Michigan Supreme Court: Unrestricted Phone Searches Violate Fourth Amendment
16 comments
·August 26, 2025pcaharrier
righthand
That’s because law enforcement is encourage to give least amount of effort to find any kind of damning evidence that a DA can use. The detective doesn’t care about justice but instead closing the case. If I have access to your entire phone, I can use anything I find against you as probable cause whether it’s related to the crime or not.
duxup
>Michael Carson became the focus of a theft investigation involving money allegedly taken from a neighbor’s safe.
>Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined.
>It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation.
Yeah that's pretty absurd.
sidewndr46
What's more absurd is that a warrant could ever establish such a restriction. If the suspect had a file named "Not evidence of me stealing my neighbor's safe" and "Definitely not a video of me practicing how to break open a safe" would it be fair to assume the warrant doesn't allow access to it?
lesuorac
If the warrant doesn't have a restrictions on it then it's a "General Warrant" and that was a major complaint of the founders of the USA.
They really didn't like it when cops showed up and took their furniture (think filing cabinet) because "it might contain evidence of sedition".
CamperBob2
What's more absurd is that a warrant could ever establish such a restriction.
Absurd or not, it's what the Fourth Amendment requires, at least in spirit. The warrant must specify the scope of the search in advance ("...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.")
Police work is not supposed to be easy. When police work is easy, that's basically the definition of a police state.
SamoyedFurFluff
I mean, at minimum I doubt anything on his phone is relevant from a year, two years ago.
pcaharrier
Pretty absurd and sadly common (in my several years' experience working in the criminal justice system). Good for Michigan for putting a stop to it.
sidewndr46
As others have mentioned the courts in Michigan don't have any real authority to stop this. Also in the rare case that someone in law enforcement gets caught doing this sort of thing, the 'punishment' is that they have to promise not to do it again
mrkstu
They can stop Michigan judges from granting warrants that fall within this scope, which should stop 90%+ of the problem within their purview.
Now the downside is that since they rely on the Federal Constitution in the ruling rather than the Michigan one, if the Supreme Court ever rules differently, this precedent will be overturned, even in Michigan.
tobinc
Oh cool so I'm sure we'll see fines or imprisonments or something right?
claytongulick
Sudden outbreak of common sense.
ranger_danger
FYI The entire state of Michigan falls within the 100-mile border zone, where searches do not have as much protection:
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
Also friendly reminder that "the Constitution does not grant aliens any protections when trying to enter the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Knauff_v...
TheCraiggers
looks at map in confusion
Since the western side of the state is quite obviously more than 100 miles from Canada I had to look this up. Apparently it's because the lakes count as international borders. That seems pretty crazy to me, especially in the case of Lake Michigan.
harikb
Forget lakes, it can be interpreted as any airport with an international flight. We are all within "100 miles of a border" even when walking our dog in the morning.
dekken_
Now do facial recognition surveillance cameras
Several years ago I had the opportunity to observe when a detective came to a magistrate's office to petition for a search warrant. The warrant sought to search the contents of a person's phone, essentially without any limitations. The alleged crime was assault and battery on a family member. When asked "What is your probable cause that the phone is likely to contain evidence of the commission of this crime?" the detective had basically nothing to say (having put nothing to that effect in the affidavit for the search warrant) other than some vague (cooked up on the spot?) statements about the "mobile nature of our modern society and the fact that cell phones are everywhere and everyone has one." The magistrate denied the warrant, but it's a sad testament to the propensity of law enforcement to cut corners that that search warrant affidavit was far from the last one I saw that targeted the cell phone of an accused and claimed that it was necessary to search the entire contents of the phone.