{"id":436,"date":"2014-06-25T23:48:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T03:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=436"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:21:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:21:01","slug":"riley-v-california-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2014\/06\/25\/riley-v-california-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fourth Amendment for the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Daniel Bogdan<\/em><\/p>\n

Part 1 in a 2-part series<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s note: At the request of the author, the title has been changed since the original publication of this post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, in Riley v. California<\/em><\/a>, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement officers may not search an arrested person\u2019s cellphone incident to arrest without a warrant.\u00a0 Ruling jointly along with United States v. Wurie<\/em><\/a>, the Court held that an individual\u2019s right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment outweighed the interest of law enforcement in conducting warrantless searches of cellphones incident to arrest.\u00a0 This decision bodes well for the future of technological privacy of arrestees, and may change law enforcement\u2019s procedures of arrest.<\/p>\n

Upon the petitioner Riley\u2019s arrest, the police searched his smartphone and found digital evidence potentially connecting him to a shooting, and charged Riley with attempted murder. Riley moved to suppress the evidence gathered from his cell phone, claiming the unwarranted search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The Supreme Court held although an arresting officer may physically inspect the exterior of an arrestee\u2019s cellphone to ensure their own safety, the data on a arrestee\u2019s cellphone may not be searched without a warrant. The Court\u2019s reasoning was that the interest of an individual\u2019s privacy outweighed the Government\u2019s interest in preventing possible remote data wipes or encryption mechanisms from foreclosing the acquisition of admissible evidence.<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s reasoning establishes a cell phone as closer in kind to an individual\u2019s home than to a piece of property.\u00a0 And, indeed, many people have just as much (or perhaps more) sensitive information on their phone as in their homes.\u00a0 Further, the content on an average smartphone is of an incredibly diverse variety, encompassing a far greater range of information than any person could reasonably have on their person before the advent of cellphones.<\/p>\n

Riley <\/em>shows the Court\u2019s willingness to adapt its interpretation of Constitutional privacy rights to address the shifting landscape of privacy in the digital age.\u00a0 Given the massive changes the tech age has brought in the amount of private material people may have on their persons, the court\u2019s unanimous ruling is a good sign for the concerns of privacy as the industry continues to innovate.\u00a0 Further, because the Court\u2019s reasoning relies on the similarity of cellphones to \u201cminicomputers,\u201d the Court\u2019s holding seems to apply broadly.\u00a0 Thus, as long as future technologies can be likened to \u201cminicomputers,\u201d under Riley<\/em>, they will also be excluded from warrantless searches.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how the Court\u2019s ruling plays out in both the course of day-to-day law enforcement and in similar litigation.\u00a0 First, it seems likely that upon arrest, an officer will place an arrestee\u2019s mobile phone in a Faraday bag as a matter of course, or alternatively police will immediately turn off the phone.\u00a0 Second, and more interesting, by carving out the exigent circumstances exception, the Court may open the possibility for increased litigation over what constitutes \u201cexigent circumstances,\u201d as the Government will likely seek to expand the definition to support warrantless phone searches. \u00a0Still, even if that justification is invoked far more frequently, the justification itself is subject to judicial scrutiny concerning whether the circumstances were truly exigent.\u00a0 Such scrutiny is not given to searches incident to arrest, which follow automatically from the fact of arrest and need no further justification. \u00a0Thus even if the exigent-circumstance justification is invoked more frequently, defendants will have greater opportunity to challenge the search than they would have had before the Riley <\/em>decision.<\/p>\n

Although the Court\u2019s ruling may expand law enforcement\u2019s usage of the \u201cexigent circumstances\u201d exception for warrantless cellphone searches, the Court\u2019s ruling today almost guarantees a reduction in warrantless cellphone searches of arrestees.\u00a0 Further, it likely will apply broadly to any technology that can fit the model of \u201cminicomputer.\u201d \u00a0Thus, the Court\u2019s decision favors individual privacy as it relates to technology, and expands Fourth Amendment rights to better fit the modern age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Daniel Bogdan Part 1 in a 2-part series Editor’s note: At the request of the author, the title has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,75,150],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-cell-phones","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-riley-v-california"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/89\/2014\/06\/file0001304334044.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-72","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}