97-25-49 - Wrongful access to telecommunications messages by cellular telephone; inadmissibility of information obtained in violation of this section.
§ 97-25-49. Wrongful access to telecommunications messages by cellular telephone; inadmissibility of information obtained in violation of this section.
(1) A person who commits either of the following offenses shall be punished by a fine of not more than One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six (6) months, or both:
(a) Wrongfully obtains, or attempts to obtain, any knowledge of a private telecommunications message by gaining access to the origination, transmission, emission or reception of signs, signals, data, writings, images and sounds or intelligence of any nature by cellular telephone, when such person is not the lawfully intended recipient of the message or is not authorized to have access to such message, or by connivance with a clerk, operator, messenger or other employee of a telecommunications company; or
(b) Being such clerk, operator, messenger or other employee, uses, or suffers to be used, or willfully divulges to anyone but the person for whom it was intended, the contents of a cellular phone message.
(c) The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to the use of a telephone monitoring device by either a law enforcement agency acting pursuant to a valid court order or to a corporation or other business entity engaged in marketing research or telephone solicitation conversations by an employee of the corporation or other business entity when the monitoring is used for the purpose of service quality control and the monitoring is used with the consent of at least one (1) person who is a party to the conversation.
(d) The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to an employee of a cellular telephone company who discloses or uses an intercepted communication in the normal course of business as a necessary incident to providing service or to the protection of the rights or property of the employer or who provides assistance to an investigative or law enforcement officer acting under a valid court order.
(2) Any information obtained in violation of this section shall not be admissible in any civil proceeding unless the information was obtained by the lawful owner of the device that obtained the information.
Sources: Codes, 1892, § 1301; 1906, § 1375; Hemingway's 1917, § 1115; 1930, § 1145; 1942, § 2382; Laws, 1999, ch. 514, § 1, eff from and after July 1, 1999.