CDT Joins Amicus Brief Opposing Overbroad Digital Device Searches
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) joined a set of civil rights and civil liberties groups in submitting an amicus brief to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs. The case involves alarming searches of phones and laptops of an individual charged with simple assault during a protest.
Based on this charge, a search warrant gave police broad authority to search the defendants’ digital devices for all photos, videos, messages, emails, and location data sent or received over a two-month period, as well as to search the device for any items responsive to over two dozen broad keywords (“officer,” “housing,” “human,” “right,” “celebration,” “protest,”).
Modern phones and laptops often contain as much sensitive information than individuals’ entire homes. We have long highlighted the danger of improper and overbroad searches of digital devices – and this case serves as the perfect example of the danger of giving a police a blank check to search these devices without strict and sensible guardrails.
The brief was submitted jointly with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
Read the full brief here.
