D E C I S I O N
(En Banc)
VILLARAMA, JR., J.:
I. THE FACTS
[This case involves a search of office computer
assigned to a government employee who was then charged administratively and was
eventually dismissed from the service. The employee’s personal files stored in
the computer were used by the government employer as evidence of his
misconduct.]
On January 3, 2007, an anonymous
letter-complaint was received by the respondent Civil Service Commission (CSC)
Chairperson alleging that the “chief of the Mamamayan
muna hindi mamaya na division” of Civil Service Commission Regional Office No.
IV (CSC-ROIV) has been lawyering for public officials with pending cases
in the CSC. Chairperson David immediately formed a team with background in
information technology and issued a memorandum directing them “to back up all
the files in the computers found in the [CSC-ROIV] Mamamayan Muna (PALD) and
Legal divisions.”
The team proceeded at once to the
CSC-ROIV office and backed up all files
in the hard disk of computers at the Public Assistance and Liaison Division (PALD)
and the Legal Services Division. This was witnessed by several employees. At
around 10:00 p.m. of the same day, the investigating team finished
their task. The next day, all the computers in the PALD were sealed
and secured. The diskettes containing the back-up files sourced from
the hard disk of PALD and LSD computers were then turned over to Chairperson
David. It was found that most of the files in the 17 diskettes containing files
copied from the computer assigned to and being used by the petitioner,
numbering about 40 to 42 documents, were draft pleadings or letters in
connection with administrative cases in the CSC and other tribunals.
Chairperson David thus issued a Show-Cause Order requiring the petitioner to
submit his explanation or counter-affidavit within five days from notice.
Petitioner filed his Comment,
denying that he is the person referred to in the anonymous letter-complaint. He
asserted that he had protested the unlawful taking of his computer done while
he was on leave, citing the letter dated January 8, 2007 in which he
informed Director Castillo of CSC-ROIV that the files in his computer were his
personal files and those of his sister, relatives, friends and some associates
and that he is not authorizing their sealing, copying, duplicating and printing
as these would violate his constitutional right to privacy and protection
against self-incrimination and warrantless search and seizure. He
pointed out that though government property, the temporary use and ownership of
the computer issued under a Memorandum of Receipt is ceded to the employee who
may exercise all attributes of ownership, including its use for personal
purposes. In view of the illegal search, the files/documents copied
from his computer without his consent [are] thus inadmissible as evidence,
being “fruits of a poisonous tree.”
The CSC found prima facie case
against the petitioner and charged him with Dishonesty, Grave Misconduct,
Conduct Prejudicial to the Best Interest
of the Service and Violation of R.A.
No. 6713 (Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and
Employees). Petitioner then filed an Omnibus Motion (For
Reconsideration, to Dismiss and/or to Defer) assailing the formal charge as
without basis having proceeded from an illegal search, which is beyond the
authority of the CSC Chairman, such power pertaining solely to the court. The CSC
denied this omnibus motion.
On March 14, 2007, petitioner
filed an Urgent Petition before the Court of Appeals (CA) assailing both the
January 11, 2007 Show-Cause Order and February 26, 2007 Resolution as having
been issued with grave abuse of discretion amounting to excess or total absence
of jurisdiction. On July 24, 2007, the CSC issued a Resolution finding
petitioner GUILTY of Dishonesty, Grave Misconduct, Conduct
Prejudicial to the Best Interest of the Service and Violation of Republic Act 6713. He is meted
the penalty of DISMISSAL FROM THE
SERVICE with all its accessory penalties. This Resolution was also brought
to the CA by herein petitioner.
By a Decision dated October
11, 2007, the CA dismissed the petitioner’s petition for certiorari after
finding no grave abuse of discretion committed by respondents CSC
officials. His motion for reconsideration having been denied by the
CA, petitioner brought this appeal before the Supreme Court.
II.
THE ISSUE
Was the search
conducted on petitioner’s office computer and the copying of his personal files
without his knowledge and consent – alleged as a transgression on his
constitutional right to privacy – lawful?
III. THE RULING
[The Supreme Court DENIED the petition and AFFIRMED
the CA, which in turn upheld the CSC resolution dismissing the petitioner
from service. The High Tribunal held that the search on petitioner’s office computer
and the copying of his personal files were both LAWFUL and DID NOT VIOLATE
his constitutional right to privacy.]
The right to privacy
has been accorded recognition in this jurisdiction as a facet of the right
protected by the guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure under
Section 2, Article III of the 1987 Constitution. The constitutional guarantee
is not a prohibition of all searches and seizures but only of “unreasonable”
searches and seizures.
[The Supreme Court then discussed the
American cases that served as jurisprudential bases for its ruling:
That the Fourth Amendment [of the U.S.
Constitution] equally applies to a government workplace was addressed in the
1987 case of O’Connor v. Ortega. In O’Connor the
[U.S. Supreme] Court recognized that “special needs” authorize warrantless
searches involving public employees for work-related reasons. The [U.S.
Supreme] Court thus laid down a balancing test under which government interests
are weighed against the employee’s reasonable expectation of
privacy. This reasonableness test implicates neither probable cause
nor the warrant requirement, which are related to law enforcement.
O’Connor was applied in subsequent cases raising issues on
employees’ privacy rights in the workplace. One of these cases
involved a government employer’s search of an office computer, United States v. Mark L. Simons where the defendant Simons, an
employee of a division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was convicted
of receiving and possessing materials containing child
pornography. In this case, the US Supreme Court held that the
search remains valid under the O’Connor exception
to the warrant requirement because evidence of the crime was discovered in the
course of an otherwise proper administrative inspection. Simons’
violation of the agency’s Internet policy happened also to be a violation of
criminal law; this does not mean that said employer lost the capacity and
interests of an employer. The warrantless entry into Simons’ office
was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment standard announced in O’Connor because at the
inception of the search, the employer had “reasonable grounds for suspecting”
that the hard drive would yield evidence of misconduct, as the employer was
already aware that Simons had misused his Internet access to download over a
thousand pornographic images. The retrieval of the hard drive was
reasonably related to the objective of the search, and the search was not
excessively intrusive. Thus, while Simons had a reasonable
expectation of privacy in his office, he did not have such legitimate
expectation of privacy with regard to the files in his computer.]
Applying the analysis
and principles announced in O’Connor and Simons to
the case at bar, we now address the following
questions: (1) Did petitioner have a reasonable expectation of
privacy in his office and computer files?; and (2) Was the search authorized by
the CSC Chair, [which involved] the copying of the contents of the hard drive
on petitioner’s computer, reasonable in its inception and scope?
(1) NO, the petitioner had no
reasonable expectation of privacy in his office and
computer files.
Petitioner failed to prove that
he had an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy either in his office or
government-issued computer which contained his personal
files. Petitioner did not allege that he had a separate enclosed
office which he did not share with anyone, or that his office was always locked
and not open to other employees or visitors. Neither did he allege
that he used passwords or adopted any means to prevent other employees from
accessing his computer files. On the contrary, he submits that being
in the public assistance office of the CSC-ROIV, he normally would have
visitors in his office like friends, associates and even unknown people, whom
he even allowed to use his computer which to him seemed a trivial
request. He described his office as “full of people, his friends,
unknown people” and that in the past 22 years he had been discharging his
functions at the PALD, he is “personally assisting incoming clients, receiving
documents, drafting cases on appeals, in charge of accomplishment report, Mamamayan
Muna Program, Public Sector Unionism, Correction of name,
accreditation of service, and hardly had any time for himself alone, that in
fact he stays in the office as a paying customer.” Under this scenario, it can
hardly be deduced that petitioner had such expectation of privacy that society
would recognize as reasonable.
Moreover, even assuming arguendo,
in the absence of allegation or proof of the aforementioned factual
circumstances, that petitioner had at least a subjective expectation of privacy
in his computer as he claims, such is negated by the presence of policy
regulating the use of office computers [CSC Office Memorandum No. 10, S. 2002 “Computer
Use Policy (CUP)”], as in Simons. The CSC in this case had
implemented a policy 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, and that the CSC may monitor the use of the
computer resources using both automated or human means. This implies
that on-the-spot inspections may be done to ensure that the computer resources
were used only for such legitimate business purposes.
(2) YES, the
search authorized by the respondent CSC Chair, which involved the copying of
the contents of the hard drive on petitioner’s computer, was reasonable in its
inception and scope.
The search of petitioner’s
computer files was conducted in connection with investigation of work-related misconduct prompted
by an anonymous letter-complaint addressed to Chairperson David regarding
anomalies in the CSC-ROIV where the head of the Mamamayan Muna Hindi
Mamaya Na division is supposedly “lawyering” for individuals with
pending cases in the CSC. A search by a government employer of an
employee’s office is justified at
inception when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that it will
turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct.
Under
the facts obtaining, the search conducted on petitioner’s computer was
justified at its inception and scope. We quote with approval the
CSC’s discussion on the reasonableness of its actions, consistent as it were
with the guidelines established by O’Connor:
Even conceding for a moment that there is no such administrative policy,
there is no doubt in the mind of the Commission that the search of Pollo’s
computer has successfully passed the test of reasonableness for warrantless
searches in the workplace as enunciated in the above-discussed American
authorities. It bears emphasis that the Commission pursued
the search in its capacity as a government employer and that it was undertaken
in connection with an investigation involving a work-related misconduct,
one of the circumstances exempted from the warrant requirement. At
the inception of the search, a complaint was received recounting that a certain
division chief in the CSCRO No. IV was “lawyering” for parties having pending
cases with the said regional office or in the Commission. The
nature of the imputation was serious, as it was grievously disturbing. If,
indeed, a CSC employee was found to be furtively engaged in the practice of
“lawyering” for parties with pending cases before the Commission would be a
highly repugnant scenario, then such a case would have shattering
repercussions. It would undeniably cast clouds of doubt upon the
institutional integrity of the Commission as a quasi-judicial agency, and in
the process, render it less effective in fulfilling its mandate as an impartial
and objective dispenser of administrative justice. It is settled
that a court or an administrative tribunal must not only be actually impartial
but must be seen to be so, otherwise the general public would not have any
trust and confidence in it.
Considering the damaging nature of the accusation,
the Commission had to act fast, if only to arrest or limit any possible adverse
consequence or fall-out. Thus, on the same date that the complaint
was received, a search was forthwith conducted involving the computer resources
in the concerned regional office. That it was the computers
that were subjected to the search was justified since these furnished the
easiest means for an employee to encode and store documents. Indeed,
the computers would be a likely starting point in ferreting out incriminating
evidence. 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. Pointedly, to impose the need to comply with the
probable cause requirement would invariably defeat the purpose of the wok-related
investigation.
Thus, petitioner’s claim of
violation of his constitutional right to privacy must necessarily
fail. His other argument invoking the privacy of communication and correspondence under Section 3(1),
Article III of the 1987 Constitution is also untenable considering
the recognition accorded to certain legitimate intrusions into the privacy of
employees in the government workplace under the aforecited
authorities. We likewise find no merit in his
contention that O’Connor and Simons are not
relevant because the present case does not involve a criminal offense like
child pornography. As already mentioned, the search of petitioner’s computer
was justified there being reasonable
ground for suspecting that the files stored therein would yield incriminating
evidence relevant to the investigation being conducted by CSC as government
employer of such misconduct subject of the anonymous complaint. This
situation clearly falls under the exception to the warrantless requirement in
administrative searches defined in O’Connor.
