The fourth amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches by law enforcement. That means that a police officer can only search you if they have probable cause, i.e. during an arrest, while serving a warrant, and even during a traffic stop. What most people aren’t aware is that when a police officer stops you during a traffic stop, they not only have the right to search your car, they can search through your electronic devices such as your phone.

A recent article by Adam M. Gershowitz of the South Texas College of Law titled “The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment” sheds more light into this topic. According to Gershowitz, “Under the search incident to arrest doctrine, officers are entitled to search the body of the person they are arresting to ensure that he does not have any weapons or will not destroy any evidence. The search incident to an arrest is automatic and allows officers to open containers on the person, even if there is no probable cause to believe there is anything illegal inside of those containers.” The term “container” also applies to electronic devices such as cell phones, or for the sake of Gershowitz’s argument, the iPhone. This means that at any point during a traffic stop, police can lawfully look at your phone’s music, movies, pictures, emails, text messages, call history, etc. Since all this personal information is on a device on your person, all the information stored inside it can be used against you.

This is pretty scary. Many people store personal material in their electronic devices so it’s pretty troublesome that law enforcement officials can look into them even if it has nothing to do with why you were pulled over. Of course, most people have nothing THAT incriminating on their phones that would cause them to worry about this but to all those people that have particularly racy images or video on their phones, and I know some people do, remove them before you’re embarrassed by an overly curious police officer. Read the full text below. You will have to download it to read it and by the way, it’s 33 pages long.

[The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment]

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