Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:32 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #117

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…

This raises the interesting question of whether you can have an app that detects (say by GPS) that you have been taken to a police station and auto-deletes the contents of your phone without breaking laws governing destruction of evidence.

I think a better way would be to setup an MDM profile that will automatically wipe devices that have been offline for a few days.

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

#122

Post by rl3 » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/25/justice/supreme-court-cell-pho...

Ellen Canale, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agency would work with law enforcement to ensure "full compliance" with the decision.

"We will make use of whatever technology is available to preserve evidence on cell phones while seeking a warrant, and we will assist our agents in determining when exigent circumstances or another applicable exception to the warrant requirement will permit them to search the phone immediately without a warrant," Canale said.

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

#123

Post by ScottBurson » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:04 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #107

jonstewart wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple: the NSA isn't a law enforcement agency. It's not presenting evidence in court.

A bit off topic, but your comment did lead me to think that there may be a alternative way to curb NSA civil liberties abuses: treat it like an island. Right now, one of the biggest problems with the NSA for civil liberties is that it routinely cooperates with other domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and local law enforcement. With this is mind, we may also want to consider pushing for laws that isolat…

Yes, I agree, this might be a workable solution to satisfy both civil libertarians and those who think the NSA should be permitted all the access it wants.

One could even argue that the Posse Comitatus Act already mandates such a wall.

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

#124

Post by Zikes » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:07 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #117

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…

This raises the interesting question of whether you can have an app that detects (say by GPS) that you have been taken to a police station and auto-deletes the contents of your phone without breaking laws governing destruction of evidence.

Too many edge cases, what if you're just there to pay a parking fine?

I think good old device encryption is the way to go. Only a warrant can make you provide the password for them to access your phone, and even then you could withhold it for whatever reason (though not without consequence).

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

#125

Post by andrewla » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #119

dragonwriter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therein lies IMO one of the big issues with US justice: the law is interpreted literally. But the aim of the original law (what it attempted to protect or achieve, i.e. the citizens' privacy) is not really deemed relevant. In the US legal system, the intent of the law is considered quite relevant in the application of the law.

By some judges, not by others. If you adhere to a strict textualism of the sort favored by Justice Scalia, intent is a nice frame for the picture, but needs to be epressed operationally, eg Justice Scalia has little time for quotations from the Congressional record about what lawmakers aimed to achieve, and prefers to focus on the text of the law that was passed rather than the goal that was intended to be achieved.…

Scalia's textualism is more nuanced. When we say something like "what the lawmakers aimed to achieve", there is an implicit assumption that all lawmakers agreed with the intent of the legislation. But what they vote on is the text of the legislation, not the intent.

So while there might be a committee of 14 congressmen that intend a law to act a certain way, there is a larger group that then proceeds to debate and enact the law, that may not share that intent, but may share the intent as codified in the law, which may be narrower or broader than the intent of the people who wrote the legislation itself.

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

#126

Post by nathan_long » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:09 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #24

miked wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alito concurring...That's very interesting language coming from conservative Chief Justice Roberts. Your implication seems to be that conservatives are the ones pushing weak privacy laws. I'll grant that many conservatives have been weak on privacy protection, which is one of the reasons that I'm a libertarian. But the primary parties arguing here for nearly unlimited cell phone search were "The Obama administratio…

That's not my implication at all. My point is simply that it's rare, for obvious reasons, for conservatives to invoke changes in the world as justification for, well anything.

"Conservative" generally means "skeptical of change". So it depends on how you look at it. I'd call myself conservative, and I want to conserve my 4th Amendment rights as I move from carrying papers to carrying digital data.

So you can say "the world has changed and now we have to protect cell phones" to say it's a progressive position, or "people still carry information and the government still can't search it without a warrant" to say it's a conservative one.

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

#127

Post by Terr_ » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

ChrisBland wrote: post #103

IgorPartola wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't get the distinction in the comparison. Let me lay out a simple example: a. I hold a picture on my mobile phone. I transmit this picture using the phone's built in radio to a friend of mine. b. I hold a picture on my laptop. I transmit the picture to a friend using my internet connection provided by my ISP. I get that the government cannot access my phone and pull the picture from it (that would be a w…

I think one of the main distinctions that people fail to make in this discussion is that in these cases, the evidence of the warrantless search was entered against them in a court of law. They needed a warrant to view the phone data and then to use that as evidence against you, in this case they said the search was illegal so all fruit of the poisonous tree could not be introduced at trial. While I disagree with what…

> While I disagree with what the nsa is doing, they are not using the evidence obtained illegally against you

Except they did, by passing it to other agencies and then falsifying their chain of investigation through "parallel construction".

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

#128

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:24 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #120

anigbrowl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This raises the interesting question of whether you can have an app that detects (say by GPS) that you have been taken to a police station and auto-deletes the contents of your phone without breaking laws governing destruction of evidence.

I'm not familiar with the intricacies of what constitutes destruction of evidence, but wouldn't that still qualify? I mean, is flushing cocaine down the toilet destruction of evidence because the cops are kicking down your door or because the act is inherently the destruction of evidence? My point is with my lay understanding of the law, I'm not sure the presence or absence of a warrant has much to do with that class…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by Phlarp » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

gnopgnip wrote: post #93

nathanstitt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warrant's has to also have legal justification, i.e. "reasonable suspicion". If it does not, that's one more thing that can be argued at trial, with the possibility that the search can be thrown out. Of course, the only time that kind of stuff gets vigorously challenged is if the defendant has top-notch legal representation. Public defender's typically would rather just plea-bargain it out. Still, it's great progre…

Any legal defense would rather plea-bargain.

A _good_ legal defense will present these kinds of things during the negotiation. Which could very well be the difference between a plea involving time served and community service or one with a 10 year mandatory minimum.

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

#130

Post by mpyne » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #117

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…

This raises the interesting question of whether you can have an app that detects (say by GPS) that you have been taken to a police station and auto-deletes the contents of your phone without breaking laws governing destruction of evidence.

Somehow I doubt it, at least if the purpose were solely to delete evidence when taken to a police station.

Having an app that deletes evidence when removed from safe areas (e.g. home, work, the commute path, etc.) would probably pass muster though, since there are many purposes for that which would not involve destroying evidence that might pertain to a legal investigation.