Supreme Court to rule on warrantless smartphone searches

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Interesting that the justices find it interesting enough to hear it. I’m not sure a murder case is the best one…but the possible implications for this insane 100-mile INS searching all your stuff without warrants could be very, very good if this one goes well.

I wonder how well encryption on phones would work in keeping the police out of it. After all there’s not much protection from lead pipe decryption and the police are right next to you holding the equivalent of a lead pipe. And of course in many jurisdictions (like the UK), with-holding a password is in itself a crime.

In my opinion, there is NO justification for allowing them to search without a warrant or permission of the owner. If they are arresting you, they have secured the phone and there is no difficulty in securing a warrant, if there may be evidence of a crime on it. If they merely have a particularized suspicion it may well be reasonable for them to seize the phone (to prevent any evidence from being destroyed) in anticipation of obtaining a warrant.

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And of course, even weak encryption would go a long way to establish an “expectation of privacy” which many warrantless search cases turn on.

Simple, just ebg13 rirelguvat

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