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Calif. Appeals Court Approves Cell Phone Searches
Local ID10T writes with this excerpt from The Blaze: "In a case explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court has determined
police officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic violation stop. ... Florida and Georgia are among the states that give no protection to a phone during a search. In particular, Florida law treats a smartphone as a 'container' for the purposes of a search, similar to say a cardboard box open on the passenger seat, despite the thousands of personal emails, contacts, and photos a phone can carry stretching back years. But after initially striking down cell phone snooping, California has now joined the list of states that allow cops to go through your phone without a warrant." Interesting additional commentary, too, from UCSD law professor Shaun Martin.
As a result of the Court's ruling, the legislature overruled the court by passing a law that provides privacy protection for mobile devices.
See http://www.californiality.com/2011/09/california-mobile-device-privacy-law.html
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Florida law treats a smartphone as a 'container' for the purposes of a search, similar to say a cardboard box open on the passenger seat
I don't know Floridian law, but does the box have to be open? If that's the case, a pass-coded cellphone is technically a sealed box.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
They don't manually go through it. There are devices they plug into the usb/charger port if it's a smartphone and will download everything to the device. Doesn't matter if you have a password. More info here:
http://www.cellebrite.com/forensic-products/forensic-products.html?loc=seg
Of course they'll keep the info, store it in their databases forever. Goodbye privacy.
Also quite common is to call in the police dog, order the dog to false-alert when walking near the vehicle, and search based on that.
Now, you should still not give permission to search, that's absolutely true. But especially if you're not a straight clean-cut educated white guy, don't be all that surprised if they trample on your rights.
I'm a clean cut white guy and I've had the K-9 "alert" on my car and been searched twice, and no drugs were found either time.
I don't understand why the work of a DOG is enough to violate my rights. The dog will alert if the handler gives the command to alert. This isn't evidence and should be disallowed in court.
Cops LIE and courts need to become confortable with that fact. The "War on Drugs" has done more to damage our rights than the Patriot Act ever did.