The US Supreme Court is to rule on warrant-less searches of electronic devices. Law Enforcement (LE) want access, without warrants, to electronic devices of everybody arrested.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday will take on the digital-age controversy over search and seizure of smart-phones and other devices. In two cases coming before the court, warrant-less searches of an electronic device not only provided the basis for criminal prosecutions but also strayed from the original reason for the arrests in question. President Barack Obama's administration and prosecutors from states across the country have lobbied for police officers to be able to search arrestees' gadgets - at or about the time of arrest - without a warrant. Such action, however, demands an examination of the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." If nine out of 10 American adults own mobile phones and the devices have advanced to become virtual extensions of our personal and private lives, at what point does LE's access to their call logs, photos, and cloud-hosted data become "unreasonable" invasions of constitutionally protected privacy?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday April 28 2014, @10:01PM
Yes, the third-party doctrine needs to go.
It was kind of jutifyable when the post office had to somehow gather the list of your envelopes, and you could forget the return address to make it harder.
Now that too many companies and agencies have all the metadata on everybody, the fourth amendment is incompatible with the third-party concept...
I don't know how they're gonna decide that one. It's less a slam dunk than legalizing corruption.