Law Technology News reports on the growing judicial controversy about police searches of smartphones incident to an arrest. The dispute focuses on the applicability of a line of U.S. Supreme Court cases decided long before smartohones came on the market. Traditionally, the justification for making a search incident to an arrest has been that it is permissible for the police to conduct a search of an arrestee’s person, clothing, and area of immediate control in order to find weapons or evidence that the person might try to destroy. Over the years, it has extended to cover wallets and handbags, and now, in a number of cases, to cell- and smartphones (the rationale being that information contained in these devices is similar to that which one would expect to find in a wallet or handbag.
Those objecting to the expansion of this doctrine argue that because of the vast amount of digital information they are able to store, the owner’s heightened interest in privacy outweighs the traditional justification of a search incident to an arrest.
As the article points out, as courts struggle with this issue, anyone carrying a smartphone runs the risk that a minor traffic stop could permit the police to search through his or her entire email.
