Privacy Win: Cellphone Search Without Warrant Declared Illegal [Privacy]

Score for privacy rights: In a 4-to-3 vote, the Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled that police has no right to search your phone without a search warrant, overruling previous lower court decisions on the matter. This is great news.

In the State of Ohio vs Antwaun Smith, the Supreme Court has declared the search of Smith's cellphone—who was arrested at the time on drug charges—to be unconstitutional, breaking the protection against unreasonable search provided by the Fourth Amendment. The court has decided that cellphones are "capable of storing a wealth of digitized information" and, as such, they should be considered private. Therefore, police should obtain a search warrant before "entering" into the phone to look for evidence against a subject.

It's great to see some reasonable, informed logic in this ocean of stupidness and privacy abuse we live in. [Supreme Court of Ohio's PDF ruling via NYT]



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