Court Opinion

ID: 9573551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:56:42.249497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:41:36.495026
License: Public Domain

*353Smith, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
The Georgia Constitution draws a balance between the state’s duty to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens and the individual’s right to be free from excessive state intrusion into his private affairs. See Preamble to the Georgia Constitution of 1983, and Art. I, Sec. I, Par. I. Although guaranteeing public accountability is an important state interest, that interest may not be used to overwhelm the individual. For example, combatting crime is fundamental to our concept of ordered society. Even so, our criminal law requires the state to act within certain guidelines before an individual’s right to privacy may be infringed. We require the police to obtain a search warrant and to follow certain procedures before installing a pen register, a device which records the phone numbers of both incoming and outgoing calls. OCGA § 16-11-60; Ellis v. State, 256 Ga. 751 (353 SE2d 19) (1987). By its decision today, the majority allows a newspaper to obtain, without a warrant, the same information as is gathered by a pen register, and gives any member of the public, under the guise of the Open Records Act, OCGA § 50-18-72 et seq., the ability to conduct an otherwise illegal search.
The appellee seeks the city’s cellular telephone records because it claims to represent the public and it asserts that there is a legitimate public interest in publicizing those records. Included in those claims is a host of problems. The telephone records contain the cellular telephone numbers of the appellants, any telephone numbers (publicized or unlisted) which may have been called from the cellular telephones, and potentially, the telephone numbers of confidential police informants.
The appellee seeks disclosure of the numbers dialed from cellular telephones, claiming that the public has a legitimate interest in knowing who city officials and others call. They cite Athens Observer v. Anderson, 245 Ga. 63, 65 (263 SE2d 128) (1980), for the idea that “[t]he right of privacy, protectable in tort. . . extends only to unnecessary public scrutiny.” Assuming for the sake of argument that the appellee’s stated interest is legitimate, the majority fails to protect the privacy interests of individuals as required by Griffin-Spalding County Hosp. Auth. v. Radio Station WKEU, 240 Ga. 444 (241 SE2d 196) (1978). In Griffin-Spalding, this Court recognized the public’s right to see certain records but ruled that where public and private information are mixed, the statute requires a custodian to separate the two and to release only the public information. The Court interpreted Code Annotated § 40-2701, the former open records statute, as requiring a “custodian of public records to preserve the confidentiality of information that the public does not have a right to see.” The appellants’ actions are authorized by Griffin-Spalding, supra at 447, which held that “[t]he manner of separating this information is left to *354the discretion of the public agency.” The deletion is not optional; it is mandated by Griffin-Spalding, which also holds that revealing personal information3 can lead to liability in tort for invasion of privacy.
An unpublished telephone number is private and personal information. Under the majority opinion, any holder of an unpublished number who is called from a city-subscribed cellular telephone is automatically robbed of the confidentiality of his number. There is no notice. This is particularly objectionable in the case of a police officer, who is on call 24 hours a day and may well have been required to give his phone number to his supervising officer for contact in the line of duty. If an official using a cellular telephone calls him at home, his personal telephone number becomes publicly available without his consent or knowledge.
This Court has a constitutional duty to protect the privacy of the citizens of the State of Georgia. “The right of privacy within certain limits is a right. . . guaranteed to persons in this State by the constitutions of the United States and of the State of Georgia. . . .” Pavesich v. New England Life Ins. Co., 122 Ga. 197 (50 SE 68) (1905). The real result of today’s opinion is that any member of the general public, including convicted felons, may access the personal unlisted telephone numbers of our citizens, including police officers and their families. All that is required is that a person’s home receive a call from a city-subscribed cellular phone. This is especially troubling in light of the fact that many police officers order and pay for unpublished telephone numbers in order to protect their families from harassment. Today’s opinion effectively denies these officers, and others, their right to privacy and frustrates their attempts to shield their families and homes from intrusion.
Additionally, giving the public, through the release of the city’s cellular telephone numbers, the means to call city officials at will and at the city’s expense serves no conceivable purpose. The city has already complied with the Open Records Act by releasing the names of the official users of each cellular telephone and an accounting of the telephone expenses of each of those individuals. This adequately provides the public with the means to “evaluate the expenditure of public funds.” Athens Observer, supra at 66.
Revealing the city’s cellular telephone numbers will do nothing to improve the public’s ability to communicate with the government or *355to monitor government expenses but will leave city officials open to harassment and the city treasury open to unchecked costs.4 If the question is one of public access to elected and appointed officials, the officials are easily accessible through their published office numbers, and most of the officials have listed residential telephone numbers as well.
The police have even more pressing reasons to keep their cellular telephone numbers confidential. The drug suppression squad, special agents, and other branches of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation use city-subscribed cellular telephones in their official duties. Among those duties are contact with confidential informants, coordination of activities and maintenance of contact among team members. Allowing the general public, including pranksters, to clog these confidential lines may seriously impair the police’s ability to communicate, respond to calls, and insure the public’s safety.
Finally, today’s decision fails to protect, as required , by law, the lives and safety of informants, undercover agents, and others who may be endangered by a blanket disclosure of telephone records. OCGA § 50-18-72 (a) (3) explicitly states that such information is exempt from disclosure, yet the Court refuses to review this issue. This is a Court to correct error, not to promote it. Miller v. State, 260 Ga. 191, 197 (391 SE2d 642) (1990) (Smith, P. J., dissenting). At the very least, given the jeopardy in which disclosure places undercover agents and informants, and the unambiguous legislative intent to shield such persons, this Court should protect them by enforcing OCGA § 50-18-72 (a) (3).

 The General Assembly saw no need to specifically exempt “personal information” from OCGA § 50-18-72 as the previous statute had been construed to eliminate such information by Griffin-Spalding and subsequent amendments did not change the judicial construction. “It is a well settled canon of statutory construction that statutes are presumed to be enacted by the legislature with knowledge of the existing law.” Hart v. Owens-Illinois, 250 Ga. 397, 400 (297 SE2d 462) (1982).

 It is interesting to note that the General Assembly has exempted itself from compliance with certain provisions of the Open Records Act. OCGA § 50-18-72 (a) (7). While Georgia has no official legislative history to show why the legislative exemption was given, a reasonable reading would be that crucial and confidential on-going discussions need to be protected so as not to jeopardize sensitive business transactions and negotiating positions undertaken for the public benefit. This rationale could apply equally to city officials.