One of the health benefits Apple touted of the Apple Watch Series 4 is its ability to detect falls. This means that in the event that you fall, the watch will be able to detect it and will require a prompt from the user, if not it will dial 911 to send someone to your location should you be seriously injured or unconscious.
It sounds good and useful, especially for senior citizens, but it also seems that it could result in the police searching your home and potentially arresting you. This was pointed out by law professor Elizabeth Joh who teaches at the University of California at Davis, who noted on Twitter (via Cult of Mac) that by calling 911, it invites the police to check on you, which in turn means that should you have any illegal items such as contraband in plainview, you could be arrested as a result.
According to Joh, “Consider: your watch (accidentally) alerts the police to check on you: 4th Amend. community caretaking exception means they can enter your home w/o a warrant. Plain view means they may seize contraband/evidence of a crime. Nice work, guys.” As it stands the Fourth Amendment prevents police/law enforcement from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, but since the wearer dialled 911, they can’t argue that the police had searched their home illegally.
While no one is arguing against the usefulness of fall detection, some are now calling for Apple to modify the feature to call the user’s emergency contact instead, as opposed to dialing 911. Whether or not Apple will make these changes remains to be seen, although it should be noted that fall detection is disabled by default unless you’re aged 65 and above.
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