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Police Can Search Cell Phones Without Warrants
Hugh Pickens writes "The California Supreme Court has ruled 5 to 2 to allow police to search arrestees' cell phones without a warrant, saying defendants lose their privacy rights for any items they're carrying when taken into custody. Under US Supreme Court precedents, 'this loss of privacy allows police not only to seize anything of importance they find on the arrestee's body... but also to open and examine what they find,' the state court said. The dissenting justices said those rulings shouldn't be extended to modern cell phones that can store huge amounts of data and that the decision allows police 'to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee's person.' Interestingly enough, the Ohio Supreme Court reached an opposite conclusion in a December 2009 ruling that police had violated drug defendants' rights by searching their cell phones after their arrests. The Ohio-California split could prompt the US Supreme Court to take up the issue, says California Deputy Attorney General Victoria Wilson, who represented the prosecution in the case."
What if my device is password protected? Can I be compelled to hand over the password? Because I won't.
If I cannot be compelled to hand over encryption keys for other forms of media, I'm not giving up a password to my mobile device, either.
At the same time, if they elect to seize and search my backpack, which is also locked, they have the option of breaking the lock to gain access to the contents. But is that legal? At that point, you're also destroying my property in the process.
Are these 'law enforcement officials' permitted to install software on devices in the course of conducting a 'search'?
Sticky.
Informatus Technologicus
What happens when they use the phone to log into email and facebook accounts to retrieve information that is NOT in the phone?
The police can't go enter your house just because they found the key in your pocket when you were arrested, they need a separate warrant to do that.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But hey, the democrats think it's just a piece of paper and the republicans think it's a suicide pact.
i think that long term, our society's abandonment of the constitution is the real suicide pact.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
It's a nice thought, but most officers will drop the phone into a "safe bag" when they take it, which is like a static shielding bag, and will prevent remote contact with the phone. Therefore, after it's been confiscated it's unlikely (possible, but I wouldn't want to gamble my freedom on the odds) that a remote wipe will work, since the phone will be in the bag until they take it out to search it, and they'll do that in an evidence room that's also a Faraday cage, to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Remote wipe is great for clearing data in case of theft, but the police are generally wise to the evidence-destroying implications.
Virg