Know Your (Phone) Rights

Two big tech policy questions havent been answered yet. And were in trouble if we dont figure them out.

LAST FEBRUARY, in a questioning room at Newark Airport, border officers told Rejhane Lazoja, who was returning from Switzerland, to unlock her iPhone 6s Plus. She refused, and the agent took it and kept it for 130 days. That’s not unusual for a border crossing in 2018, where the Fourth Amendment is flexible. What is unusual is that in August, her attorney filed something called a motion for return of property. Meaning, she asked the court to compel border agents to delete the information copied from her phone. It was the first time that motion had been used for data, not just tangible property.

I thought we settled this in 2014 with Riley v. California, in which the Supreme Court acknowledged that the ones and zeros tied to our names in faraway data centers are protected from unreasonable search and seizure. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “[A] cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house.” I get that law enforcement sometimes needs to get inside a house. I’ve interviewed engineers at Palantir, the software platform that informed the bin Laden raid. I’ve seen the surveillance systems used by NYPD counter terrorism officers. Intelligence can save lives.