Supreme Court Rules Cellphones Should be Protected by Search Warrants

Posted on Jul 1st 2014

Last month the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that underscores just how important cell phones are in our day-to-day lives. So important, in fact, that they must be shielded from the prying eyes of police officers. The Supreme Court has decided that law enforcement may not search cellphones without a warrant. The ruling was reached unanimously by the court and brings a resolution to a long-standing civil liberties debate with regard to digital privacy.

The landmark decision's summary is fairly clear on the issue: "The police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cellphone seized from an individual who has been arrested." While the Court does allow for warrantless searches in certain "exigent circumstances" like kidnappings and bomb threats, they are limited and do not apply to searches after arrests. The decision doesn't mince words in its kicker, though, stating simply: "Get a warrant."

Prosecutors and police argued that cellphones ought to be treated as address books that may contain evidence useful during investigations, while opponents contended that phones have increasingly become computers containing personal information protected by the Fourth Amendment. Justice Roberts came down in favor of the latter view, stating that phones are now "such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that a proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy."

Roberts even took proponents of warrantless searches to task in the decision, writing: "The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cellphone is 'materially indistinguishable' from searches of these sorts of physical items. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon." Indeed, phones now can and often do carry enough data to reveal a person's private life, including location data and photos. "The fact that a search in the pre-digital era could have turned up a photograph or two in a wallet," he writes, "does not justify a search of thousands of photos in a digital gallery."