Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
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Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#2To make sure you aren't carrying any top-secret files to the airport of course, I mean terrorism...
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#3Let's all remember this kind of thing the next time we are inspired by a candidate's promises or rhetoric.
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#4I get the argument that data I store on the Cloud is open to interpretation given the 3rd party (if I give Google the right to look at my data, then it is unreasonable for me to expect privacy on par with a physical drive in my possession), but data stored on my cell (a physical piece of equipment in my possession)? WTF?
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#5Yeah, that'll never be abused...
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#6Let's all remember this kind of thing the next time we are inspired by a candidate's promises or rhetoric.
If we all stop having children, then there will be less inspired youth willing to buy any candidate's pack of lies.
And the world will be full of crotchety old bastards like myself. Yay!
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#7It's an interesting question. I think the specific circumstances described in the article, where the police looked in the suspect's phone to find his home address is arguably not a bad search. But as they point out in the article, how far can you take it? Can you look up a person's recent contacts? His browser history? His "downloads" folder? His emails?
It seems like a very small step from looking up the last few people he called to going through all his emails...
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#8It is interesting to consider what the implications of this would be. Does this mean the police would be able to open the Facebook app on my iPhone, and browse my profile as well as all my friends'? Including all wall posts, messages, photos, etc? Technically, none of this is stored on the phone itself.
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#9Careful about the "warrantless" here. It's true, it's a warrantless search, and don't think I'm saying that's an illegitimate concern. However:
The police already have broad authority to search you and your immediate person incident to an arrest. If this is news to you, you really want to read up on it. This is one of the big things that makes a formal arrest different from mere detention, and one of the reasons the ACLU guides and things like that instruct you to clearly ask if you're "under arrest".
All the DoJ is saying here is that a cellphone is, like your pockets and your bags, a legitimate target of a search incident to arrest. There's apparently a circuit split on the issue. There are other things that aren't legit incident to arrest; for instance, certain kinds of car searches aren't lawful solely because of arrest (trunks can be searched if cars are impounded, but only for "inventory", and can't be searched IIRC if the car isn't impounded; similarly, being arrested outside won't give the police the automatic authority to search your house).
Re: Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
#10I prefer that police have less power than more power. That being said, this is how a system of checks and balances should work.
I'm hoping the supreme court says no but if they say yes, I am at least happy that the correct process was used rather than police continue to search phones while waiting for a supreme court decision.