Supreme Court limits warrantless searches of cell phones of arrestees.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police may not automatically search the cell phone of a person subject to a lawful arrest without a warrant.  However, they did not rule out warrantless searches of such phones based on other exceptions to the warrant requirement.  It was good to see the conservatives and Kennedy strengthening 4th Amendment protection in this high tech situation. Cell phones contain so much personal information unrelated to crime that the decision makes a lot of sense.  Certainly the phone presents no threat to the officers.  There may be something of evidentiary value on the phone, but there is such a potential for invasion of privacy unrelated to  criminal activity that such warrantless searches are not reasonable. There was some prior law that could have been stretched to allow such searches as an incident to a lawful arrest.    There are still lots of high-tech search and seizure issues the Court needs to get to.  Stay tuned.