#949 Pre-Language Syndrome

This texting thing is creating new and troubling problems—with communication and the law.
There’s people out there, right now, who are actually using PMS as a verb. “She was PMS-ing all over the place.” “I wanted to talk but she was PMS-ing.”
This can’t be right. Break it down. She was pre-menstrual syndroming? Can you be syndroming?
That’s like saying you’re going to go ATM some cash. “Yeah, I was ATM-ing some cash while my girlfriend was texting me.”
I just don’t think it’s right to go down the path of turning initials into verbs. No matter how much quicker they are to text.
But we face an even more insidious legal danger with texting. The other day a local law enforcement organization acted on a threatening text someone had sent to someone else, and used that probable cause to search the alleged sender’s home. In the process of the search, they discovered drugs and other things that led to an arrest and the taunting texter being charged with crimes.
So this, of course, leads to all sorts of legal issues. Is looking at a text on someone else’s phone the same as intercepting and surreptitiously reading someone’s mail, or the same as taping a phone call without the caller’s knowledge?
Where does a text fit legally? Is it written mail? Is it a phone message? It didn’t come over wires so can you wiretap it, legal or otherwise? Is that text-tapping?
How do you prove the owner of the phone was the person who sent the text? If he didn’t, was the search of his house and subsequent discovery of drugs legal?
My advice here is not to lend your phone to anyone who may be holding you a grudge. Prank texts could lead to all sorts of legal difficulties.
And my guess is, everything you text or cellphone is fair game for prosecution. Remember when Congressman Jim McDermott got in trouble for taping a cellphone message he had accidentally intercepted?
If that had something to do with it being a public transmission, then is a text a radio transmission and subject to FCC decency laws?
Are they going to start FCC-ing every cellphone call?
America, ya gotta love it.