Last week a federal court in Pittsburgh ruled you don't have any expectation of privacy if you're stealing someone else's Internet.
But what about privacy in regards to cellphones?
While cellphone carriers seem to have no problem giving up information on subscribers' text messages and other data ? carriers said they responded in 2011 to 1.3 million demands for information from law enforcement ? the courts remain divided about whether cops can actually access your phone without a warrant, The New York Times reported Sunday.
A judge in Rhode Island recently threw out cellphone evidence linking a man to a child's murder since the police didn't have a warrant for the records. But a federal appeals court in Louisiana is debating whether smartphone records belong to the user, and thus deserve protection, or belong to the phone company.
Courts in Ohio have ruled police need warrants to search cellphones but California's highest court has said cops can search a suspect's phone at the time of arrest without a warrant, according to the Times.
?The courts are all over the place,? Hanni Fakhoury, a criminal lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Times. ?They can?t even agree if there?s a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages that would trigger Fourth Amendment protection.?
But while courts debate cellphone data, the Pittsburgh ruling about Internet privacy is ironclad.
U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti ruled Internet subscribers, especially those stealing Internet, do "not have an expectation of privacy in that connection."
But that raises the question, if it's so clear Internet usage isn't protected, why are cellphones any different?
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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-legality-of-cell-phone-searches-2012-11
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