Supreme
Court: Police Need Warrants to Search Cellphone Data
Unanimous
Supreme Court Says Privacy Interests Outweigh Police Convenience
ByJess
Bravin
June
25, 2014
WASHINGTON—A
unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police must obtain a warrant to
search the vast amount of information on a suspect's cellphone, broadly
protecting Americans' privacy rights in the digital age.
The
opinion, by Chief Justice John Roberts, dismissed law-enforcement arguments
that no legal distinction existed between smartphones and the pocket litter
that police long have been permitted to search when arresting a suspect—for
instance, wallets, cigarette wrappers and address books.
"That
is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a
flight to the moon," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "Modern cell
phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated
by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet or a purse," he wrote.
Warrantless
searches have been justified by the need to protect officers from hidden
weapons and to prevent suspects from destroying evidence. Neither rationale
applied to the digital data accessible through a cellphone or other mobile
devices, the court found, in erecting a requirement that police go to court before
rifling through email, text messages, phone records or other data.
The
chief justice acknowledged that mobile devices are essential tools for today's
criminals, as they are for most Americans, and that requiring police to seek a
magistrate's permission to search them could impede some investigations.
But
individual rights sometimes outweigh the convenience of government, he wrote,
adding: "Privacy comes at a cost."
The
decision, which built on several privacy rulings in recent years, was one of a
pair Wednesday in which the high court forcefully applied age-old doctrines to
a society rapidly being transformed by new technology. The warrant ruling, in
particular, could have consequences for privacy questions that are likely to
arise as technology advances.
The
second decision involved online video technology by Aereo Inc., which was
challenged by traditional broadcasters arguing it violated their copyrights. In
Aereo, the court effectively said the company couldn't use technology
workarounds to escape copyright restrictions for a service that captured
broadcasting signals, recorded them and distributed someone else's content over
the Web.
Privacy
advocates hailed the cellphone ruling as a signal that the court would protect
constitutional privacy interests from the vast powers of modern technology.
"By recognizing that the digital revolution has transformed our
expectations of privacy, today's decision is itself revolutionary and will help
to protect the privacy rights of all Americans," said Steven Shapiro,
legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Law-enforcement
officials were disappointed. Technology "is making it easier and easier
for criminals to do their trade," while the court "is making it
harder for law enforcement to do theirs," said Thomas Zugibe, district
attorney in Rockland County, N.Y., who signed a friend-of-the-court brief
arguing warrantless device searches were constitutional.
The
Supreme Court has been grappling with modern technology's implications for core
constitutional rights, alternately siding with law enforcement and the
individual. Wednesday's opinion, however, was a watershed, showing that all
nine justices are keen to re-examine categorical rules written for an earlier
era.
The
government, for instance, had argued a phone's call log could be searched under
the 1979 precedent Smith v. Maryland, which held police didn't need a warrant
to install an electronic device to record phone numbers dialed by a caller. The
court dismissed that argument in the cellphone context.
That
1979 precedent also underlies the government's rationale for the vast
surveillance apparatus tracking digital communications' "metadata"
implemented since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While the Smith case's validity
wasn't at issue Wednesday, it could face scrutiny should it come before the
justices.
"Cell
phones differ in both a quantitative and qualitative sense from other objects
that might be kept on arrestee's person," Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
"Many of these devices are in fact minicomputers" that "could
just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape
recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers."
Moreover,
the information a cellphone contains—or can access through the Internet
cloud—can "reveal much more in combination than any isolated record"
that might have previously been found in a suspect's pocket. "The sum of
an individual's private life can be reconstructed" through photos, email,
phone records, Internet search histories and other data, the court said.
"It
is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who
own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect
of their lives," it continued.
That
an individual can now carry such a record so casually "does not make the
information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders
fought," the chief justice wrote.
The
cellphone ruling came in a pair of cases from different ends of the country
that had opposite results. A federal appeals court in Boston had found a
cellphone search violated the Fourth Amendment protection against
"unreasonable searches and seizures," which generally requires
authorities to obtain a warrant from a magistrate before conducting a search.
But
state courts in California ruled that anything found on a suspect's person—be
it a cellphone or matchbook—could be searched under recognized exceptions to the
warrant requirement.
Spokesmen
for both the U.S. and California departments of justice promised to work with
the law-enforcement agencies they supervise to implement Wednesday's decision.
"The
department will work with its law-enforcement agencies to ensure full
compliance with this decision," U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Ellen
Canale said. "Our commitment to vigorously enforcing the criminal laws and
protecting the public while respecting the privacy interests protected by the
Fourth Amendment is unwavering."
Chief
Justice Roberts suggested that would be simple. "Our answer to the
question of what police must do before searching a cellphone seized incident to
an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant," he wrote.
In
those rare events where it truly would endanger public safety or risk a loss of
evidence, police can act without a warrant and later argue in court their
actions were justified by "exigent circumstances," he wrote.
Justices
Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen
Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the Roberts opinion in full.
Justice Samuel Alito, who agreed in part, wrote separately to urge legislatures
to take the lead in determining privacy rights, rather than leaving the matter
to the courts.
Link to Supreme Court Opinion
Supreme Court Opinion
Link to Wall Street Journal Article
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