Tag: surveillance

Supreme Court rules: the government can’t search your cellphone without a warrant; the boss can.

Good news: The Supreme Court ruled today that the police have to have a warrant to search the cell phone of someone they arrest. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, said the vast amount of data contained on modern cellphones must be protected from routine inspection. The old rules, Chief Justice Roberts said, cannot be applied to “modern cellphones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” The courts have long allowed warrantless searches in connection with arrests, saying they are justified by the need to protect police officers and to prevent the destruction of evidence. […]