Related Stories
Supreme Court says police must get warrants for most cellphone searches
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: July 1st, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/supreme-court-police-...
The Supreme Court unequivocally ruled [on June 25] that privacy rights are not sacrificed to 21st-century technology, saying unanimously that police generally must obtain a warrant before searching the cellphone of someone they arrest. While the specific protection may not affect the average American, the court made a bold statement that the same concern about government prying that animated the nations birth applies to the abundance of digital information about an individual in the modern world. Modern cellphones hold for many Americans the privacies of life, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a court united behind the opinions expansive language. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Roberts said that in most cases when police seize a cellphone from a suspect, the answer is simple: Get a warrant. The ruling has no impact on National Security Agency data-collection programs revealed in the past year or law enforcement use of aggregated digital information. But lawyers involved in those issues said the emphatic declarations signaled the justices interest in the dangers of government overreach. Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said the decision is more than simply a warning to government officials employing high-tech forms of government surveillance. This is a cruise missile across the bow of lawyers defending warrantless search programs, Vladeck said.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing privacy news articles from reliable major media sources.
Related Stories
Top Inspiring News Articles
Top Inspiring News Articles from Years Past
