If you're arrested in California, data stored on your mobile phone, tablet or other portable computing devices could be seized by police without so much as a search warrant.Read the rest here.
That's thanks to a recent decision by the state's highest court, which declared on Monday that any and all expectations of privacy are lost once a defendant is in state custody.
By a vote of 5-2, the court said police may "rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer," according to the dissenting opinion of Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.
Werdegar was joined by Justice Carlos Moreno in opposing the decision.
"The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Werdegar continued. "As a commentator has noted, '[i]f courts adopted this rule, it would subject anyone who is the subject of a custodial arrest, even for a traffic violation, to a preapproved foray into a virtual warehouse of their most intimate communications and photographs without probable cause.'"
H/T Bill (aka The Godfather)
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