If the suspect had a screen lock, would that create a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Would you have a problem with an officer opening a suspect's mail at the scene of an incident? Ripping paper is just as little effort as hitting buttons on a phone.
De facto privacy is very different from this legal concept of "expectation of privacy". Obviously a man with a gun can violate your de facto privacy easily. The question is, what boundary are you going to put on the legitimacy of that activity?
We don't require warrants to violate your de facto privacy - we require them to violate your legal expectation of privacy.
If the suspect had a screen lock, would that create a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Yes, I think so. If the message was just displayed there, and the phone is not in the person's pocket, I don't see any more privacy for that than a post-it note on a refrigerator.
Re: the envelope, if the cop is pressing buttons to access an unlocked phone, as I said, I think that's problematical without a warrant.
We don't require warrants to violate your de facto privacy - we require them to violate your legal expectation of privacy.
But I am not sure we should require warrants to protect privacy that doesn't actually exist in any manner in normal de facto space.
One reason I definitely want to see Android n+1 have multiple user accounts is because of the terror that strikes in all of our hearts when we hand our phones to a friend to borrow.
The officer discovered the phone in a room in the apartment he had not been invited to. The officer had, at the time, no evidence of wrongdoing by the boy's caretakers. The officer claimed the phone "beeped", whereupon he picked it up, opened it, clicked past an error message about a past-due bill, and then scrolled through the message history on the phone.
Would you have a problem with an officer opening a suspect's mail at the scene of an incident? Ripping paper is just as little effort as hitting buttons on a phone.
De facto privacy is very different from this legal concept of "expectation of privacy". Obviously a man with a gun can violate your de facto privacy easily. The question is, what boundary are you going to put on the legitimacy of that activity?
We don't require warrants to violate your de facto privacy - we require them to violate your legal expectation of privacy.