The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in our Commonwealth, ruled today that the police may search the call history on your cell phone when you are arrested. This is a search allowed without a warrant. The Court left for another day the issue of whether the police need a warrant to read your emails or texts after an arrest.
The Court’s ruling is based on the police’s long-established ability to look for evidence of a crime in a suspect’s personal belongings as part of the booking process. While I understand that searches incident to arrest are a well-entrenched exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing the police to look at a suspect’s phone seems ripe for abuse. Who or what will stop the police from looking at the rest of the information on the phone? And why is the call history automatically relevant to the arrest? Certainly the police would need a warrant to obtain a suspect’s land-line telephone records after arrest. So now that we carry our phones in our pockets, has the level of privacy in our calls changed?
Has the Court gone too far, or is this just a 21st century version of a search incident to arrest?
17 Comments
Lindsay Ying posted on December 7, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I feel too much private information is going to be exposed now. If the police could check your calls maybe they may be able to go through all your msg as well who knows, where more private information may be found. If a person was under arrested due to drunk driving and got into a car accident, and for whatever reason the police go through his phone, and find out he has been selling drugs or doing other illegal activities, now he could be in bigger trouble. Don’t know if it’s a good thing or not.
I think when passing this rule, the gov. should clarify under which circumstances may the police check the people’s calls, otherwise people can be more exposed to the police and this would increase our scare feelings towards those who are supposed to be helping and protecting us.
Daniel Regner posted on December 8, 2012 at 5:37 pm
I believe that the court has gone to far. They are giving police to much power when it comes to exceptions to warrant. I think that soon there will be a case that goes even deeper then this and there won’t be anything to base a decision on. The courts need to limit what police are able to do before people feel that they have no rights when arrested.
KP posted on December 9, 2012 at 1:53 pm
I believe this has certainly gone too far. The fact that you have been arrested does not mean, that all of your privacy should be taken away. Also I do not exactly see how the history of your calls will help the police at the exact moment. It is scary to imagine how much power police might have in couple years
Lisa Cottle posted on December 9, 2012 at 3:13 pm
The court has most definitely gone too far. Cell phones are just as personal as land lines, but just because they are more easily accessed doesn’t they are any less private. I think the opinion you have stated here aligns almost perfectly with what I believe. Who is to say the arrested call logs have anything at all to do with their arrest. I know I personally feel violated when people go through my cell phone and I have absolutely nothing to hide. I understand that there are some precautions that need to be taken when one is arrested as to insure the safety of the police officers and so forth, but a call log/cell phone information does not qualify as such. This is a very touchy argument because the world is so technical now and information can be accessed so easily. We have to figure out where to draw the line because our rights to privacy will continued to be infringed upon until we decide on a definite boundary to set.
charlotte posted on December 9, 2012 at 7:02 pm
I think that the court has definitely gone too far. These days, cell phones are not only tools for making calls but also for emails, text messages, pictures, facebook, twitter, etc. Its one thing to be able to go through last calls but I don’t think its right to be able to go through someones emails and messages without a warrant. What if the person arrested is actually proven to be innocent? That would mean that were falsely arrested AND that their privacy was unjustly taken away. I think that cell phones are more private than laptops. Its really unfair to give cops the right to obtain private cellular information. Individual rights are slowly but surely dwindling. When is the court ever going to draw a line to this nonsense?
Valeria Brito posted on December 9, 2012 at 9:38 pm
I believed that the court has gone to far. Even though societies and its laws evolved over time, it is not the right time to enact a law that invades that amount of privacy. In addition, I do not believe there is any rush from the police to check someones text messages when he/she gets arrested. If they believe is necessary request a warrant and check it, if it is not, since it is a simply misdemeanor, that invasion should not be imperative to them. However, I do think that times change, and there is going to be a point in time, where laws such as this one will be needed.
Shiva Sujan posted on December 10, 2012 at 2:35 pm
I think the court has gone to far. Even though you are being arrested they have no right to invade your privacy and check your recent calls. With the world being so technologically advanced people have all sorts of their private information on their phone, this makes me wonder how much power the police will have in coming years!!
Sandra Tanasijevic posted on December 10, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Although the world is undoubtedly becoming more and more technologically advanced, I believe that the court has gone to far in this case. A cellphone does not just contain phone calls, but the court would then have access to one’s many other private activities – email, twitter, photos, etc. It is difficult to determine what is private or not these days, but I believe that the court needs to set a clear standard on what is. Having that much access to private information should not be part of the booking process.
Brandon Siegenfeld posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:04 pm
We must trust the police to some extent to obey the basic laws set out by the courts. This may lead to a limited abuse of powers in some cases however if it is done in a controlled manner it can be benefitial. So for example if the phone data is uploaded to the police evidence database and only the call logs can be pulled up for people that are arrested it would be unlikely that the other data would be accessed. I doubt the police are going to just manually start looking through your logs directly.
Also, if someone is arrested they are searched in the general grab area, and the phone is usually in that area, so it is not much of a extension.
A decrease in privacy is another issue, and this seems to be an increasing effect of the information/digital age. I would say this law is getting close to the line of invasive but is still ok.
Cristian Martinez posted on December 11, 2012 at 9:34 pm
I believe that this is not a fair measure. This only makes the “exception to a warrant” list grow longer. At that rate, what is the point of a warrant?
Thuy Pham posted on December 12, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Like everyone else, I personally agree that this has gone too far — you’re right; how does the call log automatically relate to the crime at hand? However, I can see how the government may try and argue that this is necessary, as society has certainly become more technologically advanced. Furthermore, if we’re all this opposed to it, I’m sure someone in the government must’ve considered these concerns and put them forth for discussion as well, so in all likelihood, the policemen will be trained or briefed on what exactly they can investigate on the phone, or the government will specify what information can be obtained from the phone without a warrant.
As an interesting tidbit, someone told me that when you’re talking on the phone, and you can hear yourself speaking, the government is listening in on that particular conversation. I wonder if it’s true?
Eugene Mundowa posted on December 16, 2012 at 4:51 am
The court has most definitely gone too far. Modern technology always has it’s positives and negatives and I am interested as well as nervous to see the way different areas of law are amended for these advancements. This case is an example of a negative. There is way too much information in phones these days and there is no stopping an officer from doing more than just looking at phone calls. When your phone is confiscated, you become too vulnerable to many other potential troubles that could potentially lead to other serious allegations and used against you. Basically, the 4th amendment right and privacy is infringed upon.
Contrarily, people can simply put passcodes/locks on their phone to prohibit anyone from using it. Is there a law that says you would have to unlock it?
Edmond S. posted on December 17, 2012 at 12:36 am
Has the court gone too far? If being arrested means that the government can browse your personal calls, what’s stopping them from navigating through your personal history? It’s one thing if you were the target of a national spy organization, such as the CIA or KGB, but anything below their level of espionage, specifically if it deals with a Federal Crime, which would presumably be handled by federal officers or state officers preceding them in this case, should not interfere with personal intelligence. Furthermore, it is NOT “narrowly tailoured” on the presumption that the crime was drug-related. Should they try to defend their acts on the basis of racketeering (RICO), it is highly inappropriate and should be disregarded at all cost. The court seriously needs to reconsider their place, lest we go into a diluted societal form of Orwell’s 1984. On the knowledge of public information, there are many things you would be able to find by simply searching them on Google.com; however, those perverse sites such as, mylife.com, have even taken the privilege of disclosing personal specificities that relate to one’s financial status. Of course, as they’re not completely brainless simpleton, have foreseen the possible ‘negative’ consequences of their heinous actions by searching for “rabbit holes,” or more familiarly known as “loopholes” within the law system. If, for say, the person has taken a mortgage, subscribed to a raffle for a car that they sub-conciously realize they won’t win anyways, etc., they have willingly given up their private rights to be prostituted for the general market. Of course, why this was even mentioned previously, and how this ultimately ties in to the “Who have you called case?,” is on the issue of whether or not the defendant has obliged to give up his personal intellectual assets that could potentially become detrimental to his odds of winning the case, giving him less of a proper leverage. For the criminal who has his cellphone linked via recent calls to other drug-dealers, or buyers, we must ask on the basis of ethics whether or not the court has overextended its authority to bring the evidence in from a seemingly unconstitutional grab and seizure; albeit, our democracy was not founded on the basis of ethics and a credo for civility, but rather roots itself on the basis of a constitution. And to answer the question, “Is there a law that says you would have to unlock it?,” the answer is superfluous really. Once the cellphone is confiscated, every inch of detail would most likely be scrutinized before it is even returned to its owner, or shut away as evidence. Clearly, in this case, however, the court has gone too far. They may think they are doing the ‘right’ thing, but by violating and deforming the strict laws of the constitution to influence the odds in their favor may essentially be more detrimental to society as a whole, and thus their decision on this matter will leave a mark in history as future courts will undoubtedly rely on this case as a pardon for their ‘true’ capabilities upon making a decision. Imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong with that in mind…
Dorothy Cheam posted on December 17, 2012 at 1:49 am
In such a technologically-advanced age that we live in today, having access to our phone logs serves as a new source of evidence. However, I believe the court has gone too far on this. This new ruling has definitely infringed upon the 4th Amendment Right. It also violates our privacy as the law enforcers only require a probable cause to search our phone history. Although there is a limited scope to this new ruling, like the article said, who can draw the line to what the prosecutors can do? Furthermore, no one can control what the prosecutors can do with the information they retrieve from the search. This not only causes fear and discomfort among criminals, but even the general public as well, as all our personal information is becoming less protected. I believe that a phone history search would be a good source of evidence, but there must be a clear definitions to the scope of the statute. By doing so, the law will not have all the power in the world to do what it wants to do, and our privacy is also protected in some way.
Sofia Gracian posted on December 18, 2012 at 12:40 am
I totally agree that it is a violation of privacy, but I dont think letting the cops see your call history is too bad, especially if you have been ARRESTED. I think this way only time is saved, if there’s nothing sketchy about your call history, whats your problem with letting them take a look. I understand its a violation of your privacy, but what happens when they catch a bad guy and by looking at the call history they catch their accomplice before its too late? If they really want to look at a call history, they can get a warrant, in the end, the result is the same.
I understand why people in the US might think that this is outrageous. I guess I am more chill about the subject because in Mexico, they wont just see your call history, they’ll keep your phone! There was a case in which a boy claimed that a cop stole his phone. The cop denied the allegations, but it turns out that the phone was set to automatically upload pictures taken by the phone to the boy’s facebook. Needless to say, the cop started taking pictures of himself, and they were uploaded to the kid’s facebook.
Wenwen Yang posted on December 18, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Since technology has evolved so much and is still changing at an incredible pace. Allowing the police to search through someone’s call history is a bit of a slippery slope. Today’s technology greatly expands the functions of phones. Personally, I rarely use my phone for phone calls. Most of the time, I use it to check email, go on Facebook, text people, browse the web, or use other applications. In a sense, my phone has become an electronic embodiment of my life. I know I am not alone in this sentiment. Earlier in the year I stumbled upon statistics that reflected my personal usage of my phone. There is a great deal of private data stored on my phone and to allow police to look through it without a warrant makes me deeply uncomfortable.
While people may argue that things we post or send through the web are already public and as such the content on our phones is already public, phones are much more than wall posts or emails. Things on my phone that I know are not posted online are my contacts, my calendar, my pictures, etc. These things are private for a reason and should be kept that way. Giving the police the right to look through our phones, not just our call history, without a warrant upon arrest sets a bad precedent for what’s to come in the future.
Stephanie posted on December 20, 2012 at 10:03 am
I think the Court has gone too far in letting the police now search your phone. While I can see that in the case of a drug dealer, looking in through his phone provided useful evidence, this ruling is open to abuse. Now that the police have access to searching our phones I think that in many cases some officers may unnecessarily look through our phone data. It’s just so hard to draw the line with technology but this almost seems like self incrimination.