cases require us to decide how the search
incident to arrest doctrine applies to
modern cell phones, which are now such
a pervasive and insistent part of daily
life that the proverbial visitor from Mars
might conclude they were an important
feature of human anatomy. A smart phone
of the sort taken from Riley was unheard
of ten years ago; a significant majority of
American adults now own such phones.”
The Court discusses, in detail, the
capabilities of modern cell phones regarding storage of private information and the
invasion of privacy which access to the
phone creates. “Indeed, a cell phone search
would typically expose to the government
far more than the most exhaustive search
of a house: A phone not only contains in
digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a
broad array of private information never
found in a home in any form....”
The Court concludes that “our holding, of course, is not that the information
on a cell phone is immune from search;
it is instead that a warrant is generally
required before such a search, even when
a cell phone is seized incident to arrest.”
The Court also recognizes that exigent circumstances might exist which will allow
a warrantless search of the phone such
as the “need to prevent the imm