Fed. Appeals Court Says Police Need Warrant to Search Phone

An anonymous reader writes "In a decision that's almost certainly going to result in this issue heading up to the Supreme Court, the Federal 1st Circuit Court of Appeals [Friday] ruled that police can't search your phone when they arrest you without a warrant. That's contrary to most courts' previous findings in these kinds of cases where judges have allowed warrantless searches through cell phones." (But in line with the recently mentioned decision in Florida, and seemingly with common sense.)

Re:Easy Fix. Arbitrarily stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you arbitrarily stupid only when dealing with situations that actually mention imminent harm? Perhaps it is the mention of police that makes you arbitrarily stupid? Worst case is that stupid is is not your arbitrary state but is instead your default state.

Please read Mistoid's post carefully and tell everyone how you missed the obvious mention of imminent harm - you know the not so arbitrary situation where police don't have to have a warrant to conduct a search, but later have to justify their actions in front of a judge as specifically dealing with a situation that involved knowledge of or great concern of imminent harm. A simple "I thought someone was going to be harmed" is never good enough - you need specific reasons for a judge to rule a search under imminent harm to be legal, screw up the imminent harm explanation and the evidence collected is considered tainted and is thrown out.

Re:Common sense

[icebike]

The officers were investigating a domestic disturbance, which qualifies as an exigent circumstance under California law..

Had they merely walks out an met the officers on their porch nothing would have happened.

Yet the prevented the officers from doing what the law required them to do.

Don't like that law, then get the law changed, and watch more monsters beat their wives while forbidding the police to enter.

The people you elected voted for that law, principally to protect women. If a vote were held today on that issue
it would pass again, easily, because women voters outnumber men, and Ariel Castro has taught us all a lesson
of what an unrestricted right to privacy in your home can bring.

Re:It's just so sad that the practice

[techno-vampire]

AIUI, cops tend to follow this type of ruling very, very carefully and do their best not to violate any new guidelines handed down. This isn't because they have such a great respect for the law (although many individual cops probably do) but because they don't want to have their evidence declared inadmissible, with the chance that the entire case might be thrown out. After all, they don't have to agree with the rules of evidence, they just have to make sure they follow them.