TELL US: Should Police be Able to Search Your Cellphone Without a Warrant?
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled police don't need a search warrant to look at a cellphone's call list after arresting the phone's owner. As courts around the country grapple with the issue, tell us: is this 'reasonable' search and seizure?
What's the difference between personal information and correspondence you have physically stored in your home, and similar information that's on your cellphone? And what should police have access to without a warrant?
It's a question that courts across the nation are dealing with it and one that arose here in Massachusetts on Wednesday, when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that police don't need a search warrant to look at the call list of a person's cellphone during while searching that person's personal property after an arrest.
However, in writing the court's opinion for Commonwealth vs. Demetrius A. Phifer, Justice Margot Botsford cited other court cases that raise questions about the extent that law enforcement officials can access information stored on a cellphone.
"Today's cellular telephones are essentially computers, capable of storing enormous quantities of information, personal, private, and otherwise, in many different forms," Botsford wrote. "They present novel and important questions about the relationship between the modern doctrine of search incident to arrest and individual privacy rights.
"Although an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy is diminished concerning his or her physical person when subject to a lawful arrest and taken into custody," she continued, "the same may not necessarily be true with respect to the privacy of the myriad types of information stored in a cellular telephone that he or she is carrying at the time of arrest."
The New York Times reported last month about divergent rulings in courts across the country regarding information stored on cellphones, such as a Rhode Island judge throwing out cellphone evidence obtained without a search warrant that led a man being charged with the murder of a 6-year-old boy.
A Washington court likened text messages to voice mail messages that can be overheard by anyone in a room, the Times reported, and ruled they are not protected by state privacy laws. But a federal appeals court in Louisiana is wrangling over whether location records stored in smartphones are private information or business records that belong to the phone companies.
Meanwhile, just last week the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that if passed would limit law enforcement officials' warrantless access to email, private Facebook posts and other information that's stored on the Internet. CNET.com reported that tech firms including Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter have urged Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, "and preserve the same privacy rights that Americans enjoy if their files are printed out and stored in a cabinet at home."
What should police be able to search on a cellphone without a warrant? The call log? Emails and private Facebook or Twitter messages? GPS location data that track where the phone has been? Should it all be fair game, should it all require a search warrant, or is it a mix? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Robert G. Logan
7:57 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Not unless they repealed the 4th Amendment while I wasn't looking. When are people going to wake up and become outraged at the steady erosion of civil liberties?
M C Stringfellow
2:52 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
It won't happen until the ACLU decides that the majority of the population is having its civil liberties violated. You and I know that ain't gonna happen.
TheHam
12:57 pm on Monday, December 10, 2012
I'm wide awake. Unless you have a warrant to search my cell phone, you will not.
Ayn Rand
8:34 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Absolutely. If you don't have anything to hide, don't worry. They should be able to search your car, house, computer, whatever. The job of the police is too hard as it is. Let's make their life easier.
Amy
8:44 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
I agree -
NYminute
9:45 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
The argument that if you "don't have anything to hide, don't worry" is totally without merit. My family doesn't even come into my home without an invitation! If you really believe what you wrote above, can you tell me why we fought for independence in the 1700's? You might consider reading a bit and truly getting an understanding of civil liberties! I'd call you an idiot but that would be insulting to the intellectually disabled.................
Phil
10:53 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Yikes, what kind of hogwash is that? Perhaps you should study up on the fourth amendment and prohibition against unlawful search and seizure?
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CONAN-1992/html/GPO-CONAN-1992-10-5.htm
Vineyard Worker
5:30 pm on Saturday, January 12, 2013
So you're saying, go ahead treat me like a criminal, whenever you wish because I did nothing wrong and after I have been violated I will be happy knowing that I made the police happy by making their job easier?
M C Stringfellow
5:47 pm on Saturday, January 12, 2013
You are one sick puppy. Lets just declare ourselves Communists and get on with our lives. Oh, forgot, we no longer can call it our lives, we're Communists. Government owns us. NOT WITH OUT A WARRANT CAN THEY SEARCH AND MUST SHOW JUST CAUSE.
Mark Golden
11:35 am on Saturday, December 8, 2012
I see no problem with the police searching for anything at any time, anywhere. After all, is that not the way of life here in a free society, governed by laws? No? By golly, you're correct. So, I would have to come down on the side against further erosion of our civil liberties. I, personally would have nothing to hide. But my phone is my phone. My records are my records. IF the police believe there is reasonable cause or need to search my property, let them go about it in the proper manner. That is why we have a system of laws in this country. Yes, I am a Liberal and proud of it. And I have also carried a badge! But because of my having carried a badge, I firmly believe in FREEDOM. And the law. The law PROTECTS everyone.
Earnhardt
3:01 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Agree Mark. The law protects everyone. Police are seeing new forms of evil enter our society every day. No doubt they have a full plate constantly, But to eradicate evil it has to be done properly, which means going by the book. If they have that much cause to feel the need to go through your phone, then obviously they have enough to hold you on suspicion, which gives them more than enough time to obtain a warrant, I am for law enforcement 100% but our rights need protection in the process.
Anita Roberts
12:50 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
The government regulates every aspect of our lives and now wants to diminish our civil liberties, too. Who would be so stupid and naïve to agree to a warrantless search? Even if you don't have anything to hide, you don't know the whole story and there have been cases where evidence has been planted. Let the police prove they have probable cause and get a warrant. As far as cell phones go, another violation of our privacy rights.
Vinnie Dummerino
3:18 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
The 4-th ammendment is there for a reason and what I call collateral unwarranted discovery and damage (information that someone has not right to that they gain access to with these nose of the camel activities). For example, in my phone list are several calls to an AA sponsor, priest, psychiatrist, ex-sprouse, competitor of the company I work for an so on the contents of which are not known. However, the rumors and gossip could be spread by those who accessed this info that I was an alcoholic, dying, pyschotic, cheating, and disloyal all via twitter of course damaging and harming my reputation and life and those associated with me by irresponisble and unsupportable slander which is a bell that cannot be unrung. This technology enable people to be mullahs and states to be totalitarian, a temptation most people today cannot deny due to increasing lower levels of ethical socialization. All of these behaviors need to be stopped with hard penalties.
Sonny Beaches
4:06 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Vinnie your posts have done more damage to your reputation than could be accomplished by a million malevolent mullahs.
Joseph G. Paquette
5:06 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
No search, no way, no how, period end of subject.
Citizen
8:42 pm on Saturday, December 8, 2012
The judicial system is the worst violator of the law. Would it really matter if laws were in place to prevent them from violating privacy rights? I mean really. It's all about money not law. There needs to be house cleaning. All the way up the line too much emessment for my liking. This shouldn't even be in question. BIG NO ON THIS ONE. SEARCH WARRANT FIRST THEN TAKE A LOOK IF JUSTIFIED!! We're talking about people upholding law and they're not robocops. Average Joes carrying guns with big egos.
Alice H
12:01 pm on Sunday, December 9, 2012
With a search warrant, yes. Without, no way in hell.
Dawn
10:57 am on Saturday, January 12, 2013
Wake up people. Strangers have searched cell phones for bank numbers& other things. Why not the Police? They are not looking to steal! It's obviosly for good reasoning! Strangers or Police, take your choice.
Anna Bucciarelli
12:19 pm on Monday, January 14, 2013
You are far too trusting Dawn ... most policemen ARE strangers to begin with. Joe Pacquette got it right, "no search, no way, no how period end of subject."
LCT
3:43 am on Sunday, January 20, 2013
So the consensus of the posters here don't think it's OK to have warrantless searches? Interesting as I see some of the same people posting here who don't give a fig about my 2nd Amendment rights are now concerned about their 4th Amendment rights. It's evidently OK to pick & choose which Amendment can be trampled? It's all or nothing folks. That's how our government works.
Which Amendment shall we attack next? If the lame street media ever decides to do their job, stop cheerleading for POTUS & starts doing real reporting minus the liberal bias, you can be your life the next Amendment under fire will be the 1st Amendment.
How many rights & liberties are you willing to give up before we smarten up & pay attention?