Riley v. California

Statement

Today, in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court by a 9-0 vote ruled that police officers may not search the data on cell phones seized incident to an arrest. While law enforcement officers may hold a phone seized at the time of arrest, they must get a warrant before accessing the content stored on the phone, including text messages, photos, and emails.

In the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that a 16-gigabyte cell phone can hold "millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos," and that such a large amount of data in such varied formats presents significant consequences for privacy. These concerns are magnified in the context of the limitless storage capacity of email and cloud computing, an area where law enforcement is able to access content older than 180 days without a warrant.

I believe the Supreme Court's unanimous decision demonstrates the shift in the expectations of privacy we have for our digital information. This case underscores the need to extend similar protection to the information we store in our email and in the cloud. The Leahy-Lee ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607, would require that the government get a warrant to access documents and content we store in the cloud and in our email accounts, eliminating the antiquated 180-day rule.

The ECPA Amendments Act was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote and awaits consideration on the Senate floor.

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