رای دیوان عالی آمریکا در خصوص بازرسی موبایل مجرمان

In a landmark digital privacy decision Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that police officers must have warrants to search suspects' cellphones upon arrest.

The justices ruled that police cannot search a cellphone without a warrant because the devices deserve special protection, since they contain so much information about a person's private life and are a "pervasive and insistent part of daily life."

Before this decision, police officers did not need warrants to search suspects' cellphones in various state across the country.

Police departments and the U.S. government had relied on a precedent set by the Supreme Court when it ruled that police could empty a suspect's pockets and examine their contents to ensure officers' safety and prevent the destruction of evidence. Now, the Supreme Court is saying that

a cellphone isn't fair game, and can't be treated the same way as any other object, like a cigarette pack.

"Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the 'privacies of life,'" Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. "Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant."

The U.S. government argued that searching data on a cellphone is "materially indistinguishable" from searching physical objects in a suspect's pocket, but the Supreme Court plainly rejected this notion.

"That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together," the decision read. "Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse."

The justices acknowledged that their ruling would "have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime," but added that "privacy comes at a cost."

The court's decision also went against the U.S. government's argument that police officers needed to search the phone quickly to prevent the suspect from wiping evidence from the phone. The justices said that threat wasn't too common, and there are various ways to prevent it from happening, like turning the phone off, removing the battery or using Farday bags, which isolate the phone from the network.

In cases where there's a real imminent risk of evidence destruction, the court said that police could search the cellphone. But that will be the exception, not the rule

source: mashable