Searching Phones

Supreme Court and Cell Phones According to The Times Editorial Board (2013), the case concerns David Riley, a Californian college student, who was pulled over by police for expired tags. During the incident, it was also discovered that his license had been suspended. As a result, the car was impounded and searched, after which guns were found under the hood. Riley was then arrested and his Samsung phone was confiscated.

When searching through the information on the phone, police found text messages containing information about a gang with a photo of Riley and another man near a car that was involved in the shooting. Riley was convicted of the shooting on the strength of this evidence (The Times Editorial Board, 2013). The Court's decision revolves around whether the information on Riley's phone is in fact admissible as evidence in a criminal case. Especially compounding the issue is that Riley was arrested for a lesser charge, which was expired tags.

His phone was only searched once he was arrested and his car impounded. This implicated him in a larger crime. The question before the court is whether citizens have sufficient rights to privacy to make such evidence inadmissible as evidence for more severe crimes than they have been arrested for in the first place. The Government of California, Jerry Brown (Garahn, 2011), is in favor of warrantless searches of cell phones when people are place under arrest.

According to the Governor: "The courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections." In other words, the Governor does not believe that courts should have decision-making powers over matters like determining privacy rights. Hence, warrantless searches should be only within the jurisdiction of law enforcement officers. The governor appears to believe that only officers of the law should have the power and the right to determine what should be involved in warrantless searches.

California Senator Mark Leno, on the other hand, disagreed at the time by saying: "This veto is very unfortunate. The message from the governor was rather incoherent. When you consider all the information that is accessible on one smartphone, if that same information was contained anywhere else police would need a warrant to search for it. So it makes no sense to carve out a legal exception for smartphone searches." (Garahn, 2011) Senator Leno opposes the bill on the strength of existing legislation.

Since a citizen's privacy rights regarding all other types of warranted searches are honored, the Senator appears to believe that this rule should also apply to any and all other searchers of a person's possessions or environment. In my own view, the rights of citizens have been violated in many ways, especially since the 9/11 attacks. Government and legislators have passed bills that impose unfairly on the privacy and freedom rights of citizens. With new technology, the line between privacy rights and effectively fighting crime has become even thinner.

This is why it is vitally important to maintain a sense of privacy for everyday citizens. Whether guilty or not, I believe that Reilly should have been served with a warrant before his phone was searched. As Senator Leno correctly states, citizens have the right to privacy and to be served by a warrant before their private.