
Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search After Arrest Violates 4th Amendment [pdf] - driverdan
http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/pdfOpinion.asp?OpinionID=25167
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tptacek
Footnote 30, on Page 13, is very very important to understanding the
limitations of this ruling; the ruling concerns _inventory searches_ and not
the more common _searches incident to arrest_. If you are arrested, in most
locales in the US, it is very likely that evidence taken from your phone _at
the time of your arrest_ will stand up in court. Keep your phones secure.

~~~
chrsstrm
_Keep your phones secure_

Ok, so I get arrested and my phone is taken. Lucky for me my phone is
encrypted and I was able to shut it off before it left my possession. So I've
made it more difficult for the phone to be searched on the spot, but what is
preventing the authorities from compelling me to decrypt the phone eventually?

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breakall
The 5th amendment?

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briandh
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted for this, unless you are being
interpreted as snarky (whereas I interpret you as offering a noncommittal
answer).

While it has not been settled in court yet, IIRC, the 5th amendment right
against self-incrimination is the legal rationale used to argue against forced
decryption [1].

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-eff-amicus-
brief-a...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-eff-amicus-brief-argues-
fifth-amendment-prohibits-compelled-decryption)

~~~
breakall
I was tentative because the direction that two centuries of case law has taken
the bill of rights often surprises me.

Thanks for the link. I googled for a bit to see if there had been a decision
by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, but it doesn't appear so.

I watched a bit of the oral argument [1] from last November, and the state's
argument was that since they were only asking for an order for the defendant
to decrypt the data (not hand over the decryption key), the the defendant's
5th amendment rights would not be violated.

[1]
[http://www2.suffolk.edu/sjc/archive/2013/SJC_11358.html](http://www2.suffolk.edu/sjc/archive/2013/SJC_11358.html)

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dmix
In Canada, if the phone has a password police need a search warrant to go
through it.

Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a
disturbance on a bus:

> One morning, Anthony Granville was arrested for the Class C offense of
> causing adisturbance on the school bus. His cell phone was taken from him
> during the bookingprocedure and placed in the jail property room.

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pavel_lishin
> _Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a
> disturbance on a bus_

That's a pretty vague term. We don't know what, exactly, his disturbance on a
bus consisted of.

~~~
Crito
Agreed, a "disturbance" on a moving vehicle has the potential to be rather
serious. If it was hitting some other kid with a spitball then an arrest would
be unreasonable, but something interfering with the driver would be much more
serious.

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sushirain
"Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search". This title is a garden-path
sentence.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

~~~
waqf
How so? What is the misleading interpretation here?

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chacham15
It doesnt mean that the language is misleading but rather that the natural
parsing of the language is wrong.

I.e. we naturally parse this sentence as "(Texas) Appeals (Court Rules Phone
Search)" which is wrong. The correct parse is "(Texas Appeals Court) Rules
(Phone Search)". I.e. at first glance we think that "appeals" is a verb rather
than an adjective.

~~~
shawn-furyan
For the first example to parse, wouldn't it need to be "(Texas) Appeals
(Court's Rule of phone search)..." or something along those lines? That is,
the grouping doesn't parse correctly without at least a possessive apostrophe
which the Title lacks. I'm failing to detect a correct parsing under the
grouping you offer. I'm not sure that a parsing path that requires parsing
errors can be considered the more likely for the reader to take. In my case, I
parsed it correctly from the beginning.

~~~
dionidium
You're missing the point. It's not that the sentence has to have multiple
logical interpretations; it's that your brain begins to parse it one way and
then comes to words that don't fit that interpretation. I had to jump back to
the beginning twice because I assumed "appeals" was the verb at first.

~~~
shawn-furyan
OK, that makes sense. I guess then I'm not sure whether this was meant as a
criticism of the title or just pointing out the feature. Since "Texas Appeals
Court" is a single entity, it seams like a reasonable way to begin the
headline, especially given the general convention that headlines avoid
unnecessary prepositions such as in the possible alternative "Appeals Court in
Texas". To my reading, the garden path ends at the third word, which doesn't
seem too terribly bad for a headline. Perhaps I'm missing some subtle
annoyance though.

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kyrra
News coverage on today's ruling: [http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-
court-expands-cell-...](http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-court-
expands-cell-phone-privacy-rights/ndc9W/)

EFF story on the case from a year ago when the case was going to trial:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/eff-texas-high-
court-c...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/eff-texas-high-court-cell-
phone-isnt-pair-pants)

The EFF post gives some background on the case in question.

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rosser
Skimming the ruling, this is pretty much exactly the line of reasoning I'd
hoped a court would use in considering these issues. Yes, it turns out, a
phone is not just like a pair of pants. Who knew?

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essayist
Google Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/pdfOpinion.asp?OpinionID=25167)

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allsystemsgo
Interesting to see the conversations in the court room. You'd think they'd be
more intellectual or high minded. You'd think they would cite specific law
nomenclature or cases. But it really is just off the cuff opinions being
thrown about.

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dtrizzle
Texas is doing better than California on this issue:
[http://www.petersesq.com/2014/02/cell-phone-searches-ca-
vs-t...](http://www.petersesq.com/2014/02/cell-phone-searches-ca-vs-tx/)

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sl1e
Page 13 ref 29: Is this saying that I am exempt from unreasonable search if it
is known that I let others(someone) use my phone. That by letting someone use
it I no longer assume the "expectation of Privacy"?

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hippich
So it seems cop screwed up. He could obtain proper search warrant, but he did
not. So phone search is allowed, just as usual, with proper warrant. Otherwise
- it is illegal search.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I see where the officer had sufficient cause for that warrant. It
sounds like the subsequent felony charge was unrelated to the original
offense.

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gregcohn
This is exactly the point of getting a warrant: to have this dialogue with a
judge.

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bradleysmith
have another link anywhere?

I'm catching an internal server error trying to find that PDF.

~~~
driverdan
Here's a Google Drive link for online viewing:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_UAHWnblkuSmZtSVhDQldUb3c](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_UAHWnblkuSmZtSVhDQldUb3c)

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abjorn
Oh boy, the last time I saw an official state of Texas site give a 500 error
it stayed that way for a month...

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johnny635
Texas rocks!

