Is a conversation &quot;private&quot; (in a two-party state) if it is at your desk at work with a co-worker? In the context of an in-person conversation in the State of Washington (a two-party state), an online reference states: Whether a conversation or other communications is "private" depends on a number of case-specific factors, such as the subjective intention of the parties, the reasonableness of their expectation that the conversation would be private, the location of the conversation, and whether third parties were present. Suppose the location was your desk at work, and a co-worker came up and propositioned you. Further suppose that though this is in the midst of a cubicle farm nobody else was in earshot. Would it be legal to record such a conversation at your workplace without getting the consent of the co-worker? I can't tell from this as it seems to me: a) The subjective intention of the co-worker would probably be that the conversation was private; b) the lack of other people within earshot might have provided the co-worker with the expectation the conversation would be private; but on the other hand, c) at that location you would not expect privacy. (I will accept as valid, BTW, an answer pointing me to reasonably authoritative documentation, up to and including court cases on point. I was unable to find it: Stuff I found was all in the context of telephone conversations (i.e. not in-person) or public hearings or being a journalist.)
A reasonably analogous case is State v. Kipp, 179 Wn.2d 718. The court held that a secret recording was illegal, and the recording was of a face to face recording, using a cassette recorder. The court provides an analysis of the meaning of "private" under RCW 9.73.030, and concludes that "A communication is private (1) when parties manifest a subjective intention that it be private and (2) where that expectation is reasonable" (with appropriate in-state citations). They say that Factors bearing on the reasonableness of the privacy expectation include the duration and subject matter of the communication, the location of the communication and the presence or potential presence of third parties, and the role of the nonconsenting party and his or her relationship to the consenting party. Ultimately, the intent or reasonable expectations of the participants as manifested by the facts and circumstances of each case controls as to whether a conversation is private but in this case, Kipp manifested a subjective intention that the conversation be private. We have found subjective intent that a conversation be private even though the party does not explicitly state such an intention The court in fact rejects the state's contention that a person who confesses to child molestation should expect this information to be reported to the authorities, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect the conversation to remain private and the court reaffirms that the subject matter of the conversation in this case was not one that is normally intended to be public, demonstrating Kipp's reasonable expectation of privacy.
Trump was an officer of the government, and Twitter wasn't. The First Amendment forbids the government and its agents from viewpoint discrimination, but private companies are not bound by it and can discriminate as much as they please. (There was a question as to whether such discrimination might affect whether the company enjoys a shield from liability under 47 USC 230, but even so they have the right to block and censor as they wish if they are willing to risk that liability.)
Assuming that the documents were either true, or Manning reasonably believed that they were true, there would be no cause of action for defamation. Many of the documents disclosed would have been confidential in some sense, but usually a violation of a confidentiality statute has a criminal sanction associated with it, but does not carry with it a private cause of action &ndash; in part, because conceptually, the party actually harmed is considered to be the government and not the person about whom information is revealed. It is also possible that Manning could utilize the state secrets privilege as a defense and have such a suit dismissed on the grounds that a full and adequate defense of the claims would require the disclosure of official state secrets. For example, if a covert agent were murdered due to a wrongful disclosure of information, usually official disclosure of the fact of being a covert agent would be required to prove the case, and that evidence would be barred by the state secrets privilege, effectively barring the lawsuit entirely. Constitutional claims of privacy violations under the 4th Amendment generally relate to the wrongful acquisition of information and not its wrongful disclosure. The constitution bars unreasonable search and seizure, not unreasonable disclosure of information. The only privacy tort that might be applicable is "Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts." (A sister privacy tort, Intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into privacy affairs, is directed at the collection of data phase and not the dissemination phase). See Restatement of the Law (Second) of Torts, §§ 652B and 652D. But, this tort raises serious First Amendment concerns and has not been widely adopted. Realistically, this tort is unconstitutional in the absence of an affirmative contractual or quasi-contractual duty not to reveal facts that runs to the person making the disclosure, and in general, Manning would not have that kind of relationship. The classic public disclosure of embarrassing private facts case would involve a lawyer's or psychotherapist's revelations about a client. Also, in the case of the public disclosure tort the basis for damages is largely personal emotional distress and violation of trust, as opposed to damage to reputation, per se. The requirement is that the disclosure be embarrassing or breach of contract, not that it harm someone's reputation since you have no legal right to a reputation that differs from the truth.
They aren’t treated differently In most jurisdictions, law enforcement requires a warrant to intercept/open/read the contents of physical or electronic correspondence. Similarly, in most jurisdictions, a warrant is not required to read the metadata: who is communicating with whom, how and when but not what. That is they can read what’s written on the outside of the envelope or the routing information of the email/SMS. Telephony is not correspondence because it is not the intent of the parties to create a permanent record. It is usually treated as any other conversation - if it carried out in a place and manner that the participants have a reasonable expectation of privacy it’s usually illegal to record it (electronically or by writing it down). If it’s said publicly, it isn’t illegal.
In general, there are few laws in the US that restrict a person's freedom to disclose a fact known about another person. Examples of such limits are HIPAA which restricts health-professionals disclosure of medical information, and FERPA which restricts an educational institution's disclosure of student records. There are laws that restrict government disclosure of information about individuals. Confidentiality might be guaranteed via a contract, if there is a non-disclosure clause in the contract. A number of (major) businesses do have privacy policies where they promise not to disclose your information, or do so only in a specified way: such things generally exist for internet businesses. Some states like California have mandatory privacy policy laws. In New Jersey, there is simply the traditional tort claims of intrusion upon solitude, unreasonable publicity of private life, false light, and appropriation of name or likeness. Passing along general information about a person or a way to contact them would not be seen as an unreasonable intrusion.
The nature of the meeting matters: I assume this is a private meeting, not a public meeting. Under RCW 9.73.030, you have to announce that the meeting is being recorded (the announcement must itself be recorded), or the recording device must be obvious. There is no exception regarding property status (such as &quot;on school property; in a government-funded facility&quot;). But it also matters if the conversation is &quot;private&quot;. See State v. Townsend, 57 P.3d 255, which gives weight to the subjective intent of the parties, thus the primary question would be whether the school official intended the communication to be private. Given strong FERPA privacy protection of personal information about students and in light of the likely nature of the conversation, one might think that the administrator intends the discussion to be private. However, the administrator cannot discuss e.g. disciplinary issues with third parties, so that would not be a valid basis for expecting privacy. You would really need to get a lawyer, discuss the expected subjects with the lawyer, and see if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy (even if this is not a public meeting). Your local ACLU chapter might advise you of your rights, though they would probably also advise you to not experiment with breaking the law (I don't see what legitimate purpose would be served by recording in secret).
Attorney-client privilege is normally waived if a privileged communication is voluntarily disclosed. Submission of an attorney-client privileged document to a judge to review in camera does not waive the attorney-client privilege. Most of the case law involves inadvertent "oops" style disclosures of attorney-client privileged documents (keep in mind that big lawsuits often involve exchanges of terabytes of data that have to be reviewed page by page for attorney-client privileged materials by armies of junior lawyers and paralegals, so mistakes are inevitably made now and then), which is a somewhat convoluted area of law. Basically, if it is caught soon enough, the person accidentally receiving it can be ordered to not look at it any more and to destroy it without keeping copies if it remains within an accidental recipient law firm or government agency's possession and has not been further disseminated into public records yet. In particular, such documents can't be presented as evidence at trial if the mistake is caught before it is too late to correct the mistake. In those cases, the legal system does its best to pretend that the mistaken disclosure of attorney-client privileged materials never happened.
You've identified exactly the right question: whether the person's subjective expectation of privacy, when viewed objectively, is the "justifiable under the circumstances". (Smith v. Maryland) The Supreme Court hasn't addressed how this test applies to ISPs and website requests. However, this question has been addressed by several circuit courts of appeal. I'll build a list of example cases. Many find that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in this information, but there are some cases that go the other way, and there is some nuance regarding exactly what information is being given away. US v. Beckett (11th Cir. 2010): the information consisted of the identifying information transmitted during internet usage and phone calls that is necessary for the ISPs and phone companies to perform their services. It is unreasonable for Beckett to have been unaware that such information was being transmitted to the ISPs and phone companies and so he “assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the [information].” United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir. 2007): Analogously, e-mail and Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from addresses of their messages or the IP addresses of the websites they visit because they should know that this information is provided to and used by Internet service providers for the specific purpose of directing the routing of information. Like telephone numbers, which provide instructions to the "switching equipment that processed those numbers," e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses are not merely passively conveyed through third party equipment, but rather are voluntarily turned over in order to direct the third party's servers. Regarding your secondary question about a "secret machine" that the government develops to get access to contents of an envelope without opening it, that is very similar to the situation in Kyllo v US 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (internal quotations removed): [...] obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the home's interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a search-at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. [...] Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology-including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home.