????假如你在美國某個法律不允許吸大麻的州里因為拿著一支大麻煙而被警方逮捕了，那么警察是否有權在沒有搜查證的情況下隨意搜查你的iPhone或Android手機？假如你的手機里有大概16GB的個人信息，比如電子郵件、短信、通訊錄、日歷、照片、視頻和GPS記錄呢？

????這是美國最高法院上周二受理的兩起案件中反映出的一個根本問題。其中一起案件與加利弗尼亞州的一起涉黑槍擊案有關，另一起案件則是一名波士頓男子販賣可卡因的聯邦案件。

????自從2011年以來，加利福尼亞州高級法院為警方開了綠燈，允許他們在“可能導致逮捕嫌疑人”的情況下搜查嫌疑人手機。但是美國第一巡回區上訴法院（主要負責緬因州、馬薩諸塞州、波多黎各以及羅德島的聯邦上述案件）的一個陪審團卻于去年五月明確裁定，禁止警方在無搜查證的情況下搜查他人手機。因此，法院必須在今年六月末任期結束前解決這個法律沖突。

????自從美國建國以來，擁有逮捕權的警員歷來有權在沒有搜查證的情況下搜查被拘捕人的任何隨身物品，甚至包括有權打開嫌疑人隨身攜帶的信封、容器，以及搜查其筆記本、記事簿或者錢包等。這些物品中含有的私人信息與如今儲存在手機里的信息并沒有本質上的區別。

????但是上文提到的這兩起案件的辯護律師卻得了眾多民權組織和機構的支持——比如歷來比較激進的美國民權同盟（American Civil Liberties Union）和一向鼓吹自由主義的加圖研究院（Cato Institute）。這些律師指出，鑒于當代數碼設備巨大的存儲能力，以及如今手機中儲存的各類公民信息所具有的高度敏感性，傳統的法律法規也到了該修改的時候了。

????耶魯大學法學院（Yale Law School）教授尤金?菲德爾和私人律師安德魯?平克斯在他們為民主與科技中心（the Center for Democracy and Technology）和電子前沿基金會（the Electronic Frontier Foundation）所撰寫的一份聲明中指出：“科技的發展使人們現在能夠每天隨身攜帶海量的信息。數碼科技問世以前，這類信息都是儲藏在家庭的抽屜或文件柜里。那時執法部門必須先獲得搜查證才能搜查這些資料?！?（平克斯同時也是美亞博律師事務所的一名合伙人。）

????16GB恰恰是蘋果iPhone 5最小容量版本的存儲量。菲德爾和平卡斯說：“16GB意味著它可以儲存8億個單詞的文本——如果是一本書的話，它的厚度比一個足球場長度還長，如果寫在紙張上，要16輛大卡車才能拉得完。”（iPhone 5也有32GB和64GB版，但是其它廠商最高能夠提供內存為128GB的手機。）

????憲法責任中心（the Constitutional Accountability Center）的道格?肯德爾和伊利莎白?維德拉在一份非當事人意見陳述中指出，如今警察不需要搜查證便可搜查嫌疑人的手機，這種行為很像英國殖民時期英國當局頒發的臭名昭著的“通用搜查狀”和“協助搜查走私物品令”——它們也正是美國憲法《第四修正案》（the Fourth Amendment）的修憲者一心想要制止的罪惡。卡德爾和維德拉說：“‘通用搜查狀’和‘協助搜查走私物品令’缺乏對需要搜查的人或物的任何具體說明，也沒有針對任何具體的犯罪嫌疑。”因此，為了避免這種無理搜查和扣押，《第四修正案》明確規定，“所有搜查不僅僅必須是合理的，另外所有搜查證還必須‘特別說明搜查的地點和扣押的人或物’?！?/p>

????（《第四修正案》原文寫道：“人民的人身、住宅、文件和財產不受無理搜查和扣押的權利，不得侵犯。除依照合理根據，以宣誓或代誓宣言保證，并具體說明搜查地點和扣押的人或物，否則不得發出搜查和扣押狀?！保?/p>

????不過執法部門卻非常希望保留傳統的法規，也就是給予執行逮捕的警務人員以無限制地搜查嫌疑人隨身物品的權力。美國司法部副部長小唐納德?威瑞利指出，這個歷史法規“主要旨在‘通過逮捕造成較少的隱私預期’。小唐納德?威瑞利在聯邦法院審理布里馬?武里一案中代表美國政府一方參與了訴訟，另外還在加利福利亞州法院審理大衛?里昂?賴利一案中扮演了所謂“法庭之友”的角色。

????威瑞利認為：“這項傳統法規也符合警務工作的實際。在實踐中，我們不可能指望警務人員在執行拘捕的過程中對嫌疑人的隨身物品逐件進行法律分析……當今世界，手機極有可能承裁了不法行為的證據，能夠幫助執法人員確認他們已經拘捕的嫌疑人?！?/p>

????威瑞利還說：“與其它載體不一樣的是，嫌疑人被拘捕后，他們手機里的內容仍然可以被銷毀或隱匿，因此警方事后再想去追回這些重要證據幾乎是不可能的，也是不切實際的?！边@里他指的是落網嫌疑人的共犯可能使用一種“遠程擦除”技術毀掉手機上儲存的可用作證據的數據——這種技術本來的開發目的是為了防止手機被盜。

????Say you're arrested for possessing a marijuana cigarette in a state where that's still illegal. Can the arresting officer, without a warrant, riffle through your Apple (AAPL) iPhone or Google (GOOG) Android with impunity, inspecting, say, 16 gigabytes worth of emails, text messages, contacts, calendars, photos, videos, and GPS records of your comings-and-goings?

????That's the bottom-line question permeating two cases being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday -- one involving the prosecution of a California man for a gang-related shooting and the other, a federal case against a Boston man for selling crack cocaine.

????Since 2011, the California Supreme Court has greenlighted broad warrantless cellphone searches "incident to an arrest," while a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit -- which hears federal cases from Maine, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and Rhode Island -- categorically forbade such searches last May. The Court will apparently be resolving this conflict before its current term ends in late June.

????Since the country's founding, an arresting officer has traditionally been permitted to search and inspect, without a warrant, anything found on the arrestee's person, even if that meant opening closed envelopes and containers, and flipping through the accused's notebooks, datebooks or wallets -- all containing private information that does not differ in kind from what is now stored on cellphones.

????But attorneys for the two defendants in these two cases -- backed by numerous constitutional and civil liberties groups, ranging from the progressive American Civil Liberties Union to the libertarian Cato Institute -- argue that the traditional rule needs to be revised in light of the massive storage capacity of modern digital devices and the extraordinary sensitivity of the private data citizens now routinely store there.

????"Technology now makes it possible for individuals to carry huge quantities of information with them every day," write Yale Law School professor Eugene Fidell and private attorney Andrew Pincus in a brief they've co-authored by the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Prior to the advent of digital technology, this information would have been stored in the drawers and file cabinets of people's homes," they write. "Law enforcement officers would have been required to obtain a warrant in order to search such materials." (Pincus is a partner with the Mayer Brown law firm.)

????A 16 gigabyte phone -- the smallest available storage capacity for the Apple iPhone 5 -- "can store 800 million words of text -- well over a football field's length of books or sixteen flat-bed truckloads of paper," Fidell and Pincus write. (The phone also comes in 32 GB and 64 GB versions, while other manufacturers offer up to 128 GM of memory, they note.)

????In light of this new reality, argue Doug Kendall and Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center in their amicus brief, today's warrantless cellphone searches incident to arrest closely resemble the reviled "general warrants" and "writs of assistance" that British authorities carried out during colonial times -- the precise evil the Framers of the Constitution sought to bar by enacting the Fourth Amendment. "These warrants and writs lacked any specificity about the people or items to be searched and were not predicated on any individualized suspicion," they write. To prevent such searches, the Fourth Amendment explicitly "required not only that all searches be reasonable, but also that all warrants 'particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'"

????(The Fourth Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.")

????But law enforcement authorities urge preservation of the traditional rule, which gives arresting officers an unqualified right to inspect items found on the arrestee's person. This historical rule "rests primarily on the 'reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest,'" according to U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. -- who represents the interests of the United States as a party in the federal case, United States v. Wurie, and as a so-called friend-of-the-court in the California case, Riley v. California.

????"The traditional rule also comports with the realities of police work," Verrilli argues, "in which officers cannot reasonably be expected to undertake an item-by-item legal analysis during arrests ... In today's world, cell phones are particularly likely to contain evidence of unlawful activity and to help law-enforcement officers identify suspects they have apprehended."

????"And unlike other containers," Verrilli continues, "their contents can be destroyed or concealed after the suspect is taken into custody, making it impossible or impracticable for the police ever to retrieve critical evidence." Here he is referring in part to the threat that a confederate of the arrested individual could use "remote wiping" technologies -- designed for people whose phones are stolen -- to destroy incriminating data saved on the phone.