"Catherine Crump, acting director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at University of California, Berkeley and co-counsel for Macabeo, said the decision is significant not so much because it safeguards phone data but rather because it resists an expansion of the grounds for warrantless police searches.
Crump noted that millions of Californians commit small traffic infractions every year. If a court had gone the opposite way, "then the power of police to search people going about their daily lives would have been sweeping," she said. This would have applied to people's backpacks and other personal items, if not their smartphones since they were addressed in the Riley decision."
- Date Published:12/05/2016
- Original Publication:The Recorder