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Supreme Court Rules Cell Phones Can't Be Searched Without a Warrant
New submitter CarlThansk (3713681) writes The courts have long debated on if cell phones can be searched during an arrest without a warrant. Today, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest. "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, said the vast amount of data contained on modern cellphones must be protected (PDF) from routine inspection."
Phones may still be searched under limited circumstances (imminent threats), but this looks like a clear win for privacy. Quoting the decision: "We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime. Cell phones have become important tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous criminals. Privacy comes at a cost."
Who is this imposter pretending to be Clarence Thomas?
This is reasonable, as police historically have not needed a warrant if there is an "imminent threat".
However, any genuine "imminent threat" from a cell phone would be an extremely -- and I mean very extremely -- rare circumstance.
(Note for citizens: this is not a good reason to not lock your phone. Police have been known to bend the rules. I would like to see that change, but today you should be careful.)
according to the ruling, which I have read most of, you would have to prove the data on the phone would be an imminent threat, which is impossible to do. They state in the opinion that you can search a phone for psychical threats such as a bomb or a blade hidden in the case, but data on a phone is not an imminent threat, it is just data.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
What don't you believe? That SCOTUS made a good decision for once? Or that you missed First Post by that much?
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
You're almost certainly right that they'll try it, but that's not what it means here. "Imminent" means "in the near future", and the idea is that cops would like to know if you just texted all your buddies to "come to the corner of 5th and Ghetto to kill the pigs arresting you". I can certainly see why police would like to know that and have a legitimate reason to.
However, there's no way to ask a phone (slash-camera slash-Rolodex (SCOTUS's words!)), "hey, can you give me just the information I need to know in the next 5 minutes and keep everything else safe for its owner?". Cops could use that as an excuse to get into your phone, and hey, since I'm already in here, let's see what this little miscreant was posting on Facebook... SCOTUS ruled that this is a flimsy excuse that doesn't justify the privacy abuses that police had committed, and so dismissed it explicitly as not being sufficient cause to invade your personal information repo.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
no problemo. they will just buy the self-same info from facebook or amazon and it's "affiliates" (anyone with money).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think that we are getting deeper into the woods and Supreme Court can actually keep two opposing concepts in mind at the time and be ok with it. Supreme court decision covers police and says that police cannot spy on cellphone owners. Can somebody explain, if, then NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, TSA, DIA and thousands of other agencies can continue spying? What if policeman will call his colleague at DEA, FBI and will ask for data: happens all the times. What about the usual process, where DIA employee working with NSA data while spying on US people will give a tip to local police to check "that person". Also, does the ruling cover only cellphones? What about the rest of devices, such as desktops, tablets etc. Ruling says that other devices are covered. The outcome is that spying and collection will continue as it has continued. People who have privacy concerns will be pacified with this ruling. Finest example of doublespeak and doublethink.
I kind of do.
It's pretty obvious that the data on cell phones is "papers" from the fourth amendment, and the phones themselves are "effects".
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The driver was an imminent threat to the general prublic by driving with undue care and attention or by operrerating an usafe vehicle (Ie burn tout head light, tail light, etc...).
No. That doesn't make sense.
However, they will still abuse citizens by simply claiming they had probable cause to search the phone. Just like they can pull you over, bring in a dog for no reason, claim the dog "alerted" on your car and then search it anyway. It's just a matter of a few DA's to come up with something that will pass some friendly judges scrutiny, do it a few times and only bring those cases to those friendly judges to avoid getting an unfavorable ruling... then later start using it on everyone and when questioned on it they'll claim "There is a set precede in law, used in dozens of cases, that shows this is a legitimate and justifiable search" and viola.
Think about DUI checkpoints. Clearly unconstitutional, but they convict people using them every day.
Obvious, except to the government lawyers and/or attorneys general who issue the guidance which says "nah, we can do anything we want".
Because they've been arguing that this isn't your "papers and effects", and therefore they could whatever they pleased.
Because government and law enforcement have mostly been focusing on how to ignore the Constitution and claim it doesn't apply.
It's simply too inconvenient for them to have to follow all of these pesky laws.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Now if we can just add language to somehow apply this to apps...
A commercial entity being allowed to download all of the info out of my smart phone makes me no less comfortable than the government doing it. Especially when it's through a trojan horse such as Candy Crush or Angry Birds.
This is the only reason I root my Android. If reasonable restrictions were in place, I wouldn't need to. But until the advertising giant and information harvester that writes the OS has a change of heart, I will continue to restrict said access through any means necessary.
That's essentially an extension of stop-and-frisk, which holds they can search you sans warrant to look for weapons or other items that may pose a danger to the officer. Other contraband discovered in the course of this search may be admissible, if the nature of such contraband was "readily apparent" to the officer, but it's not supposed to be license to go fishing.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is great unless you're one of the 2/3 of people that live within 100 miles of the border in a "constitution exempt" zone.
They'll just go ahead and search your phone anyway, by whatever means they have. They won't be able to submit what they find as evidence . . . until they get a search warrant afterwards.
They can still use anything they find as part of their investigations . . . to get other evidence by legal means, which they then can submit to a judge for a warrant.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
More police just adds more layers in which they can game the system.
What needs to happen is a permanent recording of all interactions with people so they can't just get together and decide what their story will be.
We need to fix the system so that it has an inherent "we can't just take you at your word" element in it. Because time after time the police have demonstrated they neither know, nor care about, the actual law.
Sure, many of them may be honest. But if we just assume that enough of them aren't, and set up a system which shows what really happened ... then maybe we might be better off.
I have lost count of the number of times I've seen stories in which the police collectively say "this is what happened", and when someone's cell phone video comes up they're proven to have been lying. And then their own internal review boards clear them of any wrong doing.
There needs to be more serious penalties for when police flout the law. And there needs to be more capturing of what actually happened, because when they do flout the law, the band together to hide that fact.
Increasingly, I think we need to apply the same thing to government. Because we can't trust them to follow the law either.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
During his confirmation hearings, Ted Kennedy noted that Sam Alito "never saw a police search he didn't like."
Alito wrote up his own opinion on this decision, not-quite agreeing with the rest of the bench, but still voting against this particular search. I guess there's a first for everything.
Think about DUI checkpoints. Clearly unconstitutional
Says who? The precedent suggests otherwise. I don't really care for the concept myself, but I can recognize a compelling state interest when I see one. You're perfectly free to respond to every single question asked at a checkpoint with "I don't talk to the police, may I leave now?" and there's not a damned thing they can do about it, unless of course you're under the influence.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yup, he/she is, and no, it won't apply, since screening at the border is a different animal.
Now all the US needs is a similar commonsense approach at border crossings.
You're assuming our government wants to fix the problem. They don't. The border issue is good for everyone involved with the exception of the immigrants.
Umm .. you do know that I am talking about the confiscation and inspection of electronics in your possession as you legally cross a border into the US?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It would take a Constitutional amendment, not just a law.
From the looks of it it seems that this ruling only applies to the data stored on phones, not information passing over the network. This doesn't apply to the mass surveillance of communications and it doesn't mean that the FISA courts aren't going to blanket approve every single warrant like they have been for the past several years. All this really means is the police can't search your phone when they arrest you or during a stop to gather evidence against without first getting a warrant. While this is definitely a step in the right direction it isn't nearly as wide reaching as you would think.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Then there would be an imminent threat of death for the victim, allowing cops to search the phone for recent calls.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Or, they'll go with their new favorite toy ... illegally search your phone, and then go through the bullshit of parallel construction.
And then it would be "we got an anonymous tip, and confirmed it when we checked his cell phone", which will be used to cover up "we illegally searched his phone, and then called in our own tip".
And none of them will be charged with perjury or obstruction of justice.
Until we start seeing police officers charged and jailed for this crap, they'll keep doing it.
The police have become little better than those in banana republics where you have to assume they're all corrupt, because there's enough of them to make assuming the one you've got now is honest is a bad idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The NSA isn't trying to convict in a court of law. What's admissible matters less to them.
However, in this case, the Supreme Court was 8-1, and the opinion amounted to "WTF is wrong with you? Of course you need a warrant, asshat!"
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
What about the Cloud? The great workaround to constitution in the digital age?
May the Maths Be with you!
Hopefully, everybody. Make the information public. Livestream it to the interwebs. Have citizen groups review it. Make review of the content mandatory if there is any dispute. If the police 'accidentally' turned them off or made sure they could't see anything .. throw out the case.
Do anything which opens the process and prevents abuse.
The cops will complain about their privacy and their rights, but using that to ignore ours is not what I'd call a good excuse.
Trusting them blindly clearly isn't working. So you structure the system so it says, "we don't actually trust you, and we don't trust the people who are supposed to be overseeing you".
By the people, for the people. Not whatever the hell we decide we want to do.
How many times have police officers need to be told they have no legal right to confiscate your phone, or force you to delete pictures from it? They obviously don't know or care what the law says. So, we obviously can't trust them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That is the exact argument that justifies a police state. Do you want a society where you can be searched at any time by the police to see if you're guilty of a crime, even when they do not have reasonable suspicion of you committing a crime? You, your parents, your friends, and everyone you know will always be treated as though you're guilty of something, and the police's job is just finding out what that something is.
Eventually, citizens will record everything, and what you are suggesting is going to pass.
If the government can record anywhere, we the people should be recording anywhere.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
There's a danger here though, and that is the existence extraordinary-rendition loophole that allows for people to be taken and held. It's bad enough to be taken to Cuba, but there are other places that are much further off-the-radar where one could be taken without any recourse at all, and worry is that if an agency decides that someone is bad, if the courts won't let them arrest them and charge them conventionally then they might feel they must use extraordinary rendition instead. So, one goes from at least a chance of going through the court system to simply disappearing.
I think that the default needs to be to prosecute terrorists as garden-variety criminals. Terrorists need to be downplayed to the level of spree killer or serial killer, and treated with the same handling. I'd much rather see a special court set up to handle such prosecutions, perhaps overseen in trial by a member of the Surpreme Court and with juries comprised themselves of judges from various courts, where the court isn't "open" so that sensitive information that needs to remain sensitive can be introduced as evidence but can be still held close. Appeal from this court could go right to the Surpreme Court itself, though that might force the presiding justice to recuse himself or herself. Information from such cases could be made public after a certain amount of time that would have to be predetermined, but while a flawed system it would still be better than holding someone in-perpituity on borrowed foreign soil.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Tell that to people in Gitmo, etc., who have NEVER been to court after how many years? Slap on the words 'terrorism' or 'national security' and you'll be lucky if you ever get your day in court.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Simple solution: Require every uniformed officer to wear a Go-Pro (or similar device) with very VERY strict guidelines and harsh punishment for data that "just happens to go missing."
This signature is false.
In various rulings, the net result is the cops (FBI, NSA, SEC, State, County, Local) may not search your phone without a specific individual warrant.
But the NSA is permitted to back collect the information from anyone you ever played a game with on Facebook, including their own avatars they created to "live" overseas to get around this data collection restriction. They also have ones inside WoW and other games like WildFire.
Then they claim the information is "externally collected" and use it anyway.
The UK EU Australia govts do the same thing to their citizens using our data collecting (illegal under data treaties) on them.
Any questions?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Let 'em listen. As long as what they hear can't be used in court, that's 99% of the battle for 99% of the cases.
Then they came for the other 1%, and I did not speak out because I was not part of the other 1% ...
I believe that's where they perform a special ritual (requires 2 cops for best effect.
Cop1: "Did you hear that? What was it?"
Cop2: "I think it's an email screaming for help! We better do a welfare check!"
The problem is a cop does not consider him/herself to be a citizen. They are cops, we are citizens. It's an "us vs them" mentality in which the cops are a privileged class of people who think they are the law and sometimes pretend they are above it. That mentality also leads them to form tight bonds in which they will cover for each other and outright lie about anything to keep their jobs and freedoms. And internal panels for review are just as bad often letting cops off the hook for perjury, assault and outright murder with little more than a slap on the wrist.
If you ask me law enforcement should retrain itself (pipe dream, I know but hopefully not) to see itself as citizens who are tasked with enforcing the law. They are not the law, they are not above it and they are subject to the very law they help enforce as everyone else is. They simply have a job to do though it is a very important one.
Facts don't support your contention r.e. cameras exonerating the cops.
That has been true. When the cops have off buttons.
However the first trail of officer 'always on' cameras resulted in a 60% reduction in officer involved violence before they told anybody but the cops the cameras were on. Think about that; 60% reduction in ass beatings. Only the cops knew they were on camera.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Do read https://www.eff.org/wp/defendi... . ICE and CBP do have the authority to detain you or refuse entry into the country (for non-US citizens), or detain your devices (the last one happens often), if you refuse to give them the password.
The average local police officer isn't getting a FISA warrant, but will instead have to convince a judge that there's probable cause to check out the contents, and will have to tell the judge what they're looking for. Obviously, if there is probable cause, the police should get the search warrant. This decision looks sensible to me. It may be that judges are too free in issuing search warrants, but that's a separate issue. (So's the NSA.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes