Neither Automobile Nor Exigency Exception Justified Warrantless Search of Mobile Phone

The U.S. Supreme Court’s distinction for privacy purposes between mobile phones and more traditional information “containers” isn’t limited to the Fourth Amendment’s search-incident-to-arrest exception that the justices addressed in Riley v. California, 2014 BL 175779, U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held Dec. 11. (United States v. Camou, 2014 BL 347953, 9th Cir., No. 12-50598, 12/11/14).

Extrapolating from the reasoning in Riley, the court shut down two other potential routes for generally allowing law enforcement officers to search mobile phones without a warrant: the automobile exception and the exigent-circumstances exception.

In Riley ...