Rolling Back the National Security State: Cops Now Need a Warrant to Search Your Cell Phone

So the Supremes have held, in a unanimous decision.

The Court rejected every argument made to it by prosecutors and police that officers should be free to inspect the contents of any cellphone taken from an arrestee. It left open just one option for such searches without a court order: if police are facing a dire emergency, such as trying to locate a missing child or heading off a terrorist plot. But even then, it ruled, those “exigent” exceptions to the requirement for a search warrant would have to satisfy a judge after the fact.

The ruling was such a sweeping embrace of digital privacy that it even reached remotely stored private information that can be reached by a hand-held device — as in the modern-day data storage “cloud.” And it implied that the tracking data that a cellphone may contain about the places that an individual visited also is entitled to the same shield of privacy.

The Fourth Amendment may be in sad shape, but it's not dead yet.

Note that all bets are off when you go through Customs. So if you have a lot of personal crap on your phone, leave it at home and get a sterile one when you go abroad.