Think before you SMS

2004-06-11 08:56

Denver - A few hours after NBA star Kobe Bryant had sex with a hotel worker, the woman exchanged cellphone text messages with a former boyfriend and someone else.

What's in those messages could help determine whether the sex was consensual or whether Bryant is guilty of rape as charged. The judge himself said the content may be "highly relevant" to the case.

That the judge could order the woman's cellphone company to produce the messages so long after they were sent shouldn't surprise anyone, analysts say.

SMS senders beware. Like e-mail and internet instant messages, text messages tend to be saved on servers.

"One of the false assumptions that people make is that when they hit the delete button, messages are gone forever, but nothing can be further from the truth," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Atlanta.

The Bryant case appears to be the first high-profile US criminal case in which cellphone text messages could be entered into the docket. In Europe and Asia, where texting is hugely popular, some criminal cases have hinged on them.

In Sweden, police and prosecutors used text messages to prove that a nanny influenced by a pastor of a religious sect shot and killed his wife while she slept and then killed a neighbour next door with whom she was alleged to be having an affair.

And police in southern Japan are examining e-mail and text messages as part of the investigation into the recent box-cutter killing of a 12-year-old girl, allegedly by an 11-year-old classmate.

'Common practice'

In the Bryant case, defence attorneys said text messages were exchanged among the woman who has accused Bryant of rape and two other people - the former boyfriend and a person as yet unidentified - in the hours after the alleged June 30 attack.

Four months later, Bryant's attorneys subpoenaed AT&T Wireless Communications Inc, seeking the messages. The company fought the subpoena, but last month state District Judge Terry Ruckriegle ordered the company to turn the messages over to him.

He will review them in private to determine whether they are relevant to the case, in which Bryant has pleaded not guilty.

AT&T Wireless spokesperson Mark Siegel said the company co-operates with law enforcement officials for investigations but refused to discuss its policies on storing text messages.

The company's website said messages not immediately delivered are held for 72 hours for more delivery attempts - then deleted. How messages in the Bryant case would be available four months later isn't known; most likely they were retrieved from an archival storage system.

"It's just a common practice," said Kagan, the telecoms analyst. "I don't know an instance where they delete them.

"I think in these days of corporate fraud and in these days of terrorism we're seeing more and more reason to store forever," Kagan said. "Don't ever say anything on e-mail or text messaging that you don't want to come back and bite you."

- SAPA