Abstract
Almost every American carries a cell phone in their pocket. But modern phones do much more than simply send and receive calls. Cell phones in the twenty-first century contain a digital record of one’s entire life. The wealth of private information that can be gathered from a cell phone has led the Supreme Court to recognize the need for increased digital data protections. In Riley v. California, the Court recognized the privacy concerns associated with modern cell phones and curtailed warrantless searches of a phone incident to arrest. In Carpenter v. United States, the Court acknowledged smartphones can generate a detailed record of every user’s movement and strictly circumscribed the government’s ability to obtain that record from a cell carrier. This Note contends that the same privacy rationales underpinning Riley and Carpenter demand a reevaluation of the abandonment doctrine as it pertains to password protected cell phones. As an exception to the warrant requirement, the abandonment doctrine applies when a person forfeits any expectation of privacy in an object. In the years following Riley and Carpenter, state and federal courts have continued to employ the doctrine to justify warrantless searches of cell phones. This Note explains why such decisions are wrong and argues password protection is a dispositive factor when determining if a warrant must be obtained before searching an “abandoned” phone.
Recommended Citation
Samuel Chan,
Ending Arbitrary Invasions by Shielding "Abandoned" Password Protected Phones,
76 Fla. L. Rev.
825
(2024).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol76/iss3/6