This raises issues covered in 2305's section on civil liberties and and the Supreme Court.
A unanimous court ruled that police need warrants if they want to search the cell phone of a person they have arrested. Police generally do not need warrants in such cases, but cell phones are argued to be different because of the information they contain. It is the first time the court has ruled on searches on cell phones. The data on them can only be searched if a warrant is issued to authorize it.
In the material on civil liberties I try to cover the exceptions the court has allowed for many of them. This ruling narrows those exceptions.
- Click here for NYT coverage.
A unanimous court ruled that police need warrants if they want to search the cell phone of a person they have arrested. Police generally do not need warrants in such cases, but cell phones are argued to be different because of the information they contain. It is the first time the court has ruled on searches on cell phones. The data on them can only be searched if a warrant is issued to authorize it.
In the material on civil liberties I try to cover the exceptions the court has allowed for many of them. This ruling narrows those exceptions.
- Click here for NYT coverage.
In a sweeping victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesdayunanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.
While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies.
“This is a bold opinion,” said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “It is the first computer-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can’t apply the old rules anymore.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, was keenly alert to the central role that cellphones play in contemporary life. They are, he said, “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”
The case is Riley v California.
- Click here for the decision.
- Click here for ScotusBlog's background on the case.
The court argued that by being allowed to search through the cell phone without a warrant, police were able to go on "fishing expeditions" and broadly search for anything they can potentially arrest someone for. This defeats the purpose of warrants.
Here's an author that is not that satisfied by the decision:
In 1926, the court said, Judge Learned Hand “observed … that it is ‘a totally different thing to search a man’s pockets and use against him what they contain, from ransacking his house for everything which may incriminate him.’”
But “if his pockets contain a cell phone, that is no longer true.”
That’s why police need a warrant to search your phone.
And this the court did not say: Search warrants are not that hard for police to get. They go to a judge or magistrate and argue that they have probable cause to believe there may be criminal activity involving you. They don’t have to prove you’ve done anything.
You are not consulted.
Also, police need a warrant to search your phone but others — private investigators, industrial spies, identify thieves or your kid’s nosy friend (or your kid) — do not. The Constitution protects you from actions by the government, not anyone else.
And the court said police don’t always need a warrant. In “exigent” circumstances — a suspect texting an accomplice about a bomb or a child abductor who may have information about a child’s location on his phone — they need not waste time calling a judge.
The message from the court: Be careful what you put on your phone.
