Together with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed an amicus brief in March 2015, urging the state Supreme Judicial Court to hold that, when law enforcement has probable cause to obtain a warrant to look for a particular type of file on a cell phone, it should not be permitted to search the entire phone.
Our brief argued that the police can get a warrant to search only the areas of the phone that can contain the files as to which officers have probable cause. Otherwise, given the breadth of information that can reside on a cell phone, a warrant to search a cell phone can amount to an unlawful “general search warrant.”
