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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]

#141

Post by makmanalp »

rayiner wrote: post #116
PaulAJ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is true, but the Court's language in this case strongly suggests that it would find a similar privacy right in documents held in the cloud independently of cellphones. This is contrary to Smith vs Maryland, which the government uses as justification for gathering metadata, in which it was held that a single phone number could be passed to the police without a warrant because it had already been voluntari…

You're right that the discussion on page 21 of the opinion suggests that the Court would find a privacy right in documents held in the cloud. Indeed, the government seemed to have conceded that point! "The United States concedes that the search incident to arrest exception may not be stretched to cover a search of files accessed remotely—that is, a search of files stored in the cloud." Slip. Op. at 21. Incidentally,…

Interesting ... another interpretation I read was that "The United States" is a party to the case and it's their opinion the court is talking about: The court itself is specifying no opinion on the matter.

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

#143

Post by joering2 »

Phlarp wrote: post #132
joering2 wrote: post #114

uhm, so local sheriffs bought stingray equipment and spent tens of thousands of dollars on equipment they well know is illegal to use, and now with this decision they will just shut it down and stop using it? Okay... While this is "good news", its nothing more than that: a news. No change at all will happen. Nothing! Your local sheriff is breaking the law. So what? Are you gonna call law enforcement to arrest him? Go…

This ruling was not specific to the use of stingray devices, those are still legal to use if they have the proper warrant. What's illegal with stingrays is lying about where the information came from on the warrant or in a trail. No surprise lying to a court will get you in trouble. This ruling absolutely will have an impact on the relatively widespread use of those little memory dumping devices that cops love to use…

Just exactly why you believe it will make any dent? With Holter behind steers, why would you think anyone will require any sort of legality or transparity from anyone that works for Government??

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

#144

Post by _bfhp »

nathan_long wrote: post #126
rayiner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 witho…

"Conservative" refers to the vague party/ideology that more smoothly (than "liberalism", that is) allows for-profit coroprations to co-opt the government to achieve the regulatory situation for maximal wealth accumulation. It refers to nothing else. To pretend otherwise is to further facilitate the maximal wealth accumulation.

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

#145

Post by drawkbox »

endersshadow wrote: post #33
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…

It is refreshing to see balance in security/privacy even being mentioned. Sometimes the system actually works, it may take the Supreme Court 15 years to get to it but it actually works.

"Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions..."

Mobile phones and computers are an extension of our brains now and peering into that is more invasive than papers and possessions of the past as they track metadata and behavior that people don't explicitely want to be recorded.

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

#147

Post by nl »

_bfhp wrote: post #144
nathan_long wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 witho…

"Conservative" refers to the vague party/ideology that more smoothly (than "liberalism", that is) allows for-profit coroprations to co-opt the government to achieve the regulatory situation for maximal wealth accumulation. It refers to nothing else. To pretend otherwise is to further facilitate the maximal wealth accumulation.

Not only is that unhelpful, it's also untrue. It doesn't capture the goals of the tea party movement for example.

It's true the outcomes of conservative ideology are often what you say, but that doesn't make it a goal anymore than the fact that there are welfare cheats makes cheating on welfare a goal of progressive politics.

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

#148

Post by Shivetya »

thucydides wrote: post #102
dan_bk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I practice law elsewhere, but if I were a lawyer for the NSA, I would be scared after reading this opinion. Some of its reasoning about cell phones is directly applicable to the NSA's reported invasions of Americans' cell phones, indefinite collection of all Americans' call logs, and other matters. Admittedly, the Court tends to defer more to the executive branch in national security contexts than in criminal ones li…

Not really, the NSA's actions were deemed to not be a search and as such would not fall under the same reasoning used in this case.

If you read this ruling about cell phones Roberts made it clear they were declaring the officer's actions to be a search, hence requiring the warrant.

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

#149

Post by malka »

mpyne wrote: post #135
a3n wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're crossing the no-rights zone otherwise known as the border.

No, the "no rights zone" only applies to non-USPERs outside of U.S. soil. NSA might reasonably be able to claim that they didn't know a given email address used outside the U.S. actually belongs to a U.S. person, but they'd have a much harder argument claiming that a phone issued to a U.S. area code didn't reasonably belong to a U.S. person, even if used overseas.

He meant that the border police can search you, your car, your phone, without a warrant, as long as you are within a radius of 100 miles from the border. That's named the 'constitution free zone'

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

#150

Post by rayiner »

makmanalp wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that the discussion on page 21 of the opinion suggests that the Court would find a privacy right in documents held in the cloud. Indeed, the government seemed to have conceded that point! "The United States concedes that the search incident to arrest exception may not be stretched to cover a search of files accessed remotely—that is, a search of files stored in the cloud." Slip. Op. at 21. Incidentally,…

Interesting ... another interpretation I read was that "The United States" is a party to the case and it's their opinion the court is talking about: The court itself is specifying no opinion on the matter.

That is an issue that should be mentioned, but I wouldn't quite characterize it that way.

> The United States concedes that the search incident to arrest exception may not be stretched to cover a search of files accessed remotely—that is, a search of files stored in the cloud. See Brief for United States in No. 13–212, at 43–44. Such a search would be like finding a key in a suspect’s pocket and arguing that it allowed law enforcement to unlock and search a house. But officers searching a phone’s data would not typically know whether the information they are viewing was stored locally at the time of the arrest or has been pulled from the cloud.

Slip. Op. at 21.

There's two ways to read the first sentence.

1) We will assume for the sake of argument that documents in the cloud are protected, as the government says.

2) Even the government admits that documents in the cloud are protected.

Because the Court follows up with its own analogy ("like finding a key in a suspect's pocket"), I think reading (2) is more natural. The Court isn't just restating the Government's opinion, but acknowledging the shared premise, with the implication that the Government must share reasoning that logically flows from that premise.

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