Cellphone Privacy In Canada: Encryption Triggers Need For Warrant

codegen writes "The Ontario Court of Appeal has just ruled that the police can search your cellphone if you are arrested without a warrant if it is not password protected. But the ruling also stated that if it is password protected, then the police need a warrant. Previous to this case there was no decision on if the police could search your phone without a warrant in Canada."

Re:Works for me

[RobinH]

Not quite the same. Your wallet doesn't contain a log of all electronic communications you've had with other people. Remember, they're searching through the communication histories of *those* people too. That means even if you lock your own cell phone, the police can get access to communications you've had by searching other people's unlocked phones. I'm not saying that's wrong, exactly, but it's different from a wallet.

Room within a room.

[concealment]

A real world analogy: encryption is like a room within a room.

If you were to enter a residence, and find it divided into apartments, you'd probably have to get a warrant for each locked, separately numbered door.

The real question is whether one individual can have multiple rooms within a room. If your phone and computer are encrypted, do they need a warrant for each?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you leave your garage door open, the police can also walk up your driveway and search your house because it's not locked...otherwise they need a warrant. That makes sense.

Yup. That is more or less exactly what the US Supreme Court said recently http://www.executivegov.com/2010/08/ninth-circuit-court-secret-gps-tracking-is-legal/ [executivegov.com]

If his car had been behind a locked fence or in a closed garage then the police's actions would have been a "search", but because he had no physical security around his house that fact on its own means it was not a search when the police attached a GPS tracker to his car.

This also known as the Poverty Exception to the Fourth Amendment.