Current Event
More than 90 percent of American adults own a mobile phone, and more than half of the devices are smartphones. But “smartphone” is a misnomer. They are personal computers that happen to include a phone function, and like any computer they can store or wirelessly retrieve enormous amounts of personal information: emails, photos and videos; document files; financial and medical records; and virtually everywhere a person has been.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether law enforcement officers during an arrest may search the contents of a person’s mobile phone without a warrant. The court should recognize that new technologies do not alter basic Fourth Amendment principles, and should require a judicial warrant in such circumstances.
The court is considering the issue in two separate cases. In one, Boston police officers arrested a man on drug charges and seized his flip phone. After seeing an incoming call on the phone’s outer screen, they opened the phone and checked the call log, which led them to an apartment where they found drugs, money and firearms.
In the other case, a San Diego traffic stop turned into a gang investigation after the police seized the driver’s smartphone and found suspicious text messages. Hours later, a detective searched the phone “looking for evidence,” he said, and downloaded “a lot of stuff,” including photos and videos that implicated the driver in gang-related crimes. As a result, the seven-year prison sentence the man originally faced was enhanced to a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life.
The Fourth Amendment requires, as a general rule, that police officers obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” This was a central concern of the framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, who knew well the danger of “general warrants” that allowed government authorities to enter a home and rummage around looking for incriminating evidence.
There are a few narrow
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether law enforcement officers during an arrest may search the contents of a person’s mobile phone without a warrant. The court should recognize that new technologies do not alter basic Fourth Amendment principles, and should require a judicial warrant in such circumstances.
The court is considering the issue in two separate cases. In one, Boston police officers arrested a man on drug charges and seized his flip phone. After seeing an incoming call on the phone’s outer screen, they opened the phone and checked the call log, which led them to an apartment where they found drugs, money and firearms.
In the other case, a San Diego traffic stop turned into a gang investigation after the police seized the driver’s smartphone and found suspicious text messages. Hours later, a detective searched the phone “looking for evidence,” he said, and downloaded “a lot of stuff,” including photos and videos that implicated the driver in gang-related crimes. As a result, the seven-year prison sentence the man originally faced was enhanced to a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life.
The Fourth Amendment requires, as a general rule, that police officers obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” This was a central concern of the framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, who knew well the danger of “general warrants” that allowed government authorities to enter a home and rummage around looking for incriminating evidence.
There are a few narrow