Does the Fourth Amendment Protect Your Smartphone From Warrantless Searches?
You might think that you know your family and friends well, but Google knows them much better than you do. Most smartphones reveal evidence of people’s thoughts and feelings that they do not tell even to the closest people in their lives. When your spouse or partner looks at information on your phone that you did not intentionally show them, it feels like an invasion of privacy; an unwritten etiquette rule is that, no matter how close your relationship with someone, you can only look at the images and chat messages on their phones that they show you. How much worse is it, then, when a police officer grabs your phone and starts scrolling? It should be illegal, and it is. Of course, in some situations, police are allowed to look at some of the potentially incriminating evidence on your phone. What can they look at, and when can they look at it? If things went from bad to worse at a traffic stop, and you need help thinking clearly about which of the information the police found during the traffic stop is admissible in court, contact a Florida drug offenses attorney.
A Trap House in Your Pocket?
Long before there were smartphones, and even before there were automobiles, there was the Fourth Amendment, which protects against illegal search and seizure of private property by law enforcement or other agents of the state. If the police want to search your house, your file cabinet, your computer, or any other item of your property, they must obtain a search warrant. To do this, they must persuade a judge that they are likely to find evidence of a specific crime by searching the item of property for which they are requesting the warrant.
Traffic stops are an exception; your car is in plain view, so police can search it if there is probable cause for a search. Unless you truly have something to hide, you probably take your smartphone with you every time you drive. If police went through your phone just because you ran a stop sign, they would find evidence of everything you had ever done wrong. Even if you don’t have drugs in your car, there is probably evidence of drug activity somewhere on your phone. Therefore, in 2014, the Supreme Court handed down the Riley v. California decision. In Riley, the Court ruled that smartphones are not subject to warrantless searches; you must do more than make an illegal lane change to enable the police to search your phone, because if they do, they will find plenty of skeletons in your closet and in everyone else’s. Instead, at a traffic stop, police may only look at what is visible on the currently open screen of your smartphone, but they may not scroll through conversations or open apps.
Contact FL Drug Defense Group About Drug Cases
A Central Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are being charged with drug crimes after a traffic stop, and your smartphone is making it worse. Contact FL Drug Defense Group in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/373/
