Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Supreme Court says cops can't search your phones without a warrant

Woman on city street looking at smartphone

The Supreme Court's Aereo decision may not have it earned many techie fans, but its decision on two other cases -- Riley v. California and U.S. v. Wurie -- may change that. The highest court in the land has just unanimously ruled that the police "generally" cannot search your cellphones without a warrant. As always, there's room left for extenuating circumstances, but you won't have to worry about the police rifling through the contents of your mobile devices if you get pulled over for speeding.


These two cases were rooted on opposite sides of the country, but in both instances the police used information obtained from the plantiffs' phones to tie them to acts of wrongdoing. In David Leon Riley's case, a slew of curiously worded text messages prompted police to investigate a connection to a San Diego-based members of the Bloods, while an entry in Brima Wurie's call log led police officers in Boston straight to his apartment (and his stash of drugs) after he was arrested.


Developing...


Comments


0 comments:

Post a Comment