MANILA, Philippines — August 6, 2025 — A controversial 2012 federal court ruling that permitted police to impersonate suspects using their seized cell phones without a warrant has effectively been nullified by later constitutional decisions. At the time, the court held that law enforcement officers could read messages and send deceptive replies to a suspect’s contacts using their phone, without violating the Fourth Amendment (Doctorow, 2012).

That decision stood largely unchallenged until the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Riley v. California (2014), which established a powerful precedent for digital privacy. The Court ruled that cell phones are not like wallets or briefcases and contain “the privacies of life,” requiring a warrant for search and seizure. “Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is simple—get a warrant,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts (Riley v. California, 2014).

In the wake of Riley, legal scholars and privacy advocates have confirmed that the impersonation tactic previously allowed would now be unconstitutional. Sending messages from a seized phone to entrap contacts would likely violate both the Fourth Amendment and federal wiretap laws.

Jennifer Granick of the ACLU stated in 2015 that Riley “brought Fourth Amendment protections into the digital age” and curtailed abusive practices that thrived on outdated interpretations of search and seizure (Granick, 2015).

Despite this progress, digital rights advocates remain concerned about increasing pressure from law enforcement to bypass encryption and expand surveillance powers. The erosion of Riley would represent a major regression in constitutional rights—and a signal that the surveillance state is not finished pushing.

Citations:
Doctorow, C. (2012, July 19). Judge says it’s OK to use your seized phone to impersonate you and entrap your friends. Boing Boing. https://boingboing.net/2012/07/19/judge-says-its-ok-to-use-you.html
Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014).
Granick, J. (2015). Digital searches and the Fourth Amendment. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/digital-searches-and-fourth-amendment

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