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Posted on 08/19/2013 3:41:11 PM PDT by rarestia
If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.
In 2007, the police arrested a Massachusetts man who appeared to be selling crack cocaine from his car. The cops seized his cellphone and noticed that it was receiving calls from “My House.” They opened the phone to determine the number for “My House.” That led them to the man’s home, where the police found drugs, cash and guns.
The defendant was convicted, but on appeal he argued that accessing the information on his cellphone without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Earlier this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the man’s argument, ruling that the police should have gotten a warrant before accessing any information on the man’s phone.
The Obama Administration disagrees. In a petition filed earlier this month asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, the government argues that the First Circuit’s ruling conflicts with the rulings of several other appeals courts, as well as with earlier Supreme Court cases. Those earlier cases have given the police broad discretion to search possessions on the person of an arrested suspect, including notebooks, calendars and pagers. The government contends that a cellphone is no different than any other object a suspect might be carrying.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
i seriously hope you forgot your sarc tag.
it’s personal property of one person. the fact that it can call others is not an issue.
Reason 4,912 toe end the WOD.
Exactly what I thought.
I am. I wonder if, in the cases involving address books etc., search means looking for contraband or searching for the information contained therein or both.
Not really, since the SCOTUS has long held that any conversation that uses a cellphone has no expectation of privacy. They have really beaten the issue to death, that any and every form of electronic communication can be monitored by the government at whim.
In most cases, even face to face communication has little protection. If the government installs listening devices, it is a crime to tamper with them, interfere with them, or even point them out to others.
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I’ve never seen a picture of Pershing wearing a hat with a red star on it, have you?
Simple really. I do not use a cell phone, and I never will.
Simple really, we all need a really good encoding app for cellphone data.
Police who are not lazy can use tree charts to eventually have a database containing information on every individual in their jurisdiction who uses and/or sells drugs. All they have to do is listen to informants, takes notes on people producing funny smells, record license numbers and descriptions at parties and record the information with pen and paper to be entered with a computer later on. Eventually, they can have all of the evidence and testimony that they’ll need without grabbing cell phones on questionable grounds.
Well when one believesthe Constitution is a charter of negative liberties the govt can do anything it wants.
That presumes you knew they were government listening devices. To me they might look like buttons or pieces of that old router I took apart... Sorry, just thought it was electronic debris from our modern lifestyle, cat toys, etc. ...they're somewhere at the local dump by now... Now, prove I knew they were government listening devices that I shouldn't have tampered with.
Thanks for linking to the print version.
Hanging tyrants on the spot is a sure deterrent to despotism.
F U B O !
When will it ever end? Someone/group needs to stand up! Who?
The Supreme Court found a constitutional right to privacy in their Roe v. Wade decision.
The Supreme Court can’t so easily let Obama ride rough over their ruling. Oh wait, Chief Traitor Benedict Roberts... Never mind!
Agreed. Robinson opened a door but I don’t think it really applies and Edwards seems wrongly decided but I still have some reading to do. It will be interesting to read the 1st Circuit’s reasoning here. I think SCOTUS has over time trashed the idea of being Secure in Person and Papers.
But here’s the thing for the cops to consider ... this was your garden variety low level crack dealer. Pushing a few buttons on the cellphone would be low risk. But damn, consider a jihadist who has a dude like Q outfitting the phones. With a button press or two, they could have set off a car bomb [damn, NSA will ALL OVER this post] or worse. The last thing I’d want to do is to mess with any of their electronics.
In fact, if I was a forensics guy, I’d want a lab with a mini cell tower so the phone wouldn’t lose signal but controlled by me so it couldn’t make an outside call. Even then I’d treat it like a rattlesnake.
But I digress. Searching a cellphone or even reading a pencil-and-paper address book should not be done without a warrant.
all the more reason that it needs a warrant...you missed the point
This is a case of a search incident to arrest. In a search incident to arrest the police may without a warrant search the person himself or the immediate surroundings for the protection of the police.
It seems to me that a person does have REP in his cellphone and unless the police have probable cause, I don't see any valid exception that would allow a warrantless search of a cellphone incident to an arrest.
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