Monday, July 14, 2014
Say what? You wanna search this phone? Get a warrant, y'all!
The Superior Court of Pennsylvania says the police may not search your cellphone without a warrant. Citing SCOTUS's recent decision in the consolidated cases of Riley v. California and U.S. v. Wurie, the court upheld the lower court's "suppression of photographs containing alleged child pornography that were obtained from defendant Adam Edward Stem’s phone during a warrantless search following his arrest for an unrelated incident."
As you may recall, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote these cheeky lines for the majority in Riley and Wurie:
The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry [private] information in his hands does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cellphone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civil_rights/2014/07/the-superior-court-of-pennsylvania-upheld-based-on-a-recent-us-supreme-court-decision-the-state-superior-court-has-h.html
The Riley and Wurie decision is the most interesting case from the last term from my perspective. All nine subscribe to Roberts' opinion. The go deep into the right of privacy. They cite an old case on privacy from around 1886 or thereabouts-- Boyd. That case has extensive language about privacy. The Court understood the scope and depth of information which is available through a Smartphone. Note that I did not employ the word data or say that the information is On the phone. The information is on the Cloud. We have protection for our information stored on the Cloud. The Court did not put it directly that way but dumbschmucks who carry Smartphones are protected. I urge all Americans not to put all your information of any private nature on your so called Smartphone. If you drive by a Stingray tower your information can be stolen--by the government or other thieves. Just keep you name, rank and last four digits of your serial number on your person. Not your social security number, date of birth, or credit card numbers.
Posted by: Liberty1st | Jul 15, 2014 5:56:36 PM