The Fourth Amendment And Your Smartphone

You may have seen those cartoon drawings about online privacy that show search engines as a frenemy that compiles volumes of embarrassing and prospectively incriminating information about you.  If you ever want to see a person’s worst side, look at an electronic device with which he or she connects to the Internet.  If the person possesses any bigotry, grudges, irrational fears, or obsessions, you will see evidence of them.  You will find out every uncharitable thing the person has ever said about anyone else and every inappropriate joke the person has ever seen fit to repeat.  If the person has ever requested illegal drugs or responded to such a request, you will find evidence of this on the person’s phone.  Smartphones are the obvious place to look for evidence of crimes in many cases.  When can police search your phone, and when does the Fourth Amendment protect its contents?  If you are facing criminal charges arising from evidence that police found during a search of your cell phone or other personal electronic device, contact a Tampa criminal defense lawyer.

Can Police Search Your Smartphone Without a Warrant?

Pursuant to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, police cannot search your personal property unless they obtain a warrant; judges issue search warrants after police provide evidence that, by searching a particular property, such as a suspect’s residence or workplace, they will find specific evidence that points to a specific crime.  Search warrants are not just a matter of, “He looks like trouble.  Let’s look around and see what we find.”

Traffic stops are a different story.  If the police pull you over, they can arrest you if there is something in plain view, such as drug paraphernalia or a weapon, that they consider probable cause for an arrest; the arrest may or may not lead to you receiving criminal charges.  What happens if your smartphone is in plain view, though.

In the Riley v. California decision of 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only the screen of your phone is in plain view at a traffic stop, and that is the only part of your phone that police may search.  They do not have the right to open apps or toggle between conversations on messaging apps.  If they did, they would find a wealth of information that could lead to criminal charges against people they hadn’t suspected and charges for crimes they had not even known had taken place.  To find this much information, they would need a search warrant.  In other words, the screen of your smartphone is enough to give police the right to request a search warrant to search your phone, but they cannot skip the step of getting a warrant and go straight to searching your phone at a traffic stop.

Contact Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Bryant Scriven

A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges related to the contents of your smartphone.  Contact Scriven Law in Tampa, Florida to schedule a consultation.

Source:

supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/373/