HANDS OFF CELLPHONES
No warrant, no search: U.S.
In a strong defence of digital age privacy, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police may not generally search the cellphones of people they arrest without first getting search warrants.
Cellphones are powerful devices unlike anything else police may find on someone they arrest, Chief Justice John Roberts said for the court. Because the phones contain so much information, police must get a warrant before looking through them, Roberts said.
“Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the privacies of life,” Roberts said.
The message to police about what they should do before rummaging through a cellphone’s contents following an arrest is simple. “Get a warrant,” Roberts said.
Last November, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a similar decision, ruling unanimously that there are far more privacy interests at stake when police search computers and mobile phones than when they riffle through cupboards and filing cabinets.
“It is difficult to imagine a more intrusive invasion of privacy than the search of a personal or home computer,” the court said, as they potentially give police “an almost unlimited universe of information.”
The court went on to say it found no distinction between computers and cellphones, which “have capacities that are ... equivalent to those of computers.”
The U.S. Supreme Court chose not to extend earlier rulings that allow police to empty a suspect’s pockets and examine whatever they find to ensure officers’ safety and prevent the destruction of evidence.
The Obama administration and the state of California, defending the cellphone searches, said cellphones should have no greater protection from a search than anything else police find. But the defendants in these cases, backed by civil libertarians, librarians and news media groups, argued that cellphones, especially smartphones, are increasingly powerful computers that can store troves of sensitive personal information.
Authorities concerned about the destruction of evidence can take steps to prevent the remote erasure of a phone’s contents or the activation of encryption, Roberts said. One exception to the warrant requirement left open by the decision is a case in which officers reasonably fear for their safety or the lives of others.
Justice Samuel Alito joined in the judgment, but wrote separately to say he would prefer elected lawmakers, not judges, decide matters of privacy protection in the 21st century.