Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): In two closely watched technology cases, the Supreme Court placed limits on law enforcement and on streaming video services. In a unanimous decision, the court decided police officers need a warrant to search cell phones. And, separately, six of the nine justices sided with broadcast networks against an Internet startup that sought to share their signals without paying a fee.
For more on today’s decisions, we turn as always to Marcia Coyle of “The National Law Journal.”
That first case, Marcia, sounds a little bit like, when is a cell phone not a cell phone?
(LAUGHTER)
MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal: Well, it was a fascinating case, a very straightforward decision by the chief justice.
Actually, it was two cases, Gwen, one from Boston and one from California. The cell phone owners had been lawfully arrested, one for concealed weapons and gang-related activity, the other for drug-related activity. One cell phone owner had a smartphone. The other had the older clip phone.
As you know and as we have talked about, a search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, generally, if police have a warrant, but there are exceptions to the warrant requirement that the court has recognized over the years. And that exception — one of the exceptions played out in the case today.
Police can search you after you have been arrested, generally for two reasons, one, to look for any weapons that might endanger the officer or the public, and also to preserve possible destruction of evidence — preserve destruction of evidence — preserve evidence that might be destruction.
Sorry about that.
GWEN IFILL: I got it.
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