POLLO V DAVID

Petitioner is a former employee of a CSC Regional Office.

The respondent CSC Chairperson received an anonymous complaint that contained allegations that the petitioner is lawyer
for many who have pending cases with the CSC.
An investigation was thus ordered by the respondent, who also directed the investigating team to back up all the filed in
the computers in the Legal and other divisions of the petitioner, all of which were witnessed by several employees when
conducted. After completing the task, all the computers were sealed and secured to preserve the files stored therein, and
the backed-up files were turned over to the respondent. The files indeed contained pleadings and letters in connection with
CSC administrative cases.

Was the search conducted on the petitioner’s computer valid?

Yes.
The constitutional provision on the guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure applied to government employees
The constitutional guarantee is not a prohibition of all searches and seizures but only of "unreasonable" searches and
seizures. the right to privacy can be violated when the citizen has a legitimate, reasonable expectation of privacy, which
extends to the workplace. For government employees, what is reasonable in their expectation of privacy is different, in
that their offices, desks, and file cabinets may be reduced by virtue of actual office practices and procedures or by
legitimate regulation. There must be a balance between the invasion of the employees’ legitimate expectations of privacy
and the government’s need for supervision, control, and the efficient operation of the workplace.
Government agencies provide myriad services to the public, and the work of these agencies would suffer if employers
were required to have probable cause and to secure a warrant before they entered an employee’s desk for the purpose of
finding a file or piece of office correspondence. The delay in correcting the employee misconduct caused by the need for
probable cause rather than a reasonable suspicion will result into damage to the agency’s work, and ultimately to the
public interest.
How reasonableness of a search in the workplace is determined
Determining reasonableness involves determining whether the action was justified at its inception and whether the search
conducted was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.
For the first, a search of an employee’s office by a supervisor will be justified at its inception when there are reasonable
grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct, or
that the search is necessary for a non-investigatory work-related purpose such as to retrieve a needed file. For the second,
the search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the
search and not excessively intrusive considering the nature of the misconduct.
Application to the petitioner’s case
In this case, the search conducted on petitioner’s computer was justified at its inception and scope. The CSC conducted
the search in its capacity as a government employer and in connection with work-related misconduct – the imputation that
the petitioner was lawyering for those with pending CSC cases. If found to be true, such allegations would have
prejudicial effects to the integrity of the CSC and the public’s confidence in it.
Considering the damaging nature of the accusation, the CSC had to act fast. That is why on the same date, a search was
immediately conducted on the computers assigned to the petitioner. Indeed, the computers would be a likely starting point
in finding incriminating evidence. Also, the nature of computer files, that is, they could easily be destroyed at a click of a
button, necessitated the CC’s quick action. To require a warrant would defeat the purpose of the investigation. Also, the
search was conducted in an open and transparent manner, and the petitioner was notified that it was being conducted.
The computer search is not the petitioner’s personal computer – he has no reasonable expectation of privacy
The computer from which the personal files of the petitioner were retrieved is a government-issued computer, hence
government property, the use of which the CSC has absolute right to regulate and monitor. Such relationship of the
petitioner with the item seized – the office computer – and other relevant factors and circumstances failed to establish that
petitioner had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the office computer assigned to him.