Judge says it's OK to use your seized phone to impersonate you and entrap your friends

boingboing ^ | July 19, 2012 | Cory Doctorow

[carenot]

A federal judge has upheld the practice of police using seized phones to impersonate their owners, reading messages and sending sending entrapping replies to contacts in the phone's memory, without a warrant. The judge reasoned that constitutional privacy rights don't apply to messages if they appear on a seized device -- even if the messages originated with someone who has not been arrested or is under suspicion of any crime:A federal appeals court held that the pager owner's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure were not violated because the pager is "nothing more than a contemporary receptacle for telephone numbers," akin to an address book. The court also held that someone who sends his phone number to a pager has no reasonable expectation of privacy because he can't be sure that the pager will be in the hands of its owner.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The Gestapo - alive and well.

[Drill Thrawl]

Judges seem to be in a contest to see who can be the biggest ass clown.

[Bobalu]

We don’t need no stinkin’ Fourth Amendment

[bikerman]

does it also mean I can use a police frequency to play cop?

[a fool in paradise]

So if they raid your home and your computer is logged in, they can freely send out email messages to contacts as well?

[Cyber Liberty]

This had better not stand.

They say it’s the same as a paper-bound “phone book.” I think that’s protected. IANAL, so we’ll see.

[redgolum]

So in other words, electronic communication is not covered in the bill of rights.

[Altariel]

Our freedoms continue to be whittled away.

How long before Freepers stand together and say “We aren’t going to tolerate this any longer?”

[LevinFan]

How about the crime of using someone elses phone service without consent? I’m pretty sure if I pick up someones phone and make calls, it is called theft.