The Supreme Court Saves Cellphone Privacy

[Commentary] The nine justices of the Supreme Court -- whose average age is 68 -- often admit to being unfamiliar with modern technology, if not befuddled by it. While listening to oral arguments in April, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked, with apparent sincerity, why anyone other than a criminal would carry two cellphones. Yet in a gratifyingly sweeping ruling, the court embraced a central reality of the digital age and protected such phones from being searched without a warrant during an arrest, except in rare circumstances. The ruling reaffirmed the essence of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures -- “one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself,” as the court said -- even though the Bill of Rights was written by men who could not have imagined an iPhone in their maddest dreams.