The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is an unconstitutional search and seizure for police officers to search someone's cell phone when arresting them, Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr reports. The court said the searching a cell phone doesn't ensure that officers won't be harmed or that evidence won't be destroyed, which are both reasons that officers are allowed to search arrestees while taking them into custody: "'There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. In addition, [United States v.] Robinson regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself. Cell phones, however, place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. A search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson."
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