{"id":4189,"date":"2014-06-25T18:07:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T01:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2014-06-26T16:04:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T23:04:10","slug":"supreme-court-cops-need-warrant-can-rummage-cell-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=4189","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court: Cops Need a Warrant Before They Can Rummage Through Cell Phones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Civil_Rights_Banner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If \u00a0police want to rummage through a person’s cell phone and look at his wedding or family photographs; find out his doctors appointments; read his private emails or texts to friends and foes; gain access to work or doctors’ appointments or perhaps, get the list of personal contacts and \u00a0memos – they need to get a warrant.<\/p>\n

Citing the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures in its opinion,\u00a0the U.S. Supreme Court<\/strong>\u00a0send a loud message to law enforcement on Wednesday with its unanimous decision that cell phone searches require a warrant. \u00a0Also the justices offered solutions to law enforcement concerns on how to keep defendants in custody from erasing cell phone data.<\/p>\n

Before today’s decision, \u00a0cell phones were fair game for police to search after an arrest. The government could get your digital data that could include videos and information on where a person shops or the places a person visits.<\/p>\n

The decision sets up privacy rights in the digital age that include tablets and laptop computers, according to a story in the New York Times.<\/a><\/p>\n

While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, the New York Times story stated that \u00a0its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies, the Times stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a bold opinion,\u201d Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University told the New York Times. \u201cIt is the first computer-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can\u2019t apply the old rules anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its \u00a038-page opinion,<\/a> the justices even offered simple solutions<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court Justices pointed to the obvious to underscore their decision about the difference between going through a person’s wallet and gleaning for digital data in a cell phone.<\/p>\n

“Cell phones differ in both quantitative and qualitative sense from other objects that might be carried on an arrested person. \u00a0Notably, modern cell phones have an immense storage capacity. \u00a0Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and generally constituted only a narrow intrusion of privacy.” \u00a0 the justices stated.<\/p>\n

Adding, “But cell phones can store millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures or hundreds of videos. This has interrelated privacy consequences.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here are more excerpts from today’s Riley v. California, Supreme Court decision:<\/strong><\/p>\n