3 ms·

Lock your phones. Do not consent to searches, saying it cleary and decisively. Ask why you are being held, and continue to ask if you can leave.

• dkokelley 15y ago
  None of that would have mattered in this case. He was arrested already. The phone search was part of an "inventory" search for impounding the car. A judge would have issued a warrant for the phone contents as he did for the home later in the case (where the authorities found guns, drugs, and money). The interesting part of this case has to do with the precedent that a cell phone is a "container" just like a glove box or safe. As such, when being legally searched (such as when doing an inventory search) it can be accessed and the contents claimed as evidence.
  • hack_edu 15y ago
    My advice is assuming you've yet to be arrested or questioned thoroughly. Cops are legally required to answer these questions truthfully, and if don't ask them specifically cops are known to play with semantics and probing questions to get you to implicate yourself. Approaching a police interaction like I said above helps you end the interaction before letting the cop get near the point of reasonable suspicion.
  • tptacek 15y ago
    This is incorrect in a couple of interesting directions, if you read the (annoyingly numerous) other comments I've written in the thread. Here, I'll just suffice it to say that even in an arrest search, and maybe even in a warranted search, if the police can't decrypt your phone, that's the ballgame.