The Supreme Court Saves Cellphone Privacy

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

JUNE 25, 2014

The nine justices of the Supreme Court — whose average age is 68 — often admit to being unfamiliar with modern technology, if not befuddled by it. While listening to oral arguments in April, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked, with apparent sincerity, why anyone other than a criminal would carry two cellphones.

Yet in a gratifyingly sweeping ruling on Wednesday, the court embraced a central reality of the digital age and protected such phones from being searched without a warrant during an arrest, except in rare circumstances.

“Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a unanimous court. “With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life.’ ”

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