After police in Indiana discovered a batch of cellphones at the site of a drug bust, they did some digital sleuthing and searched each device for its telephone number. Those numbers allowed investigators to get the call histories of each cellphone owner. Those logs connected them with the illegal drug operation, according to Reuters.
One of the men found guilty in the trial appealed his conviction. In his appeal, his lawyers argued that the police had no right to search his phone without a warrant.
That argument didn't fly with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. The court found that any infringement of the defendant's privacy by the police was so minor that it didn't violate his constitutional protection against unreasonable search.
Judge Richard Posner's decision examined the proper role of the police in handling personal technology found at crime scenes.
"Lurking behind this issue is the question whether and when a laptop or desktop computer, tablet, or other type of computer (whether called a 'computer' or not) can be searched without a warrant," wrote Judge Posner.
Posner went on to compare a cell phone to a personal journal or diary. Police can open a journal to find out the owner's address, but can't read anything else without a warrant. According to the judge, the same should be true of cell phones: finding an owner's number is fine, but police can't read text messages or look at photos stored on the phone without a judge's permission.
But prosecutors in the case argued that police tend to be in a race against the clock to obtain data from cellphones -- since they can often be wiped clean of data by their owners, from a remote location.
The decision left plenty of legal questions for other judges to interpret. For one thing, Posner chose not to answer the question of just how far police can go in diving into a suspect's recovered cellphone.
Do you think police should be able to look at a suspect's text messages or other data without a warrant? Sound off in the comments below.