type of information to convey far more than previously possible.” Id. at 394. Just by looking at one category of information—for example, “a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions” or “a record of all [a defendant’s] communications … as would routinely be kept on a phone”—“the sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed.”[1] Id. at 394–95. In short, Riley rejected the premise that permitting a search of all content on a cellphone is “materially indistinguishable” from other types of searches. Id. at 393. Absent unusual circumstances, probable cause is required to search each category of content. Id. at 395 (stating that “certain types of data” on cellphones are “qualitatively different” from other types); id. at 400 (analyzing data from a phone’s call log feature separately); see also Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2217 (2018) (analyzing data from a phone’s cell tower location signals separately).
This distinction dovetails with the Fourth Amendment’s imperative that the “place to be searched” be “particularly describ[ed].” U.S. Const. amend. IV.; cf., e.g., United States v. Beaumont, 972 F.2d 553, 560 (5th Cir. 1992) (“General warrants [which lack particularity] have long been abhorred in the jurisprudence of both England and the United States.”). Probable cause and particularity are concomitant because “—at least under some circumstances—the lack of a more specific description will make it apparent that there has not been a sufficient showing to the magistrate that the
- ↑ Moreover, the Supreme Court intimated in Riley that searching a phone may be akin to searching a defendant’s house—if not even more invasive. Id. at 396–97 (noting that a “cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house” because a phone “not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home,” but it also “contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form”) (emphases added); id. at 403 (comparing general searches of cellphones to the “general warrants and writs of assistance … which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity” against which the Founders fought) (emphasis added).
6
