In an earlier post we told you about the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Fearon in which the Court ruled that a warrantless search of a cell phone, incidental to arrest, must be limited to a "cursory" examination, presumably limited to a look through the contents to ascertain if it contains evidence relevant to the offence for which the individual has been arrested. A detailed search, or following links to social media sites, would require a warrant. If the phone is locked or password protected, a warrant is needed to access the contents of the telephone. The Supreme Court of Canada is currently scheduled to hear the appeal in the Fearon case on April 16, 2014
It will be interesting to see what the SCC thinks about a warrantless search of a cell phone, even if incidental to arrest, in light of its recent ruling in R. v. Vu, 2013 SCC 60 which we also discussed in a recent post. You will recall that in the Vu case, the SCC put limits on the ability of police to search computers when a warrant provides for search of the premises, but does not specifically mention computers.
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