Supreme Court Tells Police 'Get A Warrant' For Phone Searches
From Supreme Court Brief
The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision protecting cellphone privacy sent a strong signal on Wednesday that the admittedly low-tech justices grasp the profound changes that the Information Age has wrought.
“Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life,’ ” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the court. He added that cellphones and smartphones are “now 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.”
Ruling in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, the court said that with rare exceptions, the Fourth Amendment requires that police obtain a search warrant to probe the contents of modern-day phones in the possession of arrestees. Rejecting government assertions of the need for quick access to phone contents, the court stressed the damage to personal privacy that would result from police seizure of devices that “place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals.”
In tone and substance, Roberts’ decision seemed aimed at giving the court’s acknowledgement, if not blessing, to a new American era—much as Reno v. ACLU in 1997 commemorated the birth of the Internet, comparing it then to the colonial “town crier” deserving of full First Amendment protection.
Wednesday’s ruling was similar in retrofitting modern technology to the intention of the Constitution’s framers. Because of the vast data stored on phones, searching them could yield the same information that British soldiers could obtain by rummaging through a colonial home, the court suggested.
Read more in our daily News Update...
From Supreme Court Brief
The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision protecting cellphone privacy sent a strong signal on Wednesday that the admittedly low-tech justices grasp the profound changes that the Information Age has wrought.
“Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life,’ ” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the court. He added that cellphones and smartphones are “now 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.”
Ruling in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, the court said that with rare exceptions, the Fourth Amendment requires that police obtain a search warrant to probe the contents of modern-day phones in the possession of arrestees. Rejecting government assertions of the need for quick access to phone contents, the court stressed the damage to personal privacy that would result from police seizure of devices that “place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals.”
In tone and substance, Roberts’ decision seemed aimed at giving the court’s acknowledgement, if not blessing, to a new American era—much as Reno v. ACLU in 1997 commemorated the birth of the Internet, comparing it then to the colonial “town crier” deserving of full First Amendment protection.
Wednesday’s ruling was similar in retrofitting modern technology to the intention of the Constitution’s framers. Because of the vast data stored on phones, searching them could yield the same information that British soldiers could obtain by rummaging through a colonial home, the court suggested.
Read more in our daily News Update...