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Florida Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant To Search Cell Phones
An anonymous reader writes "In a case stemming from a Jacksonville burglary, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 Thursday that police must get a search warrant before searching someone's cell phone. 'At this time, we cannot ignore that a significant portion of our population relies upon cell phones for email communications, text message information, scheduling, and banking,' read the majority opinion (PDF), authored by Justice Fred Lewis. 'The position of the dissent, which would permit the search here even though no issue existed with regard to officer safety or evidence preservation, is both contrary to, and the antithesis of, the fundamental protections against government intrusion guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.'"
Hey, Florida's not all that bad.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Somebody check for snow in Tallahassee!
This will probably wind up in the Supreme Court eventually. I've been looking forward to that day.
For once in a very long while, I feel slightly more proud to be a (native) Floridian!
The Ontario court of Appeal in a case called Fearon recently decided that if the phone is not password protected it is fair game for the police to go through it without a warrant.
Two justices thought that it was constitutional for police to randomly search through your cell phone, though it seems they did not publish an opinion as to why.
A full report of this ruling should include the justification for such a ruling. I would love to read it!
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
What exactly makes a cellphone (or any digital device) different than any other personal posession? Why did it take a special court ruling (and probably millions of dollars) to "clarify" this "issue"? Does the law (and the constitution) not already state that a person cannot be searched without due process?
Where in the world did this confusion come from?
Cell phones are carried about on your person. Historically, when you are arrested, the police review and inventory items on your possession. They are able to do so because they are arresting you. Any evidence found on your person is admissible in court. However, the modern day cell phone often extends above and beyond the things that a normal person might carry on their person. You might have thousands of messages, emails, your bank statements, and other personal and confidential information you do not make a habit of carrying with you. If the police need access to that information, and have probable cause, then they should have to get a warrant to do so. Just as they would need a warrant to review my call logs, my bank statement, or to search through my house.
For the same reason you can patent ancient chestnuts by suffixing the claims with "...in a mobile device." All bets are off and no claim is too outrageous.
The powers assume you don't have civil rights until some court says you do. Even the words on a 200-year-old scrap of parchment are re-parsed with each new technological advance (printing press, telegraphy, telephones, etc.) because there are people in power for whom your clearly stated rights are an obstacle to their goals... so your rights are not applicable in this particular case until someone slaps them on the wrist and tells them that the right does, in fact, still apply.
This is the ugly truth behind the often-quoted maxim "the law doesn't keep up with technology." The people behind the law have a vested interest in making sure the established protections of the rule of law can't be applied in as many circumstances as possible, and work hard to redefine each new technological plateau as a new frontier of surveillance, seizure, and self-incrimination.
The men behind the Bill of Rights understood this. This is why we even have a Bill of Rights: because the government needs a standing restraint order against stalking their citizens.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The Supreme court shouldn't even be allowed to hear this case( and wasn't the original intent of duty of the supreme court), nor the case from California regarding gay marriage nor any other law that the relevant states supreme court has already ruled on.
The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over federal matters. In the case of gay marriage, a federal statute called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was being debated. If you paid attention to the arguments, the justices questioned why the federal statute was necessary and whether it interfered with the states' right to define marriage. That was one part of the cases.
The second part is whether California can define marriage differently than other states. When it comes to legal differences between states, that is appropriate for SCOTUS.
There is a REASON why each state has a supreme court. 7 black robes in Washington should not be overturning/hearing on individual state laws/rulings unless the founding papers of this great land specifically gave the Supreme Court the power to do so.
There are federal implications in the case of gay marriage.
In this particular case, every state ought to have a ruling on this subject and be done with it instead of one court ruling for all.
Should civil rights be defined differently for each state?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What exactly makes a cellphone (or any digital device) different than any other personal posession? Why did it take a special court ruling (and probably millions of dollars) to "clarify" this "issue"? Does the law (and the constitution) not already state that a person cannot be searched without due process?
Where in the world did this confusion come from?
because cops are assholes who think it's their job to take as much leeway they can get every time they can.
shouldn't be so, but it is. so when they started finding phones in peoples pockets(after going through the due process of determining that they looked like hoodlums) they took the opportunity to treat them as if they had just found everything in the phone as if it was on a printout and hell, since they now had the phone in custody why not try entrapping people based on the good faith they(the friends of the owner of the phone) had on the owner of the phone. because, as you know it's A WAR! a war on drugs and there's no rules on war(well, there isn't if you don't adhere to international conventions anyways). or terror. or for the good of the town. or whatever.
of course it's a generalization but can you blame people for starting to make such generalizations when they stem from real actions..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
To elaborate, the search incident to arrest is justified for the officer's safety. If you had a sealed letter on you, they could open it because there might be a shiv in the letter. In opening that letter, the contents enter plain view which makes them known to the police.
A cell phone is rightly exempt from this, because you can eliminate any possibility that the cell phone is a weapon without examining the data.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Just FYI everyone, the Florida Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the Florida state constitution, and it's well-settled precedent that state constitutions can provide greater protection than the Federal constitution. The only way this case could have legitimately gotten to the U.S. Supreme Court is if the Florida Supreme Court found that a warrant WASN'T necessary. The defendant then could have asked the USCT to find that under the 4th and 14th amendment one was required.
To paraphrase the Simpsons:
Floridian: "Wow, Florida, this makes me feel...what's the opposite of ashamed?"
Florida: "Proud?"
Floridian: "Not that far from ashamed."
Florida: "Less ashamed?"
Floridian:"Yeah!"
Florida: "Awww, thanks."
DOMA was put into place as a way to keep states from recognizing any other states law regarding gay marriage. So Florida wouldnt be forced to recognize a couples gay marriage certificate from California. It doesnt stop California from deciding whether or not it wants gay marriage. I'm not sure why this even came into question.
Which is a violation of the Full Faith and Credit clause. And therefore a matter for the Supreme Court.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
So before the United States came into being there weren't any marriages!!! Hooray for the USA! ("Helping people 'hook-up' for over 200 years!!!)
... Or you are just plain wrong.
Here is a very important detail that just doesn't get noticed:
The US Constitution and Bill Of Rights DOES NOT GRANT ANY RIGHTS to the people. The people already had those rights. Those documents recognize those rights and protect those rights from intrusion by the government.
You might remember another document that said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. "
Yup, it is "self-evident" that these rights do not come from any gooberment proclamation. That fact that people seem to think that the government has rights over PEOPLE is one of the major problems that we have nowadays.
Sadly, given recent events with the sequester my first thought was that some high powered politician had to have been affected. Bravo for some common sense from the judiciary. Now lets percolate that up to Washington and spread it around.
i dont know who are you agreeing/disagreeing with here but guns are mentioned in the constitution and thus SCOTUS can hear cases on it. marriage isnt mentioned at all like you said - thus my big response on marriage never being a right at all for anyone. The states provided a way to recognize heterosexual couples with perks, bonuses etc etc but the federal government never did institute such priviledge... so definitely that falls under the states rights. As far as general civil rights, those are only fair game if those are in the constitution. People want to sue and have the supreme court hear arguments for "rights" spanning all disciplines that are not even mentioned in any of our documents and for the supreme court to rule (i.e. make precedent, make a new law out of clear blue sky) is and was never there intention/duty. If you want to create/amend something in the constitution for them to rule on - then *GASP* get some grass roots efforts together, talk to your congressman, go visit your local mayors/townfolk, and get the appropriate number of states and votes to change/amend to the constitution whatever it is that you seek. Then they can rule on that part of the law appropriately. The case here in Florida revolves around privacy and everyone is expected to have privacy so maybe someone can link some constitutional writings that support appropriate search and seizure that is currently in the law.
The problem with banning gay marriage is the ideal of equal protection under the law, which is expressed in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.
States and the Federal Government pass laws that give tax benefits and other privileges to married couples, and then pass laws that restrict people from marrying based on sex.
This fundamentally wrong. It's enshrined in the 14th Amendment that "no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
There are only two ways around this. Remove laws that give privileges to married couples or make gay marriage legal.
You can't have a situation where your laws grant privileges to a specific group of people and not others. It is fundamentally WRONG.
While marriage is not specifically mentioned, Article 4, section 1 states, "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." This is what allows a couple to be married in Kansas, then move to Ohio, and not have to remarry, or otherwise register their marriage. Many are arguing that states that fail to recognize the marriage of a gay couple in another state, are in violation of this rule.
Lots of things aren't mentioned in the Constitution. This is why we have the 9th Amendment which makes it CRYSTAL CLEAR that the Constitution does not contain an enumeration of the rights of the people, and that not listing a right means nothing about whether or not such a right exists.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Also, marriage != religion.
Ahh, yes. Sanctity of marriage when you need it, marriage != religion when you don't. It must be nice to be able to flip flop to whatever position is suitable for you in any situation.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
"Should civil rights be defined differently for each state?"
Absolutely not. No state should be able to withhold civil rights. Especially when other states grant full rights. Further, Civil Rights shouldn't be up for ballot measures or public vote. If Jim Crow laws and black Civil Rights had been up for public vote, we wouldn't be where we are now. We would still be segregated. In case many forget, the government had to send in the military to enforce school de-segregation. And I fully support that. No state or city or any sort of municipality should have any right to deny civil rights. And if it takes the military to force it, then so be it. I want to see the day the military is sent to enforce equal marriage rights. Then, perhaps people will understand that we are in a Civil Rights battle that is no different from that of the 1960s.
And apparently the poster that you are replying to doesn't understand how the US Constitution works.
States can makes what laws they like, as long as they don't interfere with Federal law, or the US Constitution. Put simply, a state cannot make a law that violates Federal Law. And the SCOTUS has the authority, granted by the US Constitution, to rule on such matters.
The constition also makes it crystal clear that the power of the Federal government is EXTREMELY limited, yet that hasn't stopped them.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Slavery was legal because some states said so; we had to fight a bloody war to make the point that it was not. States are not independent. Get over it. The state's rights thing has been invoked in slavery/gay-sex-crime/keep-the-former-slaves-out-of-our-schools/miscegenation/jesus-is-king/we-can-marry-kids case for over a hundred fifty years. No matter how many times the Confederacy trots this out, we will slap it down.
Marriage was, is, and will be a government-controlled institution. You aren't married by the power of Jesus, but by the power vested by the State in the justice of the peace, or minister, or druid. And there was marriage long before we invented gods.
there is no separation of state and religion. there is no such clause. not even the words "separation", "church" or "state".
I see you are one of those people that pretends that the Establishment clause does not exist:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;. . .
The text in the Constitution says that Congress must remain neutral when it comes to all religions. Thus separation.
the supreme court redefined what the meaning of the first amendment even means in that regard and had to look to a document outside of the confines of the constitution to even have something to go by(and they even got the intent of this phrase wrong).
The words are quite evident if you bother to read them.
Even so, the document or paragraph by Jefferson regarding "separation of church & state" referred to a state Church - whereas all of Great Britain was under one denomination and they did not want that for American was one of the main reasons why they fled their old country to begin with.
Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom which explicitly states: "Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced". Funny, I didn't see how "any" == Anglican Church.
That wall must be kept high and impregnable." is the quote from the court in 1947 not taking into account the whole context of Jeffersons letter but only a small phrase for which they would coin all their rulings against, asserting for themselves what the Founders wanted without taking the full letter and context into consideration. Since then people have been programmed to believe that this phrase is in the constitution which it is not.
The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom was ratified in 1786. The Bill of Rights was ratified after that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's the only logical point. I'm sick of the whole gay marriage issue. I could give a fuck one way or another since marriage is largely just a joke nowadays anyway. People fall madly in love, promise never to love another then find "the real love of their life" and move on. Rinse, repeat. 4 or 5 times isn't unusual. It's a joke why not let the queers in on it. That pretty much is the icing on top.
The thing is, the Full Faith and Credit clause goes on to say
"And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."
which IMO makes the Defense of Marriage Act (which says that certain acts have no effect whatsoever) constitutional though ill-advised.