“And, did you miss me, textually?”
by Imran Ali
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the portability and mobility of messages - for archiving and longevity when changing handsets, applications or devices.
As I wrote about The Mobility of Messages last month, I’d largely considered scenarios which were quite personal and largely about personal archiving. However, Wired’s recently published Most Text Messages Are Saved Only Briefly explores the flipside of this issue - legality, retention and privacy. The story describes how pager messages between Detroit’s Mayor and his Chief of Staff revealed infidelity and potential perjury.
Though the parties in this scenario were largely incriminated by the use of an arcane paging infrastructure, national security legislation around issues of data retention means most of need to consider mobile messaging as less ephemeral than we thought.
As usage of email fragments in favour of more immediate and synchronous media such as SMS, there will be increasing pressure on mobile network operators to retain communications for legal discovery, forensics and as potential evidence in criminal and civil cases.
