canada-police-officerThanks to the efforts of companies like Apple and Google, police who are trying to unlock a suspect’s cellphone will have their efforts thwarted as neither Apple nor Google holds the keys to unlocking the device. This means that unless the suspect has data stored in the cloud, whatever is on the phone is pretty much safe from prying eyes, unless the suspect were to volunteer to unlock the phone themselves.

Safe to say this has frustrated law enforcement officials to no end, but it seems that over in Canada, it’s an entirely different story. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled by a 4-3 decision that the Canadian police has the right to search cellphones without a warrant during arrests and under certain circumstances.

Prior to this, the police were allowed to search cellphones without the need for a warrant, so essentially what this new ruling does is that it adds specific guidelines that officers need to follow to ensure that the search is just and legal. According to Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, one of the judges who voted against the ruling had this to say:

“I doubt not that police officers faced with this decision would act in good faith, but I do not think that they are in the best position to determine ‘with great circumspection’ whether the law enforcement objectives clearly outweigh the potentially significant intrusion on privacy in the search of a personal cellphone or computer.”

Filed in Cellphones. Read more about .

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