Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf

by justinph • 12 years ago

854 142 12 years ago

bruceb• 12 years ago

One goes against us (Aereo), one goes for us today. The reasoning for this decision is pretty easy to understand and only takes a minute or so to read the first two pages.

lallysingh• 12 years ago

I don't really care much about Aereo. Today's a very good day.

trose• 12 years ago

Honestly, Aereo had it coming. You can't just take someone else's content and stream it to other people for profit. I know it was a great service and we all enjoyed it but I'm not going to sit around and pretend what they were doing was legal. If the "victim" of their service was anything else besides the big nasty cable companies I dont think anyone would be singing their praises.

gr3yh474• 12 years ago

they were providing rental antennas and dvr for free over the air programming, that's a good service for many and there's no reason to think they can't do that

tanderson11• 12 years ago

Your comment misses the point of much of the dissent revolving around the Supreme Court's decision. Aereo may very well have secondary liability for copyright infringement enabled by its services, but that was not the question brought before the court.

The question brought to the court was whether or not Aero has direct liability for copyright infringement. This direct liability is only found if Aero "volitionally" "performs" copyrighted material.

The opinion of the court uses a "looks-like-cable-TV" justification for its treatment of Aero, as Scalia (dissenting) notes:

"The injury claimed is not violation of a law that says operations similar to cable TV are subject to copyright liability, but violation of §106(4) of the Copyright Act. And whatever soothing reasoning the Court uses to reach its result (“this looks like cable TV”), the consequence of its holding is that someone who implements this technology “perform[s]” under that provision. That greatly disrupts settled jurisprudence which, before today, applied the straightforward, bright-line test of volitional conduct directed at the copyrighted work."

Whether or not Aero has secondary liability does not matter; the Supreme Court's vague ruling destabilizes existing jurisprudence and eliminates a concrete test in favour of the immaterial "looks-like-cable-TV" criterion.

EDIT: formatting.

nknighthb3• 12 years ago

Aereo is such a specialized case about such a specialized law for a dying ecosystem that it's hard to care at all.

This case is of actual relevance to people who won't be dead in the next 30 years, and will remain relevant long after.

gr3yh474• 12 years ago

The loss of Aereo sucks, but this is a much heavier positive ruling.

I wonder if this extends to the NSA's warrantless collection and to what extent.

PaulHoule• 12 years ago

Now we need a peer to peer network to watch broadcast TV...

gr3yh474• 12 years ago

I'm sure that will happen in the near future

endersshadow• 12 years ago

This portion of the ruling would be interesting to see used:

"We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime...Privacy comes at a cost."

Roberts looked squarely into the "police efficiency" argument and shot it dead. This was a remarkably scathing opinion of law enforcement's methods w/r/t cell phones. I wonder if we'll see this used as part of the broader challenge to the NSA. The EFF was just gifted an incredible opinion to strengthen their case(s).

ihsw• 12 years ago

Not really. Simply put, LE agencies have always been happy to directly and unambiguously state that combating crime trumps privacy, and now they will do so without hesitation.

It was only a matter of time until the issue of privacy was addressed, and now that it has come to pass then the issue will cause polarization in politics. Whether this is good or bad is up to you.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

It is refreshing to see balance in security/privacy even being mentioned. Sometimes the system actually works, it may take the Supreme Court 15 years to get to it but it actually works.

"Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions..."

Mobile phones and computers are an extension of our brains now and peering into that is more invasive than papers and possessions of the past as they track metadata and behavior that people don't explicitely want to be recorded.

eugenez• 12 years ago

The ruling is not so much about whether they can search a phone without a warrant, but whether the resulting evidence is admissible in court for criminal cases. This will not impact NSA's collection since they have not been using it in court.

malandrew4• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, we still need to address parallel construction which allows the fruits of NSA collection to make its way into domestic law enforcement activities and eventually court cases by indirect means. Parallel construction seems like it should be ruled unconstitutional since you have the right to confront your accuser in court (confrontation clause of the sixth amendment).

Out of curiosity, does anyone here know the current state of legal challenges that aim to stop the practice of parallel construction?

acangiano• 12 years ago

This passage is just beautiful:

"Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get a warrant."

davidrhunt• 12 years ago

Agreed. I also really like this passage later on:

"These cases require us to decide how the search incident to arrest doctrine applies to modern cell phones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy."

dan_bk2• 12 years ago

Why would the same not apply to the Internet cables the NSA directly taps all over the World?

moskie• 12 years ago

Present such a case to the Supreme Court and let's find out. :-)

njharman3• 12 years ago

Two reasons

1) Most people "all over world" are not US citizens and therefor not covered by bill of rights "that our founding fathers fought for" (according to US Government). NSA does (claim) to attempt to identify communications of US citizens it intercepts "overseas" and doesn't look at them without cause.

2) NSA breaks the law. Routinely it would appear.

jonstewart• 12 years ago

Simple: the NSA isn't a law enforcement agency. It's not presenting evidence in court.

rayiner5• 12 years ago

It's generally not useful to quote flowery language like this, because it's not legally operative. It might justify a particular application of the law, but it isn't the law. It is what lawyers call "dicta."

NSA wiretaps differ in two key ways:

1) At least in theory, they are intended to capture foreign communications. People not on U.S. soil who are not U.S. citizens enjoy no protections under our Constitution.

2) This case is based on interpreting the "search incident to arrest" exception to the 4th amendment's warrant requirement. The essence of the exception is that while a warrantless search of someone's person is potentially the most egregious of fourth amendment violations ("person" being specifically enumerated in the text of the 4th amendment), it is nonetheless reasonable in the context of a search incident to arrest,[1] where it might be necessary in order to secure the arrestee, who might have a gun or throw away evidence.

An undersea cable is totally different. It is not a search of anybody's "person" but a search of something containing signals that people are transmitting out into the world. There are four specific things enumerated in the 4th amendment: someone's house, person, papers, and effects. It is clear how searching a phone in someone's pocket is a search both of their person and their effects. But signals transmitted out into the world does not fit neatly into any of those four categories. For example if those signals were transmitted via radio versus fiber optic cable, would it be a "search" to listen in on them?

Now, the language of the case is relevant in that it suggests the Court may be open to a more expansive reading of the 4th amendment when it comes to digital data. There is no way the conservatives on the court would favor extraterritorial application of the Constitution with regards to undersea wiretaps, but it could bode well for challenges to domestic surveillance.

[1] Incidentally, as the opinion notes, the touchstone of the 4th amendment is "reasonableness." This fuzzy word is used explicitly in the Constitution to allow judges to engage in line drawing and balancing the interests of law enforcement with privacy rights.

davidp• 12 years ago

For the same reason that French laws don't apply to German activities outside of France.

poibfueuhrhdjd• 12 years ago

It does, but the Supreme Court can't just issue an advisory opinion on the matter without a case or controversy properly before it.

thucydides3• 12 years ago

I practice law elsewhere, but if I were a lawyer for the NSA, I would be scared after reading this opinion. Some of its reasoning about cell phones is directly applicable to the NSA's reported invasions of Americans' cell phones, indefinite collection of all Americans' call logs, and other matters. Admittedly, the Court tends to defer more to the executive branch in national security contexts than in criminal ones like this, but this opinion is ominous for some of the NSA's surveillance programs. In some places, the opinion's discussion of the inherent intrusiveness of cell phone searches reads very much like Judge Leon's rejection of the NSA's phone metadata collection program from December 2013 (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/JudgeLeonNS...).

And it's ominous for the NSA not just because the reasoning is directly applicable to some NSA programs, it's also that all 9 Justices signed on to an opinion that is more than assertive; it is scathing and sarcastic. E.g., Justice Roberts mocks the government for calling a cell phone search 'materially indistinguishable' from a search of a wallet, purse, or address book. That is "like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon" (p. 17).

This line alone would make an NSA lawyer blanch: "We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime... Privacy comes at a cost" (p. 25). NSA lawyers should be seriously concerned that in the criminal context, the Court unanimously announced a broad rule that the government almost always needs a warrant to search even an arrestee's cell phone - and then blithely dismissed the government's arguments about the after-effects of such a rule, saying, "Oh well, privacy comes at a cost."

baddox• 12 years ago

Those are illegal as well.

yew• 12 years ago

Look at the footnote on page 18 of the opinion for a smidgen of context - it doesn't exactly explicitly mention wiretapping, but "the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information . . . under other circumstances" looks close enough.

Reproduced here:

Because the United States and California agree that these cases involve searches incident to arrest, these cases do not implicate the question whether the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information amounts to a search under other circumstances.

wil421• 12 years ago

Simple answer: you don't have a resonsable expectation of privacy when you send something along the wire. This begs the question is info on the wire the same as sending a letter like generations before us did?

A cellphone is just like a briefcase 30 years ago. It has all my letters (email), work papers (files) and other personal info like an address book.

rdrdss232• 12 years ago

"protection for which the Founders fought"

I rather legal opinions not fall back on founder-worship for their legal basis...

The founders explicitly didn't include any rights in the constitution. The Bill of Rights was begrudgingly added later as a compromise after the constitution was approved by the states.

Furthermore, the right to privacy is really not on the same level as the other rights (where things are more black and white) and the 14th amendment was passed in the 1860s - well after any "founders"

TheCoelacanth• 12 years ago

This case has more to do with the 4th amendment which is part of the Bill of Rights.

anigbrowl2• 12 years ago

This raises the interesting question of whether you can have an app that detects (say by GPS) that you have been taken to a police station and auto-deletes the contents of your phone without breaking laws governing destruction of evidence.

pc86• 12 years ago

I'm not familiar with the intricacies of what constitutes destruction of evidence, but wouldn't that still qualify? I mean, is flushing cocaine down the toilet destruction of evidence because the cops are kicking down your door or because the act is inherently the destruction of evidence?

My point is with my lay understanding of the law, I'm not sure the presence or absence of a warrant has much to do with that classification.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

I think a better way would be to setup an MDM profile that will automatically wipe devices that have been offline for a few days.

Zikes• 12 years ago

Too many edge cases, what if you're just there to pay a parking fine?

I think good old device encryption is the way to go. Only a warrant can make you provide the password for them to access your phone, and even then you could withhold it for whatever reason (though not without consequence).

mpyne4• 12 years ago

Somehow I doubt it, at least if the purpose were solely to delete evidence when taken to a police station.

Having an app that deletes evidence when removed from safe areas (e.g. home, work, the commute path, etc.) would probably pass muster though, since there are many purposes for that which would not involve destroying evidence that might pertain to a legal investigation.

SoftwareMaven• 12 years ago

A great decision, IMO, and the only sane decision for e.g. traffic stops (a place where cell phone searches should never have been considered legal). It probably won't alter things appreciably for somebody who is being arrested, though. I can't imagine that warrant will be hard to get if the police have enough on you to put you in cuffs.

bilbo0s• 12 years ago

To be perfectly frank...

They don't even need that much at the rate most warrants are sworn out.

joshlegs2• 12 years ago

e.g. "a confidential source" that we saw on here yesterday.

in any case, it's good to see this decision. perhaps it's the beginning of the legal system recognizing that electronic data is private information and should be protected.

executor14• 12 years ago

For minor offenses, probably hard to get a warrant to search your phone. At least is another road block.

nathanstitt• 12 years ago

A warrant's has to also have legal justification, i.e. "reasonable suspicion". If it does not, that's one more thing that can be argued at trial, with the possibility that the search can be thrown out.

Of course, the only time that kind of stuff gets vigorously challenged is if the defendant has top-notch legal representation. Public defender's typically would rather just plea-bargain it out.

Still, it's great progress for keeping everything above board as much as possible.

gnopgnip2• 12 years ago

Any legal defense would rather plea-bargain.

malandrew4• 12 years ago

As we start having more and more officers being recorded as they interact with the public, it would be interesting to have a policy of "thinking out loud", where the cops actively are dictating what they are thinking during an encounter so that it is harder to "rewrite history" by presenting an alternative false viewpoint in order to be congruous with the decision to search.

For example, if a cop says "I'm pulling this person over because they have a busted tail light", it's hard for them to make a claim that they thought the person could have been some sort of drug kingpin that needed further searching.". Compare this to "I'm pulling this vehicle over because I just saw it leave a known drug house."

The more we can recreate "presence" at a particular time and place when a crime (by an individual or by a LEO), the more information judges and juries will have to deliberate if suspicion was in fact reasonable, and not based on some arbitrary detail like the race of the person being stopped.

Recreating presence makes it so someone no longer has to depend on top-notch legal council to artfully argue why they are innocent. It should bring down the legal costs of both the prosecution and the defense, while achieving greater justice.

pdkl952• 12 years ago

The value in requiring a warrant isn't about how hard they are to get. While they do server as a certain minimum standard (you have to at least make it sound ok), the big benefit is that they serve as a kind of governor (speed limiter) on the powers we give to police.

It's a lot harder to start a widespread, hard-to-undo abuse of power when you have to ask permission each time you exercise that power. A single abuse of power can be (hypothetically) remedied in court after the fact. Unfortunately, the situation changes when the problem grows to "general warrant" size. At that scale, you tend to need armies, not courts.

Shivetya2• 12 years ago

Just make sure to LOCK your phone upon being stopped by the police. The ruling leaves open the possibility that cops may be allowed to disable locking software if the phone is unlocked and they take it.

So lock your phone immediately. Give remote wipe to a trusted family member if you are truly worried.

pionar3• 12 years ago

How does this ruling leave that possibility open? What does "no search without warrant" leave open to this interpretation? Are you suggesting that police would be able to make an "in plain view" argument on unlocked phones?

rayiner5• 12 years ago

Wow. It was 9-0 (Alito concurring). It's also not a narrowly-written opinion:

Even less sophisticated phones like Wurie’s, which have already faded in popularity since Wurie was arrested in 2007, have been around for less than 15 years. Both phones are based on technology nearly inconceivable just a few decades ago, when Chimel and Robinson were decided.

Slip. Op. at 9.

It's not every day that a conservative Chief Justice writes an opinion predicated on a changing world diminishing the scope of earlier decisions.

miked• 12 years ago

Alito concurring...That's very interesting language coming from conservative Chief Justice Roberts.

Your implication seems to be that conservatives are the ones pushing weak privacy laws. I'll grant that many conservatives have been weak on privacy protection, which is one of the reasons that I'm a libertarian. But the primary parties arguing here for nearly unlimited cell phone search were "The Obama administration and the state of California, both of which sought to justify cell phone searches...".

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/25/supreme-cour...

Not to mention that it was Bill Clinton who was behind the appalling push to expand no-knock raids by police for drug busts.

Even for pot smokers who didn't inhale.

rayiner5• 12 years ago

That's not my implication at all. My point is simply that it's rare, for obvious reasons, for conservatives to invoke changes in the world as justification for, well anything.

nolok• 12 years ago

It seems to be less a democrat/conservative than a executive/legislative thing

Those in power want to expand that power. I'm not in the US and we have the same here.

CWuestefeld• 12 years ago

I think the decision describes how it's not diminishing the scope of previous decisions. What's been decided here isn't contradictory to precedent it all, it just clarifies it with respect to issues that the earlier ones couldn't foresee.

0003• 12 years ago

9-0. Nice.

4k• 12 years ago

   Warrentless cellphone searches are reasonable if only it falls within a specific exception to Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. See Kentucky vs King.

I looked up Kentucky vs King on wiki. TL;DR warrantless searches conducted in police-created exigent circumstances [0] do not violate the Fourth Amendment so long as the police did not create the exigency by violating or threatening to violate the Fourth Amendment.

So, does that mean if police knocked on my door suspecting I might delete sensitive data on my phone before they get to it, are they still allowed to do warrantless search of my cell phone?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_...

EDIT: DO not start fucking downvoting just for the heck of it. May be I didn't understand it well, does that mean I can't ask a question here?

tokipin• 12 years ago

that would seem to be a similar argument to "if someone denies a police officer entry to their home, that means they're suspicious and therefore there is probable cause" which isn't valid

grecy• 12 years ago

And yet we see plenty of videos on YouTube where a person is arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else...

belovedeagle• 12 years ago

I only read the opinion summary and the concurrence, but from the summary:

And, at least as to remote wiping, law enforcement currently has some technologies of its own for combatting the loss of evidence.

And from the rest, once the officers have removed the phone from your person, there's no longer a danger of you wiping it. Of course, I don't want to suggest in the least way that officers will actually /follow/ this guideline, and that lower courts will uphold it, but there you go.

declan7• 12 years ago

Also the officers can presumably stick it in a $19 RF-shielded pouch to avoid a remote wipe by a confederate of the arrestee.

hisabness• 12 years ago

the real issue is that most telcos will hand over whatever information the govs seek. even if the information is inadmissible (which i'm not sure it is), the govs would have all the info they need to put together a case.

sramsay3• 12 years ago

cellphones are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.

Anyone else concerned that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States appears to believe that Mars is an inhabited planet?

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

I don't think you understand what the word "proverbial" means, which might be worrying, were you, rather than John Roberts, the Chief Justice.

There's plenty of things that bug me about John Roberts being CJ, but your complaint isn't one of them.

nknighthb3• 12 years ago

If I were a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it'd certainly be worrying to me that an Associate Professor of English at my school doesn't understand the word "proverbial".

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

I haven't read the ruling yet, but it does include the fact that "collection" of the data without "search" is also illegal - right? Otherwise it doesn't change the mass surveillance situation much, and not that it's not illegal, because the Constitution does say "seizures", too, but I just want it to be clearly said by the Supreme Court so there's no doubt or room for "secret interpretations".

declan7• 12 years ago

Different area of the law. Deals with search incident to arrest. Unrelated to NSA litigation or surveillance authority.

_nullandnull_2• 12 years ago

The title is misleading. It should read "Warrantless cell phones searches illegal for people police arrest".

adventured2• 12 years ago

No the title still works.

Police can't search your cell phone without a warrant.

Police that arrest you can't search your cell phone without a warrant.

_nullandnull_2• 12 years ago

Retort removed. No point arguing semantics with someone who doesn't know how to use a comma.

phkahler2• 12 years ago

How do we reconcile this "Officers may examine the phone’s physical aspects to ensure that it will not be used as a weap on, but the data on the phone can endanger no one." along with the notion that encryption algorithms are considered munitions worthy of export restrictions?

gr3yh474• 12 years ago

"physical aspects"

declan7• 12 years ago

Yep. Also the "munitions" line became false something like 17 years ago when encryption export controls moved from State to Commerce.

geuis• 12 years ago

Not an attorney, of course. Those two things don't tie together I think. Encryption can't make a phone explode, so it's not a munition.

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

With the recognition that the export restrictions are based on potential military application by a nation-state adversary which may require time and other hardware and software to realize and that the permission to search for weapons incident to arrest centers around immediate physical danger to the arresting officer and others from the item itself, so the two things are not concerned with even remotely the same considerations.

phkahler2• 12 years ago

This is the only response to my question that seems solid.

aragot• 12 years ago

along with the notion that encryption algorithms are considered munitions worthy of export restrictions?

Simple: The same way an agent can't open your car trunk even if it may contain one of 1. groceries or 2.war weapons.

declan7• 12 years ago

This is a solid decision that will curb abusive searches and help other Fourth Amendment litigation, including ongoing cases involving warrantless cell phone tracking. (That's because many of the concepts about the importance of mobile devices are true in the tracking context as well.)

But it also shows how long it takes for the legal system to fix these problems. I wrote these articles over 7 years ago about how cops in San Francisco and elsewhere were searching phones a decade ago, and the practice has likely been going on for even longer: http://news.cnet.com/Police-Blotter-Cops-need-warrant-to-sea... http://news.cnet.com/Police-blotter-Cops-OK-to-copy-cell-pho...

This may be a lesson for HN readers trying to solve privacy problems.

Option #1, enacting a new law, tends to be an exercise in futility: California rejected a fix to cell phone searches in 2011, and Congress did nothing on cell phone searches (nor has it enacted a law to fix warrantless email searches or rein in the NSA post-Snowden).

Option #2, relying on the courts, may work, but it may not. It took 10 years to fix cell phone searches, and only after millions of dollars worth of concerted advocacy by EFF, ACLU, etc. And it might have gone the other way: remember the courts have blessed the erosion of Fourth Amendment protections because of the War On Some Politically Unpopular Drugs.

Option #3, creating technology, works as soon as you can deploy it, and is subject to the laws of mathematics rather than whether a SCOTUS justice is a crankypants today when it comes to privacy. Of course the NSA may try to subvert your encryption/anonymizer/etc., but its attempts may fail, and, besides, intelligence agencies already subverted Congress long ago. :)

pdkl952• 12 years ago

Option #4, All of the above.

Many of these issues are both technological problems and political problems. Neglecting either is not a particularly good strategy.

declan7• 12 years ago

Sure, if resources were unlimited. But they're not, so you have to pick and choose.

You're right that option #2 can work: EFF has represented me and a dozen or so other plaintiffs in a case where we won at the Supreme Court, and the ACLU has represented me in two cases. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admit the possibility of winning is real. :)

But if you argue for option #1, history matters: what significant pro-privacy law has Congress enacted in the last 15-20 years? (I can name plenty that have gone in the other direction.)

More to the point, HN readers are more likely to be in a position to pursue option #3. We do have a few lawyers and law students here, but far more engineers, CS students, and programmers.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

I hope people are making it to Alito's partial concurring opinion at the bottom. He goes into more detail about the history of searches and draws a different conclusion about their rightful purpose than the "trilogy" referenced by the majority opinion. He also points out that the ruling actually puts cell phone data in a favored position compared to physical effects, and concludes that while a broad and easy to apply rule is the right decision for the court, a more nuanced set of rules enacted by legislators may be warranted.

Both opinions are great and illuminating reads!

brightsize• 12 years ago

I wonder if this has any implications at all for the seizure and search of phones and other digital devices by border agents? I suspect the answer is "no" of course, since they're not exactly in the justice business like the police in theory are. But they they are (also in theory) subject to SCOTUS decisions AFAIK, and maybe this decision signals a new attitude towards digital device searches in general?

joering22• 12 years ago

uhm, so local sheriffs bought stingray equipment and spent tens of thousands of dollars on equipment they well know is illegal to use, and now with this decision they will just shut it down and stop using it? Okay...

While this is "good news", its nothing more than that: a news. No change at all will happen. Nothing! Your local sheriff is breaking the law. So what? Are you gonna call law enforcement to arrest him? Good luck!

Yes, eventually they may be punished by Congress taking away some of their founds. But I bet they will rather let go some officers, not maintain their cars and guns properly, than stop harassing your privacy. Who knows -- perhaps somewhere they will let a murder slip through cracks just to show how important that technology is to "keep you safe", just like government has been caught times and times again in false flags attacks.

Am I wrong?

Phlarp2• 12 years ago

This ruling was not specific to the use of stingray devices, those are still legal to use if they have the proper warrant. What's illegal with stingrays is lying about where the information came from on the warrant or in a trail. No surprise lying to a court will get you in trouble.

This ruling absolutely will have an impact on the relatively widespread use of those little memory dumping devices that cops love to use in routine arrests and even traffic stops in some states.

joering22• 12 years ago

Just exactly why you believe it will make any dent? With Holter behind steers, why would you think anyone will require any sort of legality or transparity from anyone that works for Government??

rl3• 12 years ago

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/25/justice/supreme-court-cell-pho...

Ellen Canale, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agency would work with law enforcement to ensure "full compliance" with the decision.

"We will make use of whatever technology is available to preserve evidence on cell phones while seeking a warrant, and we will assist our agents in determining when exigent circumstances or another applicable exception to the warrant requirement will permit them to search the phone immediately without a warrant," Canale said.

rdl• 12 years ago

I love it when the legal process works as intended.

vaadu• 12 years ago

How does this affect the TSA at the border when they want to inspect the contents of your laptop or cell phone?

acd• 12 years ago

Does this ruling also affect warrant less laptop searches?

mayneack• 12 years ago

So what happens to everyone that has been arrested and convicted based on this in the past? Are they suddenly able to appeal?

pattisapu• 12 years ago

Wow--in some jurisdictions the whole process of getting a warrant is done remotely anyway:

Recent technological advances similar to those discussed here have, in addition, made the process of obtaining a warrant itself more efficient. See McNeely, 569 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11–12); id., at ___ (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (slip op., at 8) (describing jurisdiction where “police officers can e-mail warrant requests to judges’ iPads [and] judges have signed such warrants and e-mailed them back to officers in less than 15 minutes”).

Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

Related Stories