THE framers of America’s constitution knew nothing about mobile phones, but they knew a thing or two about unreasonable searches. In Riley v California, the Supreme Court considered “whether the police may, without a warrant, search digital information on a cellphone seized from an individual who has been arrested.” Unanimously on June 25th, the justices said no, or, to be more precise, very rarely.David Riley, a member of the Bloods street gang who was sentenced to 15 years to life for attempted murder, and Brima Wurie, sentenced to 262 months on a drug charge, will be happy to hear this. Except in true emergencies where searching a mobile phone could, say, avert a terrorist attack, police prying without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s bar on “unreasonable” searches, the justices decided. Since both Riley and Wurie’s convictions were based on evidence gleaned from such searches, they will be overturned.Chief Justice John Roberts began by observing how attached Americans have become to their mobile devices: “the proverbial visitor from Mars,” he wrote, might mistake them...
from The Economist: United States http://ift.tt/TAMrYK
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