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In a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court said that police officers are required to have search warrants before searching cellphones of arrestees. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “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’… 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 the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant.”
The court was aware of the consequences to investigations, but Roberts also wrote, “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.”
The AP reported, “The court chose not to extend earlier rulings that allow police to empty a suspect’s pockets and examine whatever they find to ensure officers’ safety and prevent the destruction of evidence. The Obama administration and the state of California, defending the cellphone searches, said cellphones should have no greater protection from a search than anything else police find.” However, the justices felt cellphones were different from other items found in pockets, like cigarettes.
The decision came after the court heard two cases. From the NY Times:
The first case, Riley v. California, No. 13-132, arose from the arrest of David L. Riley, who was pulled over in San Diego in 2009 for having an expired auto registration. The police found loaded guns in his car and, on inspecting Mr. Riley’s smartphone, entries they associated with a street gang.
A more comprehensive search of the phone led to information that linked Mr. Riley to a shooting. He was later convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. A California appeals court said neither search had required a warrant.
The second case, United States v. Wurie, No. 13-212, involved a search of the call log of the flip phone of Brima Wurie, who was arrested in 2007 in Boston and charged with gun and drug crimes. The federal appeals court in Boston last year threw out the evidence found on Mr. Wurie’s phone.
News organizations, including The New York Times, filed a brief supporting Mr. Riley and Mr. Wurie in which they argued that cellphone searches can compromise news gathering.
The ACLU’s national legal director Steven R. Shapiro said, “By recognizing that the digital revolution has transformed our expectations of privacy, today’s decision is itself revolutionary and will help to protect the privacy rights of all Americans. We have entered a new world but, as the court today recognized, our old values still apply and limit the government’s ability to rummage through the intimate details of our private lives.”
You can read the Supreme Court’s full decision, via The Post, here.
