There is a bill currently being proposed in the New York state legislature that, if it becomes law, will allow the police to search your cell phone at the site of a traffic stop or an accident. The device is the creation of an Israeli company called Cellebrite and it is designed to allow police officers to see if a cell phone was being used prior to an accident.
If the proposed legislation is allowed to become law, New York would be the first state in the country to allow their police to use it. Cellebrite has declared that the gadget will not allow the police access to apps or to private conversations. All the textalyzer is created to do, they say, is to be able to determine if a particular cell phone was being used prior to the stop or the accident.
Part of the legislation will contain language that will give the police “implied consent”. This, basically, means that the government has already determined that you will consent to your phone being search. Apparently, the politicians of New York state don’t feel that the search and seizure rules for the government that are strictly laid out in the Fourth Amendment, will not be violated by the government with this proposed law. The New York Civil Liberties Union(NYCLU) has taken a specific objection to this proposed law.
Executive director of the NYCLU, Donna Leiberman, said that, “The technology may be, in fact, scanning through the content of people’s phones and collecting data even if that’s not apparent. And even if you finely tune the technology, there are many cases where people will be fined for lawful activity. There are several ways someone could be using a phone in line with distracted driving laws that could run afoul of this test.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), too, has jumped into the fray and agrees with civil liberties groups that such technology is perfectly created for government and law enforcement abuse.
Lee Tien, a senior attorney on staff for the EFF commented that, “I think that a law that essentially requires you hand over your phone to a cop in a roadside situation without a warrant is a non-starter. I know that the supporters of this law talk about how it is designed to keep police away from these sensitive areas of your life. But, really, that’s ridiculous. They’re human and they stray and make errors in judgment.”
PHOTO SOURCE: Communitynewspapers.com