Global Ganja Report

The California Supreme Court on Jan. 3 allowed police to search arrestees' cell phones without a warrant, saying defendants lose their privacy rights for any items they're carrying when taken into custody. Under US Supreme Court precedents, "this loss of privacy allows police not only to seize anything of importance they find on the arrestee's body...but also to open and examine what they find," the state court found in a 5-2 ruling.

The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, cited US Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s upholding searches of cigarette packages and clothing that officers seized during an arrest and examined later without seeking a warrant from a judge. But the dissenting justices said those rulings shouldn't be extended to today's cell phones, which can store huge amounts of data.

The month's decision allows police "to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee's person," said dissenting Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.

US District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco ruled in May 2007 that police had violated drug defendants' rights by searching their cell phones after their arrests. (San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 3)

Photo by thivierr.