Courts split over (warrantless) police searches of handhelds

[The Straight Story]

Police Blotter: Courts split over police searches of handhelds


What: Defendants in Florida and Virginia, each arrested after being stopped for speeding, claim warrantless searches of their handheld devices violates the Fourth Amendment.

Outcome: One federal judge rejects the warrantless search as illegal, while a federal appeals court upholds it as perfectly OK.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
Anyone who relies on a handheld device for e-mail, Web browsing, note, and scheduling knows how well it knows them. Modern gadgets contain enough data about us to raise alarms about identity theft if lost--or worries of another sort if police peruse them in hopes of finding incriminating files.

To snatch these capacious little devices from our homes, police need warrants. But if we happen to be arrested with gadgets in our pocket or purse, police claim they can search through the contents, including personal photo albums, without limitation. (CNET readers who attend the Burning Man festival and like to document their pharmaceutical experimentation, take note.)

This has become an more important--and unresolved--modern privacy question. As Police Blotter reported last month, courts have split over whether (or exactly how) to support police powers or defend Americans' privacy rights.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10158244-38.html

[tbyg52]

1. The infuriating part is that there's no earthly reason it should be unresolved.

In a rational world.

No warrant, keep your hands off. Period.

[The Straight Story]

2. Our world becomes less rational each day it seems

Maybe if we all got drunk and stoned we would forget all our ills and come together for peace and hangover cures :rofl:

[gratuitous]

3. I have no knowledge of this

But can these gizmos be password protected, so that anyone swiping it or searching it can't access what's in it without a password? I realize that entering a password each time is a pain in the wazoo, but if you want to protect your data, is that a possibility?

[tbyg52]

4. Yes. And I'd really like to see them *make* me enter mine without a warrant. nt