The original arguments for "search incident to arrest" are for the arresting officers' safety (it's quite reasonable to check if a suspect has a weapon) and to

The original arguments for "search incident to arrest" are for the arresting officers' safety (it's quite reasonable to check if a suspect has a weapon) and to prevent the destruction of evidence. I was surprised to read in the article that previous cases have "given the police broad discretion to search possessions on the person of an arrested suspect, including notebooks, calendars and pagers." Those decisions represented a significant loss of due process. I dislike the administration stance, but they have a fair point. A cell phone isn't substantially different than a paper notebook. Trying to draw an arbitrary distinction between physical and digital media is missing the point. We shouldn't be arguing for stronger protections of digital data. We should be arguing for stronger protections of all data, regardless of how or where it's stored.