [government] cell phones is subject to the same restrictions and prohibitions that apply to other communications systems. Authorized use is limited since these types of telephones cannot be used in lieu of established ‘wired’ telephones.  

As a best practice, use cellular telephones only in exigent circumstances. Cell-phones and Blackberries will be used only when the mission clearly demonstrates a critical need for immediate communication and government / military telephone service and/or e-mail is not reasonably available. Government issued cell-phones will NOT be used in lieu of established land-line telephone service. Official calls should be made from official government land-line telephones when available. Government issued cell-phones and Blackberries will only be used to communicate UNCLASSIFIED information, and only used when a government land-line is unavailable.  Do NOT use personal cell-phones to conduct government business.

 

SMS / Text Messages Are Unsecure

According to the American Bar Association (2015): ‘While text messages have increasingly replaced phone calls, users do not always stop and realize that individually identifiable information, once captured in a traditional text message or third-party messaging system, likely becomes a PII record.’ Consumer text messaging services also offer little protection from sending messages to an unintended recipient. Texting a personal message to the wrong recipient can be embarrassing, but text messaging PII to the wrong person potentially carries significant consequences. Indeed, a single text message including PII sent to the wrong number or wrong person would likely constitute a PII breach and Privacy Act Violation, subject to mandatory reporting and investigation by the Defense Privacy and Civil Liberties Office.

 

Government Required to Protect Personal Telephone Numbers

You may choose to provide your personal telephone number (home / cell-phone) to your employer so that they can contact you. If you provide your home address or home telephone number (this might be your cell-phone) to your government employer, the government may not release that information to others without your specific consent. Release of home address or home telephone numbers is normally considered a clearly "unwarranted invasion" of personal privacy and is exempt from mandatory release under the FOIA.  32 CFR505.7

Distributing personal telephone numbers on social and recall rosters may create an invasion of personal privacy unless everyone on the roster consents to sharing their information with everyone else on the roster.