Alee Holbrook

6/27/2014
Opinion Column Submission
On Wednesday June 25, the United States Supreme Court passed a unanimous ruling that
requires police officers to obtain a warrant to search the cellphones and personal electronic devices of a
person arrested. In a 9-0 decision, this is the first computer-search case that Supreme Court has ruled on
and the justices opinions indicate strong support for the protection of privacy of the nearly 12 million
citizens that are arrested each year in the United States. Privacy advocates are hailing this ruling as a
landmark victory because it advances and more clearly defines our modern privacy rights and promises
protection for the future of a digital age democracy. However, it is imperative this ruling be evaluated in
the broader context of privacy in a digital age. Despite the gratifying decision, the court ignored a major
contingent in the larger privacy debate: the NSAs continued role in collecting, storing and warrantless
search of massive quantities of data that could be used by the police to criminalize individuals.
In two separate yet similar cases, Riley v. State of California and United States v. Wurie,
defendants were prosecuted for crimes that were only made known when police searched through their
cellphones. In San Diego, David Riley was connected and charged for an earlier gang shooting based off
evidence police found on Rileys smartphone. After being pulled over for expired license plate registration,
his vehicle was impounded and his cellphone seized, officers searched Rileys car and found
semiautomatic weapons. One of the officers noticed evidence of gang affiliation and subsequently
accessed the contents of Rileys smartphone to find any other signs that would connect Riley to the Bloods
gang. Solely using pictures, videos, and text messages from his phone, Riley was then charged with firing
at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and attempted murder. In Boston, Brima
Wurie was arrested by police on suspicion of dealing cocaine. Using information found from his
cellphones call log, police were able to determine where Wurie lived and obtained a warrant to search
Wuries home. Police found over 200 grams of cocaine and marijuana along with a gun and ammunition.
The evidence police found was enough to produce a conviction and 20 year prison term. Neither of these
convictions would have been possible without the police searching the personal phones of the defendants.

Chief Justice Roberts argued that searching cellphones was acute to searching homes, something
that citizens are constitutionally protected against by the Fourth Amendment. A cell phone search would
typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house, wrote Roberts in
the courts opinion. A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in
the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form.
Essentially, the Supreme Court has found that warrantless searches of personal electronic devices are
illegal. Yet, Chief Justice Roberts does not challenge the unfettered access to sensitive records the NSA
collects and stores. In fact, Roberts writes in a footnote, These cases do not implicate the question
whether [sic] the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information amounts to a search under
other circumstances.
Legal analysts say this ruling will extend to the NSA and falls outside the scope of the central issue
at hand. However, as privacy revelations continue to surface from the documents obtained and released
by Edward Snowden, we as a public have evidence that the NSA has been performing unwarranted
searches on our personal metadata for years now. Although the Supreme Court deliberately avoided
addressing mass collection and storage of personal data, this ruling indicates the justices are fully aware
to the fact that technology is generating large quantities of data about us and storing it in places we do not
want. This ruling indicates the Supreme Court is becoming more responsive to how digital information
shapes our society. At best, this ruling is a promising precedent for future cases that will challenge the
governments use of technology, including NSA surveillance.