When we first read this article about how a teen's privacy won out over a parent's right to raise their children, we were outraged. When we read that the ACLU had filed an amicus brief in favor of the teen's rights, and had trumpeted the decision as a victory, we were all set to write up a rant about how the ACLU screwed this one up, and how we at the Two Percent Company don't always agree with them.

Just in time for the holidays, the Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that children have an expectation of privacy at home and parents cannot eavesdrop on phone conversations.

The case involved a 17-year-old boy who told his 14-year-old girlfriend that he mugged an old lady, knocking her to the ground and stealing her purse. The mother of the girl, Carmen Dixon, was listening on another phone line and called police.

Oliver Christensen was subsequently convicted of a felony and served nine months in prison before the judges overturned the conviction, saying, "The right to individual privacy holds fast even when the individuals are teenagers." The court also said the mother was acting as an agent for the police.

So now parents in Washington cannot snoop around, even if a child is having a phone conversation with a mugger, dope dealer or child molester. Listen up, Seattle parents: You have no right to know.

Our outrage lasted for about five minutes, during which time we realized that the article had been written by Bill O'Reilly, and we decided to do our own research before we came to any decisions. What we discovered was interesting, to say the least.

As reported by all sources, in October of 2000, Mrs. Carmen Dixon, the mother of then-14-year-old Lacey Dixon, listened in on speakerphone while her daughter spoke with her then-17-year-old friend, Oliver Christensen. Neither of the other parties were aware that Mrs. Dixon was on the speakerphone. Mrs. Dixon overheard Christensen talking about a recent crime - the mugging of an elderly woman in town. Specifically, Christensen spoke about where he had hidden the purse that he took from the woman. Mrs. Dixon took notes, and reported what she had learned to the police, who arrested Christensen. Christensen was found guilty, and went to prison.

Recently, Christensen's appeal was upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court, and he was released from prison, apparently because he had an expectation of privacy while speaking with young Lacey, and Mrs. Dixon has acted outside the law by eavesdropping.

We view the expectation of privacy much like a legal contract between parties. To our way of thinking, since a minor requires parental consent in any contract, the same should be true for the expectation of privacy. Unless Mrs. Dixon affirmed Christensen's privacy, he should not legally have that expectation, even if Lacey told him that the conversation was private. We aren't saying that this is how the law works today, but rather that it should.

To our way of thinking, a parent must have the right to invade their childrens' privacy in this manner in order to effectively parent. As we have said before, minors are physically and mentally different from adults, and hence should have fewer rights and more protections under the law than their adult counterparts. Limiting Mrs. Dixon's ability to raise her children in this way seemed dangerous and wrong.

Then we did our own research.

It seems that Oliver Christensen was suspected by the police of participating in the mugging all along, and the sheriff got Mrs. Dixon's permission to search her daughters room for evidence. No evidence was found, so the sheriff asked Mrs. Dixon to keep her eyes and ears open for evidence. When Christensen called her daughter, Mrs. Dixon ran off to get her notepad, and hit the speakerphone. From the Washington Supreme Court decision:

San Juan County Sheriff Bill Cumming suspected Oliver Christensen, a local 17-year-old, of involvement in the robbery. He believed that evidence of the robbery might be found in the house of Christensen's then-girl friend, Lacey Dixon. Sheriff Cumming contacted Mrs. Dixon, Lacey's mother, and obtained her consent to search her home for evidence of the crime. He found no evidence in Mrs. Dixon's home, but asked her to keep a lookout for any evidence of the crime that might surface. Christensen later telephoned Lacey. When he called, Mrs. Dixon answered the telephone. She handed the cordless handset to her daughter, who took it upstairs into her bedroom and closed the door. Mrs. Dixon activated the apeakerphone function of the cordless telephone system by pressing a button on the base unit. Mrs. Dixon took notes from the conversation she overheard, in which Christensen acknowledged to Lacey that he was aware that police suspected him of the robbery and that he knew the whereabouts of the purse, but not that he had taken part in the robbery. Neither Christensen nor Lacey knew of, or consented to, Mrs. Dixon listening to their conversation.

Of all of the coverage on the internet concerning this story, 90% glossed over or missed outright what we consider to be the critical factors of this case: namely, that the police suspected Christensen and specifically asked Mrs. Dixon to keep her eyes and ears open for evidence in this case, and the fact that the Washington State wiretapping laws are exceedingly restrictive.

In effect, Mrs. Dixon was acting as an extension of the police, and hence needed to act according to the rules that govern law enforcement. The police cannot use civilians to eschew due process regulations, and that is precisely what they did in this case. If you don't want to research this yourself, just watch a few episodes of "Law & Order" and you'll see something similar (it happens about once every three episodes by our count).

Once you determine that Mrs. Dixon was acting as an agent of the police, it seems obvious that her eavesdropping is tantamount to wiretapping, and Washington's wiretapping laws are exceedingly strict — so much so that we feel they need to be changed to avoid hamstringing local law enforcement. Check the Washington statute in question yourself, if you like. That said, the laws in question are what they are today, and the justices had no choice but to find as they did — that Mrs. Dixon's acts were not admissable under the law, and that Christensen's conviction must be overturned. They ordered a new trial, without Mrs. Dixon's testimony.

Bill O'Reilly — as well as a host of other reactionary right wingers and careless reporters — would have us believe that the court ruled that "the right to individual privacy holds fast even when the individuals are teenagers," but that isn't what the ruling says. It says that the federal wiretapping laws which do contain exceptions for parents listening to their children is trumped by the more stringent Washington State laws — this is a simple statement of law, not a radical judge's opinion. Further, the reason that "the court also said the mother was acting as an agent for the police" as old Bill reports isn't because of what she did, but why she did it — that is, at the request of the police.

The ACLU, for their part, filed an amicus brief on behalf of Christensen. We haven't been able to find an actual copy of that brief, but from their quotes, we can see that their position seems quite rational:

New York Daily News:
ACLU Attorney Douglas Klunder filed a brief saying, "I don't think the state should be in the position of encouraging parents to act surreptitiously and eavesdrop on their children."

Seattle Times:
The ACLU of Washington, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case supporting privacy rights, "does not believe parents should be prosecuted for listening to their child's conversation," spokesman Doug Honig said. "It's never happened, and if it does, we want to hear about it."

This is not a perfect scenario, to say the least. The wiretapping laws in Washington need to be rewritten to allow the police to do their jobs, and Christensen — a guilty man to be sure — just walked on this conviction. We don't like that any more than anyone else does. However, the decision made by the court is the only logical decision possible, and the position of the ACLU is correct. They aren't saying that parents should not be allowed to do what Mrs. Dixon did — just that the police cannot use parents as agents to get around the criminal justice system.

If this had happened in a state where the wiretapping laws are not so strict, and if Mrs. Dixon had overheard this during a routine eavesdropping which was not urged by the police, then we would still be as outraged as we were when we first read about this. In this scenario, if the ACLU came out on the side of Christensen's privacy, we would indeed be ranting about their screw up. But that isn't the scenario that actually happened.

That said, we do want to make it clear that we do not agree carte blanche with everything that the ACLU does or says. We believe that anyone that accepts 100% of any group's platforms is either not doing their homework, not thinking critically, or both — the same argument we use when we lambast people who identify fully with Democrats or Republicans. In the case of a group like the ACLU, it is a little easier to agree with them on a broad range of issues as their platform is based on a consistent theme — protecting civil liberties. Political parties, on the other hand, often have more than one theme governing their platform, and there are often contradictions that arise.

Even though we aren't on the same page as the ACLU on every single point they may argue, overall we believe that they are doing important work, and that they are in a unique position to do this work in a way that few other groups can. Accordingly, we give them our support — via our web site and our wallets.

Those who attack the ACLU as terrorists, anti-religious radicals, organized criminals, or a host of other insults are simply not informed, or are willfully disregarding the information available. Oddly enough, the first group that would step up to defend the rights of these frothing whackos, who are screaming about how we need to kill the ACLU, is the same group that they are so intent upon destroying. If people as a whole ever truly grasp this point, we'll all be better off.