The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police may not search cellphones belonging to people they arrest without a warrant.
The unanimous ruling in a pair of consolidated cases, delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, amounts to a huge victory for digital privacy rights and a forceful check on government search powers.
The justices concluded that digital advances have enabled the cellphones to hold, for many Americans, “the privacies of life.”
“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 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 closely watched case united liberals and libertarians against the government’s contention that phones can provide critical evidence about crimes that suspects have committed, or about impending threats.
Obama said that he would act unilaterally with or without the Supreme Court.
More at The Hill
