The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment

background image writes "According to Alan M Gershowitz, the doctrine of "search incident to arrest" may allow devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops to be thoroughly searched without either probable cause or warrants [PDF download below abstract]. Incriminating evidence found in such searches may be used against you whether or not it is germane to the reason for the original arrest. He notes, 'Obviously, the framers of the Fourth Amendment could not have conceived of a handheld technological device like the iPhone, and courts have not yet been called upon to answer most of the difficult questions posed by such devices.' We've discussed similar search issues recently, as well as other privacy concerns related to modern technology.

Comments

notebook? papers?

[theRhinoceros]

Well, can the police read, say, my notebook, kept in my backpack in the car? Can they look at my wallet full of business cards and contacts? What if these papers and information are protected by attorney or medical privilege? What if these are my (HIPAA-protected) health records? These seem to be the closest analogues to what's on my iPhone, apart from the actual phone itself.

TrueCrypt

[mwilliamson]

http://truecrypt.org/ and similar tools may be of use. Not only can you protect an arbitrary volume with tc, you can hide another container inside it in a truly undetectable way.

The law only get's in the way of the undereducated

[Lumpy]

If you want anything secure, put it in a high capacity memory stick or SD card. keep them seperate. they can look over the laptop all they want they will not find anything I don't want them to find.

Come on people, Hackers, spies, political dissidents, and those persecuted by their government have had to do this all their lives. Now all US citizens have to do the same.

it's the price we pay for being safe from T E R R O R I S M .

Security in Our Papers and Effects

[Doc Ruby]

the framers of the Fourth Amendment could not have conceived of a handheld technological device like the iPhone

That point (an unproveable assertion, BTW) is totally irrelevant. The technology doesn't change our rights. We have the right to be secure in our papers and personal effects. That is obviously perfectly equivalent to records stored in the iPod. It might take a judge distracted by some arguing lawyers a few hours to decide that records stored elsewhere but accessed directly by the iPod are equivalent to the same old papers and effects, but it's an obvious conclusion.

The only relevant question is whether a cop stopping you for speeding or running a red light has probable cause to search your papers and personal effects for anything else. Which they obviously don't, especially since they've already got all the evidence of the moving violation crime they're accusing you of, and your preexisting papers could contain evidence of that only if they are accusing you of premeditated moving violations, which I think isn't even a legal charge.

The people who formulated and signed the Constitution were smart. So smart they didn't have to be able to conceive an iPhone. All they had to conceive was identifying our rights, and directing our government to protect them. And, along the couple centuries since then, we've updated their list of identified rights and required protections at least 17 more times. But none of those updates are because some gizmo appeared, even when some - like telegraphs, cars, airplanes, computers - transformed our society. Because we the people are still the same, with the same rights.

The rest of this crap is just an excuse for lawyers to make money and power brokers to steal more power from the people.