American Military News by Riley Beggin - Detroit News January 09, 2022
Police can pull sensitive personal data from many modern vehicles without a warrant due to gaps in federal law, according to new research.
Cars are becoming more connected to drivers’ mobile phones, drawing call logs, text messages, location history, contact lists, driving patterns and more into the vehicle’s infotainment and navigation systems.
But while the Supreme Court has determined that police need a warrant to search that information when it’s on a mobile phone, that protection doesn’t extend to the information when stored on a car’s systems, argued the College of William & Mary law professor Adam Gershowitz in a recent paper.
That’s because of the “automobile exception” to the Fourth Amendment, which allows police to search cars without a warrant on the basis that drivers could get away in the time it takes law enforcement to get permission to search. The exception was established in a 1925 Supreme Court decision, Carroll v. United States.
It presents a potential issue for personal privacy and civil liberties, experts say, and will only get more complicated as passenger cars become more intertwined with drivers’ smartphones — and as exterior and interior cameras become more ubiquitous in vehicles.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/01/police-need-a-warrant-to-search-your-cellphone-your-cars-data-systems-not-so-much/
