Supreme Court should begin laying out privacy protections for smartphones

[Commentary] Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court is only just coming to grips with that question.

The Court will consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution’s protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The Justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.