Courts Divided Over Searches of Cellphones
By SOMINI SENGUPTA November 25, 2012
Judges and lawmakers across the country are wrangling over whether and when law enforcement authorities can peer into suspects' cellphones, and the cornucopia of evidence they provide.
A Rhode Island judge threw out cellphone evidence that led to a man being charged with the murder of a 6-year-old boy, saying the police needed a search warrant. A court in Washington compared text messages to voice mail messages that can be overheard by anyone in a room and are therefore not protected by state privacy laws.
In Louisiana, a federal appeals court is weighing whether location records stored in smartphones deserve privacy protection, or whether they are "business records" that belong to the phone companies.
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