Do Cops Need a Warrant to Search Your Phone?

As the Occupy demonstrations have grown, videos and photographs taken by protesters have begun to circulate on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere online. Many show police using physical force or pepper spray against the assembled protesters. If you're at Occupy Wall Street or one of its spin-off incarnations, you may find yourself in a situation in which a cop asks for you to hand over your cell phone or your camera. In particular, if you're there as a citizen-journalist, hoping to document and publish the action, you may find your work -- sources, interviews, video footage -- at risk.

Can you refuse to turn over your devices? Do the police have a right to search your photos and video footage? Do they need a warrant to do so There's no simple answer -- the laws are varied state to state and, to make matters more complicated, constantly in flux. The basic principle is that police need a warrant to both seize and search your cell phone, but that principle is not absolute. There are two major reasons that police may not need a warrant to either search or seize your phone: if you are arrested, or, if they believe that you have footage of a crime taking place and that you plan to destroy the footage. If arrested, the police can seize your cell phone without a warrant as part of a "search incident to arrest," an exception that dates back to English common law. What is currently being disputed in the courts is whether they then need a warrant to search a mobile device's contents.