"Police officers should be prevented from accessing people's personal mobile phone data without a search warrant, a privacy campaign group has said.
At least 26 police forces in England and Wales have begun using new technology to extract data from phones.
And Privacy International said there had been no public debate about the rapid rollout of this practice.
But one former chief constable said obtaining a warrant in each instance would be "just not practical".
Police 'should need warrant' to download phone data "Police officers should be prevented from accessing people's personal mobile phone data without a search warrant, a privacy campaign group has said.
At least 26 police forces in England and Wales have begun using new technology to extract data from phones.
And Privacy International said there had been no public debate about the rapid rollout of this practice.
But one former chief constable said obtaining a warrant in each instance would be "just not practical".
Fails to mention that police have lawfully seized the phone at this point….
Fine with me… as long as when Law Enforcement have their warrant, the suspect is compelled to provide their password or PIN! twisted
This confuses me…I'm not in the UK but this shows a lack of basic understanding of law and legal rights as a citizen IMO.
I'm Canadian but my "non-lawyer" understanding is that a person's phone can be seized/searched under the following criteria
1) Consent - the owner gives permission
2) Court Order/Warrant - a judge/legal system gives permission
3) Incident upon arrest - if your phone is on your person at arrest, it can be searched along with everything else in your possession at that time.
Now if that parallels the UK, their main point of contention seems to be around educating people who give consent what they're consenting to.
They don't really mention it but usually the bigger issue is around point #3? Which has been legally debated in several countries several times, what is permissible to search upon arrest. I feel the article kinda misses the point on this.
It's not a technology problem on "new ways to access a phone", it's a legal problem where they forget to do any legal research whatsoever or an education problem on what you're consenting to.
My 2 cents…
Jamie
This confuses me…I'm not in the UK but this shows a lack of basic understanding of law and legal rights as a citizen IMO.
I'm Canadian but my "non-lawyer" understanding is that a person's phone can be seized/searched under the following criteria
1) Consent - the owner gives permission
2) Court Order/Warrant - a judge/legal system gives permission
3) Incident upon arrest - if your phone is on your person at arrest, it can be searched along with everything else in your possession at that time.
/quote]Basically same rules as in UK.