Can Gov't listen to cellphones without warrant?
By ADAM LIPTAK, NYT, JAN. 17, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a pair of cases about whether the police need a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest, presenting a major test of the meaning of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age.
The court has long allowed warrantless searches in connection with arrests, saying they are justified by the need to find weapons and to prevent the destruction of evidence. The question for the justices in the new cases is whether the potentially vast amounts of data held on smartphones warrant a different approach under the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches.
The lower courts are divided. In one of the cases the court agreed to hear, the federal appeals court in Boston in May threw out evidence gathered after the police there inspected the call log of a drug dealer’s rudimentary flip phone. “Today, many Americans store their most personal ‘papers’ and ‘effects’ in electronic format, on a cellphone, carried on the person,” Judge Norman H. Stahl wrote for a divided three-judge panel of the court.
“That information is, by and large, of a highly personal nature: photographs, videos, written and audio messages (text, email, and voice mail), contacts, calendar appointments, web search and browsing history, purchases, and financial and medical records,” he added.
(More here.)
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a pair of cases about whether the police need a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest, presenting a major test of the meaning of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age.
The court has long allowed warrantless searches in connection with arrests, saying they are justified by the need to find weapons and to prevent the destruction of evidence. The question for the justices in the new cases is whether the potentially vast amounts of data held on smartphones warrant a different approach under the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches.
The lower courts are divided. In one of the cases the court agreed to hear, the federal appeals court in Boston in May threw out evidence gathered after the police there inspected the call log of a drug dealer’s rudimentary flip phone. “Today, many Americans store their most personal ‘papers’ and ‘effects’ in electronic format, on a cellphone, carried on the person,” Judge Norman H. Stahl wrote for a divided three-judge panel of the court.
“That information is, by and large, of a highly personal nature: photographs, videos, written and audio messages (text, email, and voice mail), contacts, calendar appointments, web search and browsing history, purchases, and financial and medical records,” he added.
(More here.)
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