At least in my experience, they don’t ask.
Just as an example, my locked garage was searched with no warrant, and no obvious exigent circumstances, certainly none articulated to me. I was never actually charged, but there’s no way for me to prove I didn’t give permission.
[quote=“vonbobo, post:8, topic:35521, full:true”]
I picture a judge rubber stamping a giant stack of warrants all day long, or maybe these days the judge can even approve it from his smart phone while riding in the golf cart.[/quote]
Most of the reporting on this ruling has been sorely lacking in context. The case was about the typical search that goes along with an arrest: going through your pockets, looking through your purse, etc. I believe if you were in a car they can search areas that you could have reached before they pulled you out. The idea is that when they arrest a person, the cops can look for weapons and collect anything that could reasonably be described as “on the person” of the person being arrested. So they were extending this practice to phones: looking to see who you had called, checking the text messages, etc. The Supreme Court rightly noted that as phones became more capable, this type of incidental search became a bigger and bigger deal.
The reason I say all this is that even before the ruling, the cops couldn’t just look through your phone without a warrant, except for the specific case of making an arrest. Much of the discussion I’ve read today has been along the lines of, “Well, now the cops can’t walk up to me and demand to see my phone.” They couldn’t before, and they can’t now.
But to your comment: phones are now in the same pile as everything else a person owns, as far as warrants are concerned. It takes a request from the cops and it takes a judge to agree. The judge in the golf cart could have just as easily approved a warrant to go through your filing cabinet. Your phone is no more and no less safe from prying authorities.
If the police broke into your locked garage to search it—which I assume they must have done since you didn’t give permission—I suggest you contact a lawyer. You can likely find one willing to work on contingency, and at the very least you will get a free consultation.
Thanks for the advice, but this happened several years ago, and as I wrote I have no way to prove that I didn’t tell them it was ok.
Also, I actually have to live here, and the risk of retaliation is way too high.
Lets face it, cops are government employees and don’t have any motivation to do anything hard. They will always do the laziest thing they can, and whereas in the past that was dumping the phone data, now they will have to do the paperwork to justify seizing the phone and get a warrant, which subjects them to scrutiny that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
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