[Libs-Or] Supreme Court: "Stop warrantless cell phone searches"

[Diedre Conkling]

http://www.districtdispatch.org/2014/03/supreme-court-stop-warrantless-cell-phone-searches/

Supreme Court: "Stop warrantless cell phone searches"
Posted on March 11, 2014 by Jazzy Wright


Today, the American Library Association and the Internet
Archive<https://archive.org/>joined forces to file a "friend
of the court<http://www.districtdispatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ALA-Internet-Archive.pdf>"
brief in *David Leon Riley v. State of California* and *United States v.
Brima Wurie*, two Supreme Court cases examining the constitutionality of
cell phone searches after police arrests. In the amicus brief, both
nonprofit organizations argue that warrantless cell phone searches violate
privacy principles protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Both cases began when police officers searched the cell phones of
defendants Riley and Wurie without obtaining a warrant. The searches
recovered texts, videos, photos, and telephone numbers that were later used
as evidence. The Supreme Court of California found the cell phone search
lawful in Riley's case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First
Circuit, in Boston, reached the opposite conclusion and reversed Wurie's
conviction.

In the brief, the Internet Archive and the American Library Association
argued that reading choices are at the heart of the expectation of personal
privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Allowing police officers to
rummage through the smartphones of arrestees is akin to giving government
officials permission to search a person's entire library and reading
history.

Today, ALA and Internet Archive leaders weighed in on the court case.
Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association:

Today's cell phones are much more than simple dialing systems--they are
mobile libraries, holding our books, photos, banking information, favorite
websites and private conversations. The Constitution does not give law
enforcement free rein to search unlawfully through our private records.

Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of Internet Archive:

The fact that technology has made it easy to carry voluminous sensitive and
personal information in our pockets does not suddenly grant law enforcement
unchecked availability to it in the case of an arrest. Constitutional
checks are placed on the search of, for instance, a personal physical
library and these checks should also apply to the comparably vast and
personally sensitive stores of data held on our phones.

William Jay, Goodwin Procter <http://www.goodwinprocter.com/> partner and
counsel of record on the amicus brief, added:

The Supreme Court has recognized that people don't lose all privacy under
the Fourth Amendment when they're arrested. And one of the strongest
privacy interests is the right not to have the government peer at what
you're reading, without a good reason and a warrant. We are pleased to have
the chance to represent both traditional and Internet libraries, which have
a unique ability to show the Supreme Court why our electronic bookshelves
deserve the same protection as our home bookshelves.

"In my experience as a former federal prosecutor, a person's smartphone is
one of the things law enforcement are most eager to search after an
arrest," said Goodwin Procter partner Grant Fondo, a co-author of the
brief. "This is because it holds so many different types of important
personal information, telling law enforcement what the arrested person has
been doing over the past few weeks, months, and even years--who they have
been in contact with, what they read, and where they have been. Simply
because this information is now all contained in a small smartphone we
carry with us, rather than at home, should not take the search of this
information outside the scope of one of our most important Constitutional
protections--the right to protection from warrantless searches."



http://www.districtdispatch.org/2014/03/supreme-court-stop-warrantless-cell-phone-searches/



-- 
*Diedre Conkling*




* Lincoln County Library DistrictP.O. Box 2027Newport, OR 97365 Phone &
Fax: 541-265-3066 <541-265-3066>Work email**: *
*diedre at lincolncolibrarydist.org* <diedre at lincolncolibrarydist.org>
* Home email: **diedre08 at gmail.com* <diedre08 at gmail.com>

 "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change
your attitude."--Maya Angelou
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