Cal Supreme Court Tyranny

John Seiler:

Recall, anyone? Not of Gov. Jerry Brown — yet.

But of the five California Supreme Court “justices” who voted to revoke your Fourth Amendment right “against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Absurdly, the court ruled that, if cops arrest you, they can search not only your person, but everything on your cell phone. The Chronicle reports:

The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, relied on decisions in the 1970s by the nation’s high court upholding searches of cigarette packages and clothing that officers seized during an arrest and examined later without seeking a warrant from a judge.

These “justices” live in California, the world’s high-tech capital, and they don’t know the difference between a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone with more computer power (literally) than was on board the Apollo 11 space capsule that landed men on the moon in 1969.

The dissent:

Monday’s decision allows police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person,” said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, joined in dissent by Justice Carlos Moreno.

So, you’re pulled over for a DUI and taken to the cop shop. A blood test shows you were below the blood-alcohol limit. So they let you go.

But in the meantime, they downloaded info from your cell phone, including sensitive business information. As Wikileaks has shown, it’s difficult to protect information nowadays. And cop property rooms commonly lose confiscated drugs. It’s a lot easier to steal info by loading it onto a thumb drive. So your sensitive info ends up sold on the black market to a business competitor.

Your competitor uses your info to drive you from business. Your company goes broke, unemploying your 1,000 employees. You’re personally bankrupt and go on welfare.

Welcome to the California Supreme Court’s Tyranny 2011.

Jan. 4, 2011