Calif. Governor Veto Allows Warrantless Cellphone Searches

[The Northerner]

California Gov. Jerry Brown is vetoing legislation requiring police to obtain a court warrant to search the mobile phones of suspects at the time of any arrest.

The Sunday veto means that when police arrest anybody in the Golden State, they may search that person’s mobile phone — which in the digital age likely means the contents of persons’ e-mail, call records, text messages, photos, banking activity, cloud-storage services, and even where the phone has traveled.

Police across the country are given wide latitude to search persons incident to an arrest based on the premise of officer safety. Now the nation’s states are beginning to grapple with the warrantless searches of mobile phones done at the time of an arrest.

Brown’s veto message abdicated responsibility for protecting the rights of Californians and ignored calls from civil liberties groups and this publication to sign the bill — saying only that the issue is too complicated for him to make a decision about. He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message, he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/warrantless-phone-searches/

[EdMaven]

1. Asshole. His veto is a decision.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Why is Jerry Brown being such a coozie fugazi all of a sudden? Has anyone else noticed this?

:wtf:

PB

[EdMaven]

4. He's always been that. He's not a "man of the left" & never has been.

[Dawson Leery]

3. If the issue is "too complicated" perhaps you should not have

run in the first place.

[LooseWilly]

5. He was the Attorney General before becoming governor... he can't be expected to understand the law..

:sarcasm:

Obviously Brown is counting on support from law enforcement types for re-election far moreso than the "professional left"... once again, it's "hippy punching politics" to borrow a notion from Maddow.

Weak. I knew I would have felt dirty if I'd folded and voted for him...

[boppers]

6. Misleading headline.

The veto "allows" current Supreme Court decisions to stand. It was legal before the veto, and legal after it.

[EdMaven]

7. He's vetoing LEGISLATION passed by REPRESENTATIVES of the people.

The OP is not in the least misleading.

Nor was it "legal" in california before this legislation if by legal you mean enacted in formal law & common, normal practice.

Because of that January ruling from the state’s high court, the California Legislature passed legislation to undo it — meaning Brown is taking the side of the Supreme Court’s seven justices instead of the state Legislature. The Assembly approved the bill 70-0 and the state Senate, 32-4.

[boppers]

8. You are somewhat correct.

He (Brown) is saying that the current interpretation of the law, as written, stands.

If you are arrested, and have the name of 10 coke dealers in your wallet, or 10 coke dealers in your cellphone, a separate warrant is not needed to search either object.

What makes it interesting is that a cell phone can be both active, and passive, information.

Say, for example, your last IM from your cell phone was "getting busted on 33rd/Sandy, need help". Such a message in a wallet would be meaningless, but on a cell phone, indicates a possible immanent threat.

[EdMaven]

9. "Current" = as of January. Yeah, a long tradition.

[boppers]

10. If you had a telegraph form, on you, 80 years ago:

That said:
"I might be arrested tonight"

...It would be evidence.

Long story short: If you are arrested, with incriminating objects, or incriminating information, on your person, police don't need a warrant to search it.

"Yeah, a long tradition."

Yes.

It actually goes back many hundreds of years. If you were stopped for murder 400 years ago, a "warrant" was not needed to check if you had blood on your sword.

[Lyric]

11. The flaw in your reasoning is that phones are not like telegraph forms or bloody swords.

A phone is more like a doorway to your life. Through it, almost all the digital details of your life can be scrutinized. Carrying around a telegraph form didn't allow officers to read your personal mail for the past year and a half or watch home videos of your kids at Disney World. By searching a telegraph form, the cops couldn't gain access to your bank account, your credit cards, and all the information about both yourself AND your friends that's available on social networks like Facebook.

The purpose of allowing warrantless searches upon arrest was to protect officer safety. They need to make sure that you weren't carrying anything that you could hurt an officer with. But searching your phone is exactly like searching your computer, and it's a lot MORE like searching your house than it is like searching a telegraph form. Information from your phone is not (and cannot be) a clear and present danger to the arresting officer. This is nothing but a huge power grab on the part of the police.

I hope the California legislature overrides his veto, which SHOULD be easy, so long as everyone who voted for it the first time also votes to override the veto.

[EdMaven]

12. Thank you. That poster needs to think about it in the context of what's going on now

with Occupy and civil liberties generally.

[boppers]

13. Who keeps that much access on their phone? Or unlocked on a laptop, even?

That's, well, *insane* to me... but I guess that's your point. Professionally, I've had to deal with having my hardware searched constantly, and so I don't keep crap like that unlocked on a phone or a laptop.

Oh, and by the way, it's perfectly legal to search computers without a warrant when crossing national borders. It's a good thing to know if you travel a lot.