Supreme Court Privacy Ruling

NYT: "Supreme Court Says Phones Can’t Be Searched Without a Warrant"

In a major statement on privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, said the vast amount of data contained on modern cellphones must be protected from routine inspection.

The old rules, Chief Justice Roberts said, cannot be applied to “modern cellphones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”

Analysis from Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog: "Broad cloak of privacy for cellphones".