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Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

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Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#31

Post by gr3yh47 »

trose wrote: post #19
bruceb wrote: post #2

One goes against us (Aereo), one goes for us today. The reasoning for this decision is pretty easy to understand and only takes a minute or so to read the first two pages.

Honestly, Aereo had it coming. You can't just take someone else's content and stream it to other people for profit. I know it was a great service and we all enjoyed it but I'm not going to sit around and pretend what they were doing was legal. If the "victim" of their service was anything else besides the big nasty cable companies I dont think anyone would be singing their praises.

they were providing rental antennas and dvr for free over the air programming, that's a good service for many and there's no reason to think they can't do that

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#32

Post by tanderson11 »

trose wrote: post #19
bruceb wrote: post #2

One goes against us (Aereo), one goes for us today. The reasoning for this decision is pretty easy to understand and only takes a minute or so to read the first two pages.

Honestly, Aereo had it coming. You can't just take someone else's content and stream it to other people for profit. I know it was a great service and we all enjoyed it but I'm not going to sit around and pretend what they were doing was legal. If the "victim" of their service was anything else besides the big nasty cable companies I dont think anyone would be singing their praises.

Your comment misses the point of much of the dissent revolving around the Supreme Court's decision. Aereo may very well have secondary liability for copyright infringement enabled by its services, but that was not the question brought before the court.

The question brought to the court was whether or not Aero has direct liability for copyright infringement. This direct liability is only found if Aero "volitionally" "performs" copyrighted material.

The opinion of the court uses a "looks-like-cable-TV" justification for its treatment of Aero, as Scalia (dissenting) notes:

>"The injury claimed is not violation of a law that says operations similar to cable TV are subject to copyright liability, but violation of §106(4) of the Copyright Act. And whatever soothing reasoning the Court uses to reach its result (“this looks like cable TV”), the consequence of its holding is that someone who implements this technology “perform[s]” under that provision. That greatly disrupts settled jurisprudence which, before today, applied the straightforward, bright-line test of volitional conduct directed at the copyrighted work."

Whether or not Aero has secondary liability does not matter; the Supreme Court's vague ruling destabilizes existing jurisprudence and eliminates a concrete test in favour of the immaterial "looks-like-cable-TV" criterion.

EDIT: formatting.

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#33

Post by endersshadow »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #3

The loss of Aereo sucks, but this is a much heavier positive ruling. I wonder if this extends to the NSA's warrantless collection and to what extent.

This portion of the ruling would be interesting to see used:

"We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime...Privacy comes at a cost."

Roberts looked squarely into the "police efficiency" argument and shot it dead. This was a remarkably scathing opinion of law enforcement's methods w/r/t cell phones. I wonder if we'll see this used as part of the broader challenge to the NSA. The EFF was just gifted an incredible opinion to strengthen their case(s).

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#34

Post by joshlegs »

bilbo0s wrote: post #12
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #9

A great decision, IMO, and the only sane decision for e.g. traffic stops (a place where cell phone searches should never have been considered legal). It probably won't alter things appreciably for somebody who is being arrested, though. I can't imagine that warrant will be hard to get if the police have enough on you to put you in cuffs.

To be perfectly frank... They don't even need that much at the rate most warrants are sworn out.

e.g. "a confidential source" that we saw on here yesterday.

in any case, it's good to see this decision. perhaps it's the beginning of the legal system recognizing that electronic data is private information and should be protected.

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#35

Post by belovedeagle »

4k wrote: post #14

Warrentless cellphone searches are reasonable if only it falls within a specific exception to Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. See Kentucky vs King. I looked up Kentucky vs King on wiki. TL;DR warrantless searches conducted in police-created exigent circumstances [0] do not violate the Fourth Amendment so long as the police did not create the exigency by violating or threatening to violate the Fourth Amendment…

I only read the opinion summary and the concurrence, but from the summary:

> And, at least as to remote wiping, law enforcement currently has some technologies of its own for combatting the loss of evidence.

And from the rest, once the officers have removed the phone from your person, there's no longer a danger of you wiping it. Of course, I don't want to suggest in the least way that officers will actually /follow/ this guideline, and that lower courts will uphold it, but there you go.

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#36

Post by sillysaurus3 »

joshlegs wrote: post #34
bilbo0s wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be perfectly frank... They don't even need that much at the rate most warrants are sworn out.

e.g. "a confidential source" that we saw on here yesterday. in any case, it's good to see this decision. perhaps it's the beginning of the legal system recognizing that electronic data is private information and should be protected.

Would you link to the source you're referring to?

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#37

Post by dan_bk »

acangiano wrote: post #6

This passage is just beautiful: "Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to t…

Why would the same not apply to the Internet cables the NSA directly taps all over the World?

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#38

Post by sramsay »

nknighthb wrote: post #30
dragonwriter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what the word "proverbial" means, which might be worrying, were you, rather than John Roberts, the Chief Justice. There's plenty of things that bug me about John Roberts being CJ, but your complaint isn't one of them.

If I were a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it'd certainly be worrying to me that an Associate Professor of English at my school doesn't understand the word "proverbial".

I was, um, joking.

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#39

Post by [deleted] »

nknighthb wrote: post #30
dragonwriter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what the word "proverbial" means, which might be worrying, were you, rather than John Roberts, the Chief Justice. There's plenty of things that bug me about John Roberts being CJ, but your complaint isn't one of them.

If I were a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it'd certainly be worrying to me that an Associate Professor of English at my school doesn't understand the word "proverbial".

[deleted]

Re: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf]

#40

Post by higherpurpose »

I haven't read the ruling yet, but it does include the fact that "collection" of the data without "search" is also illegal - right? Otherwise it doesn't change the mass surveillance situation much, and not that it's not illegal, because the Constitution does say "seizures", too, but I just want it to be clearly said by the Supreme Court so there's no doubt or room for "secret interpretations".
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