Cell Phones and The Constitution

Recently the Supreme Court got a case dealing with Fourth Amendment and cell phones.  The case was about a man who got 15 years in prison because they found some evidence on his cell phone.  The ruling was that the police should have gotten a warrant to search his cellular device and that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights.  This now sets a precedents requiring law enforcement to recieve a warrant for searching electronic devices.  I personally agree with the Supreme Courts decision that requires police officers to get warrants.  "These days days law enforcement can sometimes use e-mail to get a warrant within 15 minutes," (17).  Getting a warrant today is really not that hard.  The privacy that this decision creates is quite important because the amount of information you can get off of your cell phone.  "An average smartphone can hold 100 times more information than the entire 72,000-page collection of James Madison's papers in the Library of Congress," (16).  All this information on your phone is about you and it is a violation of your privacy if the police can access it with out a warrant.  

In emergency situations the decision does not have to be upheld, but in all other situations the decision  must be upheld.  This is because in emergency situations police officers have to violate your privacy without a warrant as stated in the Fourth Amendment.  The main problem is that the suspects can delete the information off their cell phones .  "The possibility that evidence could be destroyed or hidden by remote devices or encryption programs could be addressed  by an officer turning off the phone or placing it in a special evidence bag that blocks the signal until a warrant can be obtained," (16).  This desicion is good in the long run too because it is protecting American Citizens from the government.  This decision may also lead to some people filing law suits against the NSA for the surveillance program used to collect information from our cellular devices.