This is a somewhat limited bit not insignificant ruling. Techdirt reports that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has “sort of” decided that the Supreme Court’s Riley decision isn’t just for phones. It covers digital cameras, too. In the case in question, a robbery suspect’s backpack was searched. In it, amongst other things, they found a camera. The police searched it without a warrant and discovered a photograph of the suspect next to what was later to be a stolen gun. This led to two convictions. One for stolen property and the other for carrying a firearm without a license.
Naturally, the defendant challenged the evidence resulting from the warrantless search of the backpack. Much of it was overturned, but the court sees digital cameras to be no different to cellphones.
The court pointed out that there’s nothing in the law that allows offers to search something without a warrant if that something poses no risk to offer safety or the preservation of evidence. Searching the backpack itself is fine, because there was the chance it could have contained a weapon. Searching the camera isn’t, because it isn’t a weapon (which was the observation made by the US Supreme Court about cellphones). They also decided that the possibility of evidence destruction was even lower in a camera with limited or zero network connectivity. The court also finds that digital cameras are to be just as likely filled with private information as cellphones. People photograph all kinds of things. And then there’s clients to worry about. While I’m sure this particular individual was not a professional photographer, such events can happen to anybody. The US Supreme Court’s Riley decision does not go as far as to explicitly include digital cameras. But rather than challenge the Supreme Court’s ruling, the court found the warrantless search a violation of the state’s version of the Bill of Rights. Hence the “sort of” at the top of this post. So, fairly limited in reach, but still quite significant. It shows that at least one court values the private data contained with one’s camera just as much as one’s phone. I can see this trend starting to spread. Not only to other areas, but to more digital devices as well. […] Indeed, with the twin threats justifying the search incident to arrest exception mitigated here because the camera was secure in the custody of the police, the officers had ample opportunity to obtain a search warrant. We carry around so much more information with us now than we did when many of these laws were made. And private information, too, about others as well as ourselves. [via Techdirt]
