Cellphone search ruled to require warrant

Its become almost accepted now that the more we rely on technology, the more our privacy is compromised. Its also generally accepted that law will take a long time to catch up with current technology. Not so with a new ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court regarding cellphones.

The ruling, a 4-to-3 vote, has ruled that police need search warrants to search anyone’s cellphone. The ruling comes because the court recognized that, especially with smartphones, cellphones are “capable of storing a wealth of digitized information.” Because of that, phones should be considered private and not just closed containers on a suspect as they have been before it seems. While the ruling seemed to cite just smartphones as the reason, it ruled that all phones apply, which is good so its not just a guess at who’s phones are protected. Either way, any sort of information stored or sent from a cell phone is now a bit more protected.

It is nice to finally see some of privacy protection for our gadgets. While it is only the Ohio Supreme Court, it shows that there are some out there who do understand that we need more protection on our digital information. One could hope that we might eventually see some sort of national movement to declare cellphones private, and require a warrant to search them. One thing is definite with this ruling: the EFF must be quite happy.

Read [NYTimes] Via [Gizmodo]