Chief Justice John Roberts cited guidance from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in his recent unanimous decision finding that a warrant is required to search the contents of a cell phone.
NIST’s Guidelines on Mobile Device Forensics was cited three times in the opinion, Riley v California, in which the justices needed to weigh considerations of search and seizure, the use of warrants and cell phone technology.
Basically, the state said the suspect in question posed the risk of erasing critical evidence from his phone – destroying evidence, giving them the right to search it as if they would search the physical area around him, which is permissible.
Prosecutors argued that evidence on the suspect’s phone was at risk of being remotely wiped or encrypted, and as NIST notes, the court cited its mobile forensics guidelines to explain remote wiping, which “occurs when a phone connected to a wireless network receives a signal that erases stored data,” whether by remote signal or by automatically when the phone travels outside a geographical area.
The justices didn’t buy it, observing that both could be prevented by removing the phone’s battery or turning it off, or mitigated by placing the phone in an area impervious to radio waves. Ultimately, the justices ruled that a warrant must be obtained to search a phone, which today, may hold “the privacies of life…”
NIST said it developed the guidelines to help investigators make decisions about the best ways to gather, preserve and report on data from cell phones and other mobile devices.
“As this ruling illustrates, it is important that policy decisions are based on a sound understanding of technological issues,” says Barbara Guttman, manager of the Software Quality Group in NIST’s IT lab.
