Supreme Court of Canada

By Lala Qadir

The Supreme Court of Canada recently issued a 4-3 decision that gave the police a green light in conducting warrantless searches of an arrestee’s cell phone as long as the search is directly related to the suspected crime and records are kept.  Over three dissenting judges that characterized mobile phones as “intensely personal and uniquely pervasive sphere of privacy,” the majority held a balance can be struck that “permits searches of cell phones incident to arrest, provided that the search—both what is searched and how it is searched—is strictly incidental to the arrest and that the police keep detailed notes of what has been searched and why.”

Canada’s high court ruling stands in stark contrast to that of the United States.  Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court heard argument on two cell phone cases—Riley and Wurie—ultimately holding that warrantless searches of cell phones, even when held incident to an arrest, were unconstitutional unless they were subject to specific exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
Continue Reading Canada’s Highest Court Rules That Police Can Search Cell Phone Contents After Arrest