Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463
ACLU: Police must get warrants to obtain personal data from cars
You might not think of your car as a treasure trove of personal data, but it frequently is -- performance data, phone contacts and location info may be sitting under the hood. And the American Civil Liberties Union wants to be sure police can't just take it. The organization is appearing as a friend of the court in Georgia's Supreme Court on June 19th to argue that personal data on cars is protected by the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment and thus requires a warrant. The appearance is tied to a case, Mobley vs. State, where police used a car's "black box" to level more serious charges.
After a deadly car crash, Georgia police downloaded data from the Event Data Recorder on Mobley's car to determine his speed before the crash, using that to level more severe accusations against him. Georgia has contended that this was legal under the Fourth Amendment's "vehicle exception" allowing searches for physical items, but the ACLU believes this doesn't count for digital data. It likened this to requiring a warrant for phone data -- just because the device holding the data is obtainable without a warrant doesn't mean the data is also up for grabs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 19 2019, @02:35AM
I don't (as AthanasiusKircher pointed out [soylentnews.org]) necessarily disagree with that.
But remember, we're talking about a criminal investigation and potential criminal charges. This isn't just an insurance investigation or a civil lawsuit. The law is quite different for civil matters.
My point is that the search of the "black box" is the same thing as searching your computer or your house.
As such, police should either get consent for the search or a warrant from a judge. If the police don't have enough to convince a judge that they have "probable cause," then it *is* just a fishing expedition, IMHO.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr