So, every app, every eBook, every email, every everything on your iPhone is now open to the cops if they arrest you, even if they arrest you on phony charges just just to look through your phone? Sure, the arrest gets tossed, but they now have your data.
The California Supreme Court allowed police Monday to search arrestees’ cell phones without a warrant, saying defendants lose their privacy rights for any items they’re carrying when taken into custody. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents, “this loss of privacy allows police not only to seize anything of importance they find on the arrestee’s body … but also to open and examine what they find,” the state court said in a 5-2 ruling.
The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, relied on decisions in the 1970s by the nation’s high court upholding searches of cigarette packages and clothing that officers seized during an arrest and examined later without seeking a warrant from a judge.
The dissenting justices said those rulings shouldn’t be extended to modern cell phones that can store huge amounts of data.
Monday’s decision allows police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person,” said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, joined in dissent by Justice Carlos Moreno.
[...]
“This has an impact on the day-to-day jobs of police officers, what kind of searches they can conduct without a warrant when they arrest someone,” she said. “It takes it into the realm of new technology.” [...] Although the court has never ruled on police searches of cell phones, Wilson argued that it has signaled approval by allowing officers to examine the contents of arrestees’ wallets without a warrant.
Those damn liberal courts in California, always on the side of the police!
a) You have the right to remain silent. If your phone is locked, they can not compel you to unlock it. A full judge might be able to, but the cop on the street certainly can’t.
b) On your laptop, if you have something to hide you should be using Truecrypt. You can have double hidden data partitions with plausible deniability, and you can even have double hidden OS partitions, again with plausible deniability.
c) iPhone and Android support native encryption of system data. Windows Phone 7 includes support for AES, HMACSHA1, HMACSHA256, Rfc2898DeriveBytes, SHA1 and SHA256 at a data and application level, but the app must be written to use those encryption models, the phone itself can’t be encrypted right now.
#41 Awake
All mobile apps I write now use AES encryption and my drives are encrypted. However I doubt this would solve the warrantless search problem.
Grandpa makes a good point. Choose your data storage wisely. Some companies like Rackspace are quite good and have an explicit privacy policy.
#38–Hey Luc==you came back. Bravo. and thanks for the compliment. Even a troll needs a little sugar from time to time.
1. Look at the reply you wrote to me (#18), look at how you assume guilt. What if the individual is NOT guilty? An arrest does not prove guilt. That’s why proper trials exist. /// Well I made a pass at that didn’t I. The “good guy” example? There is no guilt or not guilty issue at the point of arrest. At the point of arrest the issue is “reasonable basis” so I don’t know exactly what has your motor running. If the arrest was not valid then any incriminating evidence on the phone/computer would be unusable as fruit from the poisonous tree of the false arrest. Some/Many/ME argue THAT result is wrong. Guilty people should be punished. But I let majority rule. This “should” answer your concern. Think about it. Ask again if desired. The issue is thorny and multi-branched.
2–Even if they are guilty, proper punishment must be ruled by the appropriate court, not by underpaid thugs with badges and uniforms. /// Yes and here you are confusing the arrest standard with the trial standard.
3– Giving cops the power to rummage through anyone’s private information makes room for plenty of abuse. /// Only when pursuant to a lawful arrest ((as oppossed to a lawful stop)) is a HUGE restriction.
4–It already happens under current law, let’s not give them even more power. Many cops are dishonest, corrupt or just plain stupid. /// I don’t know the percentage. Always sad when the cops are no better than the citizens.
5–Some of them will blabber at the bar after work. They must not be given access to private information willy-nilly. /// Of course. Why do you “care” what any strangers says to some other stranger about you even if it is true or false? Rather girly.
6–Some of them will even make stuff up or use privileged information just because they have a beef with the suspect. Some idiots with badges think they are the law and can dish out whatever punishment they see fit. A lot of shit is going to happen with this new law. /// I doubt it.
This is all obvious. You’re a troll. /// The main point of my post was for all of us to MODIFY OUR BEHAVIOR AND EXPECTATIONS with this clear expression of the law. You know reality—its what hits you in the nose when you want to think nothing is there.
Make reality your friend.
Yea, veerily.
#14
So, cops arrest a bad guy and his plans to blow up the local bank are on his phone/computer in plain view for anyone looking at it. If cops search pursuit to a lawful arrest this crime is found out and prevented. If not, innocent people die.
Why stop there? Why not allow police to search your home without a warrant? After all, if you are innocent, you would only endure a “small” invasion of privacy but if its a bad guy, they’ll have all kinds of things to find. Think how many could be saved! Where does it stop? You might as well have said that a kitten dies if the cops can’t search your cell phone.
#35–Chris, and foobar—see? And Thomas doesn’t have much of a sense of humor either. Very stiff one that Thomas. I post mainly to give my more appropriate nom de flame to this thread.
Oh Bobbo, so many words, so little meaning. A judge who swears to uphold the constitution and then goes ahead and destroys a constitutionally protected right is by definition corrupted. Like warrantless wiretaps, uncharged detention and refusal to allow legal council, this is just another banana peel on the slippery slope that leads to your banana republic.
“Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither”,,,, Homer Simpson.
#46–Tick==I agree your other examples are much more egregious than the one subject here.
Knowledge is power though, if you keep your eyes open. I like unfair laws that I can totally protect myself from–like this one. And with computers being what they are, isn’t it a good life lesson to be learned early and often NOT TO PUT CONFIDENTIAL STUFF ON YOUR PUTER? I think so.
The law is after all what happens to you whether you like it or not.
Silly Hoomans.
Forgot to include the part in the article where a similar case was shot down in Ohio Supreme Court, meaning this will probably end up in U.S. Supreme Court.
#37
No.
I agree with #46: “so many words, so little meaning”.
It is okay that you occasionally get bitchy/hostile, and we understand that this is separate from your determined efforts to educate the masses.
My problem is that you post screens full of junk, where you mostly quote someone else.
If I go into detail it is because I am nailing someone to the wall. Like now.
You have ‘tude, but when was the last time you posted honest suggestions about a real world problem?
I’d say never.
This is nothing more than the continued use of “Search Incident to a Lawful Arrest” idea that’s been long standing. A person and his/her surrounding can be searched after a person has been LAWFULLY arrested. Arizona v. Gant extends the doctrine to the arrested’s automobile if they had access to it at the time of the search or evidence of the crime may be found therein.
Simple. Stay away from California.
There. Problem solved.
Love how liberals worship the Constitution when the issue is police arresting criminals, or Republican politicians violating its provisions. Yet they remain silent when it is liberal politicians who ignore the Constitution. I wonder how this site would have reacted if Speaker Gingrich or Hastert had responded to questions about constitutionality of the Patriot Act with the statement ‘Are you serious?, Are you serious?!’ Or if the new Democratic majority in 2007 had decided they were going to roll back this act and other Bush transgressions, by starting the session with a reading of the Constitution, and National Review responded that this was an empty gesture, representing the Democrats’ vacuous fundamentalism.
An earlier poster pointed this out, but it deserves repeating.
There are 7 members of CA Supreme Court: 2 were appointed by Schwarzenegger (Republican), 2 by Deukmejian (Republican), 2 by Wilson (Republican), and 1 by Davis (Democrat).
The 9th circuit and California are interesting places. I keep thinking the state is going to implode due to a complete lack of funds in the next year or so and perhaps force a federal take over.
woo hoo! california does it again! all evil in this country starts there and then spreads like a virus.
A cell phone, hand held data device, or laptop computer ISN’T a pack of cigs or a plastic baggie. Apparently this “freedom” to search private data files does not extend to the rest of us. Bot even family members. There is a legal case against a man, who peaked thru his wife’s emails, to see if she were cheating on him. Leon Walker may end up serving time in prison, if the Michigan state’s attorney (a woman) can successfully make a case of Computer Hacking and Privacy Violation, stick. But how is this a bit of spousal snoopy a computer crime, and LA Cops searching through portable data device, without a warrant, NOT?!
Especially with that lame ass Tv show “Cheaters” showing spouses and non-cops doing just that for syndicated entertainment. If this proves anything. It proves that lawyers and attorneys are all getting stupider about what the US Constitutional rights are. And apparently, being promoted for it.
Of course, the idiots voting them into office, think everyone else has too much rights, and need to lose them. Main;y half-senile old people voters. I guess the bureaucrats have figured out what age group to seduce, in order to reduce our rights back to the 16th century.
I believe a computer or a cellphone or any other data storage device is an extension of the mind of its owner/user. I believe the police have no more right to search these than they have a right to search your mind and your soul! A person who has access to these devices has indirect access to your mind. I can’t be the only one who thinks this way. When will someone introduce legislation into Congress making it illegal to search these devices?
#52
Unreasonable search and seizure made the the top 5 in the Bill of Rights. You have to respect that. The same way that anti-gun people have to respect the 2nd Amendment.
The bits you don’t like still exist.
Getting a court involved isn’t a bad thing. That is why we have them.
Amusing that drug sniffing dogs alerting on drugs are wrong most of the time:
http://chicagobreakingnews.com/2011/01/tribune-analysis-drug-sniffing-dogs-in-traffic-stops-often-wrong.html
YOU KNOW, the search incident to an arrest is supposedly for “the safety” of the arresting officer. I don’t see how info on a memory device could be a “danger” to the man. I assume the court case in Ohio that ruled opposite to this court case took that approach?
I’m moving back to the privacy side of the argument==not that I care that much. You wanna be safe? Stay home.
Bobbo #59 – I was getting ready tp pick a bone with you since you “most” of the time and the article referenced is titled “often wrong.” After actually finding the article, you “most is upheld.
I though it curious, though, that although they are right only 44% of the time. But right only 27% of the time for Hispanics???
That would be an interesting double blind study. Do Hisanics smell like marijuana or heroin or crack or…?
Are beans considered a drug?