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Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search After Arrest Violates 4th Amendment [pdf]
- bradleysmith 13y agohave another link anywhere? I'm catching an internal server error trying to find that PDF.
- driverdan 13y agoHere's a Google Drive link for online viewing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_UAHWnblkuSmZtSVhDQldUb3c https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_UAHWnblkuSmZtSVhDQldUb3c
- abjorn 13y agoOh boy, the last time I saw an official state of Texas site give a 500 error it stayed that way for a month...
- essayist 13y agoGoogle Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/pdfOpinion.asp?OpinionID=25167 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- dmix 13y agoIn Canada, if the phone has a password police need a search warrant to go through it. Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a disturbance on a bus: > One morning, Anthony Granville was arrested for the Class C offense of causing adisturbance on the school bus. His cell phone was taken from him during the bookingprocedure and placed in the jail property room.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago> Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a disturbance on a bus That's a pretty vague term. We don't know what, exactly, his disturbance on a bus consisted of.
- Crito 13y agoAgreed, a "disturbance" on a moving vehicle has the potential to be rather serious. If it was hitting some other kid with a spitball then an arrest would be unreasonable, but something interfering with the driver would be much more serious.
- tptacek 13y agoThe subsequent felony charge of "Improper Visual Photography" charge was more alarming; here's the statute, though: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/txstatutes/PE/5/21/21.15 http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/txstatutes/PE/5/21/21.15 This actually sounds like a sane law.
- dmix 13y agoSounds alarming for sure, but agreed sounds worthy of criminal investigation. It sounds like there was a dispute over a sexting picture of most likely a girl at the school. The police were called probably from yelling. Not fighting as there is no assault charge. They most certainly heard about the photo but didn't do anything about that at the time. The issue I take is the fact he was put in a jail cell for the disturbance part. Which was the primary factor allowing the police freedom to do what would otherwise be considered violating his rights, during a typical police stop.
- sushirain 13y ago"Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search". This title is a garden-path sentence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
- waqf 13y agoHow so? What is the misleading interpretation here?
- schoen 13y agoI parsed it correctly because I'm used to reading about appeals courts ruling on things, but one could take "rules" as a noun and "phone" as a verb (the court's rules telephoned a search to let the search know that it was illegal?). "Search" could also be a verb, but that makes it more of a stretch (even if we envision a kind of phone called a "rules phone", there would be a singular/plural agreement problem in taking it as the subject of "search").
- datathis 13y agoExactly -- this is just the context of the word rules; when you read legal stuff you know to go instantly to the other meaning.
- chacham15 13y agoIt doesnt mean that the language is misleading but rather that the natural parsing of the language is wrong. I.e. we naturally parse this sentence as "(Texas) Appeals (Court Rules Phone Search)" which is wrong. The correct parse is "(Texas Appeals Court) Rules (Phone Search)". I.e. at first glance we think that "appeals" is a verb rather than an adjective.
- shawn-furyan 13y agoFor the first example to parse, wouldn't it need to be "(Texas) Appeals (Court's Rule of phone search)..." or something along those lines? That is, the grouping doesn't parse correctly without at least a possessive apostrophe which the Title lacks. I'm failing to detect a correct parsing under the grouping you offer. I'm not sure that a parsing path that requires parsing errors can be considered the more likely for the reader to take. In my case, I parsed it correctly from the beginning.
- allsystemsgo 13y agoInteresting to see the conversations in the court room. You'd think they'd be more intellectual or high minded. You'd think they would cite specific law nomenclature or cases. But it really is just off the cuff opinions being thrown about.
- kyrra 13y agoNews coverage on today's ruling: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-court-expands-cell-phone-privacy-rights/ndc9W/ http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-court-expands-cell-... EFF story on the case from a year ago when the case was going to trial: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/eff-texas-high-court-cell-phone-isnt-pair-pants https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/eff-texas-high-court-c... The EFF post gives some background on the case in question.
- johnny635 13y agoTexas rocks!
- hippich 13y agoSo it seems cop screwed up. He could obtain proper search warrant, but he did not. So phone search is allowed, just as usual, with proper warrant. Otherwise - it is illegal search.
- rosser 13y agoSkimming the ruling, this is pretty much exactly the line of reasoning I'd hoped a court would use in considering these issues. Yes, it turns out, a phone is not just like a pair of pants. Who knew?
- tptacek 13y agoFootnote 30, on Page 13, is very very important to understanding the limitations of this ruling; the ruling concerns inventory searches and not the more common searches incident to arrest. If you are arrested, in most locales in the US, it is very likely that evidence taken from your phone at the time of your arrest will stand up in court. Keep your phones secure.
- rosser 13y agoUnfortunately true. When I saw the headline, I was hopeful this was going to be about "incident" searches, and not merely "inventory" searches. I still don't understand how the reasoning behind "incident" searches, which I'd understood to be primarily about the safety of the arresting officers, would apply to the contents of a mobile device, but that's modern criminal justice for you...
- tptacek 13y agoIncident searches are not about the safety of officers (this has come up on HN before). If you follow the cites and the doctrines, it turns out that incident searches have always been about collecting and preserving evidence as much as safety. I think incident searches get confused with Terry stops, which are solely meant to be about officer safety. The unique issue at play in incident phone searches is the notion that a phone is a little like your house; that if you're arrested during (say) a traffic stop, the police don't have the authority to drive to your house and search it too. Similarly, if you're arrested at a traffic stop, getting access to your trunk can be legally iffy too; incident searches are restricted to your immediate vicinity. This is something SCOTUS is going to resolve next year.
- Crito 13y agoIf only there were dogs that could "smell" illegal or incriminating documents on cellphones...
- ensignavenger 13y ago
- dtrizzle 13y agoTexas is doing better than California on this issue: http://www.petersesq.com/2014/02/cell-phone-searches-ca-vs-tx/ http://www.petersesq.com/2014/02/cell-phone-searches-ca-vs-t...
- sl1e 13y agoPage 13 ref 29: Is this saying that I am exempt from unreasonable search if it is known that I let others(someone) use my phone. That by letting someone use it I no longer assume the "expectation of Privacy"?