Pubdate: Mon, 15 Dec 2014
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Heather Mallick
Page: A15

COURT RULING ON CELLPHONES RAVAGES PEOPLE'S PRIVACY

My worry is that the police will go on fishing expeditions, gather
blackmail information or 'accidentally' post photos online

The Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that police can, without a
warrant, search the cellphones of people they have just arrested is
one of the most sinister in its history. Justice Minister Peter MacKay
is thrilled with the ruling. You should not be..

It's hard to imagine how the majority in the 4-3 ruling didn't
understand that a citizen's core history may be in his cellphone,
which is now in police hands.

Even I take precautions and I have a boring life. I have a password.
The phone is encased in ugly car-tire rubber so it can't slip out of
my hands. Though I try to delete everything dodgy - it is a work phone
- - the fact is, it is not a mere snapshot, it is an oil painting built
up over years.

There are more personal details in my cellphone than in my house,
which ironically the police do need a warrant to enter.

The dissenting judges noted this: "The fact that a suspect may be
carrying their house key at the time they are arrested does not
justify the police using that key to enter the suspect's home."

My worry about police being allowed to phone-search anyone they have
casually arrested - like, say, the person who videotaped them shooting
a young man on a streetcar - is that the court thinks police can
regulate themselves.

The court is wrong. No cop will stick to recent emails labelled "drug
deal" and photos of just-purchased handguns and make carefully timed
notes, as the court suggests.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this year against this level of
phone intrusion, saying that phones are not the same as pockets or
wallets, that "a flight to the moon" is not the same as "a ride on
horseback."

My worry is that the police will go on fishing expeditions, gather
blackmail information or "accidentally" post a life-destroying photo
on Twitter.

My own phone contains every interesting email I have ever exchanged
with editors, lawyers, sources, the mentally unwell, etc., along with
emails from readers who want to tell me about what the cops did to
them.

I also keep my death threats there so that if my corpse is ever found
in a quarry, the cops will have something to work with. Thanks,
Supreme Court!

That's just for starters. My most crucial emails are kept in a folder
called Lawyers. A lot of it looks bad, I now see.

How would I explain my photos? One is of a photo of 14 swaddled
newborn babies arranged in a pattern I initially thought eccentric but
then realized was the radiating arms of the swastika. If you want
proof of why you should never dress your baby in a fashionable flag
outfit, here it is. The Nazi photo, taken in Vienna in 1938, was in a
recent French museum display and I was hoping to use it in a column
but now I think I'll just delete it.

The ruling has turned a perfectly average work smartphone into a
ticking bomb. At this point, a wise citizen would only buy burners
(prepaid mobile cellphones) and top up their usage each week.

Here's one example: many people seem terribly concerned about the
rights of sex buyers, men who hire frightened, poverty-stricken young
women working as prostitutes. I disagree. Bill C-36 was a fairly good
bill mandated by the Supreme Court, which otherwise would have allowed
brothels, both local and warehouse-style, in this country.

But imagine being arrested for hiring a prostitute. Under this ruling,
the police would have the right to look at your sexual history via
your cellphone, the things you haven't even done yet. Your previous
attempts to hire "young Asians" via Now magazine ads would surely be
germane. Your affairs and your sexual tastes would be under scrutiny
and found wanting.

Will the police keep the phone as it keeps generating evidence? For
how long? Can you refuse to provide your password or will the police
IT department bypass it?

In Gary Shteyngart's 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story of a
terrible future, everyone walks around with an "apparati," a
data-collection rating device on his chest. It's like wearing an open
cellphone. This court ruling takes us one step closer to this.

And it is very easy to be arrested. It just happened to a friend's
teenage son, the victim of two 30-year-old men following him around
filming him and harassing him. The boy, wrongly accused of aggression,
was strip-searched. He's too young to have any secrets on his cell,
but I thought he was too gentle a kid to be arrested in the first
place. I was wrong.

He was vulnerable to lazily vicious cops. You think it cannot happen
to you. Maybe it will.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt