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The U.S. Supreme Court got it right in ruling today that police must obtain a warrant before searching a suspect’s cellphone.
The decision itself is surprising, coming from a conservative-leaning court that has been quite supportive of police in matters of criminal law and investigations; that the ruling was 9-0 is stunning.
The decision in Riley v. California reversed a ruling by the California Supreme Court, which had said it was OK for police to search an arrestee’s smartphone without a warrant. Attorneys for law enforcement and the Obama administration claimed that searching a smartphone was part of officers’ right to look through a suspect’s wallet and search his pockets. But the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, pointing out that the contents of a suspect’s pockets could pose a danger to officers but the contents of a cellphone could not.
Therefore, “... officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts said. Warrantless searches could be permitted in extraordinary circumstances such as child abductions or bomb threat.
The court allowed that the need to obtain a warrant could slow down police officers a bit, but this is an acceptable price to protect citizens’ privacy.
“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cellphone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple: Get a warrant,” Roberts said.
“With all they contain and all they may reveal, (smartphones) hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life,’” the chief justice said. “The fact that technology now allows and individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.”
Indeed.
A year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it is legal for police to take DNA samples from people they arrest without getting a warrant. The Los Angeles News Group editorial board agreed with that decision, but personally I do not.
My position is that one’s DNA contains even more information about him or her than a smartphone possibly can — information that future technologies will be able to exploit in ways we can’t imagine at present. Having that information seized from someone who has not been convicted of a crime and stored in a nationwide government database is, to me, a violation of the Fourth Amendment and much too Big Brothery.
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