CA Court Rules Smartphones Can Be Searched Without A Warrant

The California Supreme Court ruled that police can search a suspect’s cell-phone text messages without a warrant, based on past cases where cigarette packs can be searched. A smartphone stores vast amounts of personal data, not even in the same realm as a pack of smokes. In this electronic age, the government moves America closer to a creepy police state.

More bad news on the privacy front pushes us closer to an police state in an electronic age. Monday, in a 5-2 split decision [PDF], the California Supreme Court ruled that police do not need a warrant before searching cell phone text messages of someone who has been arrested. In fact, the court determined that an arrested person has no privacy rights over any personal belongings they're carrying on them when taken into custody. Police are allowed to seize and examine anything they find in the arrestee's possession.

The court's reasoning was based on previous decisions in the 1970s when it was decided legal for officers to search cigarette packages and clothing of an arrested person without a search warrant.

But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Kathryn Werdegar warned that examining a mobile phone without a warrant may violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

Justice Werdegar wrote:



This ruling upheld the drug conviction of Gregory Diaz, arrested in 2007 after participating in a drug deal. An officer took Diaz's cell phone from his pocket, looked through his text messages 90 minutes later, and found the message "6 4 80" which meant six ecstasy pills for $80. Diaz pleaded guilty, was placed on probation and appealed the search.

Forbes' Kashmir Hill noted that in December, however, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled a cell phone is much more like a laptop and therefore entitled to greater privacy in needing a warrant to search it. The Ohio decision took into account the vast and private data that can be stored on a smart phone, making a cell phone much more than a cigarette pack or purse "container" and requiring a warrant before being searched.

Most of us don't intend to be arrested, but where would you rather use your smartphone - warm and sunny California or cold and snowy Ohio? The California ruling seems to step America closer to an electronic police state.

Rodrigue Tremblay, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal, wrote, "And today, modern governments have all the tools to transform their country into a creeping police state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age. They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged "police state" governments could only have dreamed about... George Orwell must be turning in his grave." Tremblay warns, "CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be watching you."

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