SCOTUS unanimous - cell phone searches require warrant

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``The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought," the ruling said. "Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant."

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Damn straight. Police are always looking to overstep their bounds, it's nice to see them get punted back so thoroughly.

Well that;s the right decision at least.

Makes sense. I think legally a phone is a phone, so the same rules should apply whether it's a cell phone, a sat phone, or a regular phone.

Of course if police find a phone unattended, or one is turned into them, they should be allowed to search it to find out who the owner is, and if they happen to find evidence of illegal activity on the cellphone than they can apply for a warrant.

Is it common for the Supreme Court to issue unanimous decisions? I don't think it is, but just a couple weeks ago the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on the SBA List's lawsuit against Ohio's law that prohibits lying in political ads (SBA List maintains that they did not lie when they accused Rep. Driehaus of voting for tax-payer funding of abortion via Obamacare, and that the Ohio election commission should not have the authority to determine what is a "lie" and what is not). The Supreme Court ruling in that case was procedural, the case isn't over, what the SCOTUS ruling does is allow the case to proceed in lower courts.

A few years back the Justice Dept. lost the Hosanna-Tabor unanimously at the Supreme Court, which was a big case because the Supreme Court unanimously backed the doctrine of "ministerial exception" (i.e. that federal and state anti-discrimination in hiring and firing laws cannot be used against religious organizations employment of their ministers. In other words plaintiffs cannot use anti-discrimination laws to have courts force religions into letting people be a minister in that religion).

Today was a good day.

Yay, hyperbole.

On topic, this is a good decision.

It may be a win for people who are against the government looking into their privacy property. But at the same time, if someone is stupid enough to store evidence of a crime on their cell phone they may be too stupid to say no when an officer asks if they can search their phone. It isn't illegal for an officer to look at your phone if they ask for consent to look and you say yes.

Also, if there is enough probable cause they can probably get that warrant signed pretty quickly.

Good. No down with the metadata collection.