Appeals Court: Abandoned Phones Don’t Equal Abandoned Privacy Rights
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Progress!
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Interesting. If throw my tax returns in the garbage, and take the garbage can to the curb — there’s no expectation of privacy. The law says anyone can dig through the trash once it’s at the curb.
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Interesting. If throw my tax returns in the garbage, and take the garbage can to the curb — there’s no expectation of privacy. The law says anyone can dig through the trash once it’s at the curb.
I think the difference is, your phone is encrypted. In order to access any of the data, an attacker has to brute force your password (unless you left it powered on and it hasn't run out of battery yet), which means a clear security boundary that had to be broken.
Of course, banning circumvention is clearly bad in lots of other contexts (DMCA), but I think that a phone dropped in an emergency is a pretty good case. There's maybe even an argument than an unencrypted drive should be protected in that context, though I'm not sure it's my position.