美最高法將智能手機內容納入隱私保護

US police must obtain a warrant to search a suspect’s smartphone after the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that constitutional privacy protections apply to the often extensive data people keep on the devices in their pockets.

美國最高法院(US Supreme Court)週三裁定，那些裝在人們口袋裏的設備上存儲的大量數據也適用憲法隱私保護條款。今後，美國警方必須取得授權才能搜查嫌疑人的智能手機。

In a unanimous ruling praised by privacy campaigners, the court decided that searching a smartphone was more like downloading the contents of a computer than leafing through someone’s address book.

該法院一致做出的這一裁決得到了隱私保護人士的讚揚。在這一裁決中，美國最高法院認定，對智能手機的搜查更像是從電腦上下載內容，而不是翻翻某人的電話本。

The fourth amendment bans “unreasonable searches and seizures” but police are usually allowed to search the personal belongings a suspect is carrying. Lower courts had been divided on whether to ban searches of smartphones without a warrant.

美國憲法第四修正案禁止“無理搜查和扣押”，不過通常美國警方搜查嫌犯攜帶的個人物品是允許的。而對於是否應禁止在無授權情況下搜查智能手機中的內容，美國下級法院始終存在分歧。

Chief Justice John Roberts said the “immense storage capacity” of smartphones made them different from anything else a suspect is holding.

首席法官約翰•羅伯茨(John Roberts)表示，智能手機的“巨大存儲量”令其有別於嫌犯攜帶的其他任何物品。

“Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life’,” he wrote. “The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.”

他寫道：“當代手機並不僅僅是又一種技術上的便利工具。以所存儲和可能泄露的內容而言，對許多美國人來說，它們就是‘生活隱私’的載體。如今，科技的發展令個人可以將這類信息帶在手中，但這並不代表這些信息的保護價值有任何減少——這種保護正是我們的建國者曾爲之奮鬥過的。”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights campaign group, described the ruling as “groundbreaking”. Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney, said: “This should have implications for other forms of government electronic searches and surveillance, tightening the rules for police behaviour and preserving our privacy rights in our increasingly digital world.”

該案源於兩起警方搜查電話的事件。在“賴利訴加利福尼亞州案”(Riley v California)中，警方在一個智能手機上發現了能夠證明嫌疑人有罪的照片及其他信息，這些內容能將嫌疑人與一起槍擊案聯繫起來，州法院表示這麼做是合法的。然而波士頓發生的另一個案件卻得出了相反的結論，在該案中嫌疑人普通功能電話（不是智能電話）上的一個通話記錄被用來推斷他的居住地。該案中的這一證據被聯邦上訴法庭排除。

The Constitutional Accountability Center, which like the EFF filed a brief in the case, said it was a good day for the “Bill of Rights”. Doug Kendall, CAC president, said searching cell phones without a warrant was “even more intrusive” than “similar searches of colonial-era homes, which the Founders fought against in the Revolutionary War”.

美國最高法院駁回了加州一案中的判決。

The case originated from two incidents where police searched phones. In Riley v California, police found incriminating photos and other information on a smartphone connecting a suspect to a shooting, which state courts said was legal. But another case in Boston reached the opposite conclusion, where a call on a suspect’s feature phone (not as advanced as a smartphone) was used to discover where he lived. The evidence in that case was thrown out by a federal appeals court.

羅伯茨表示，這一裁決對於執法機構打擊犯罪的能力可能會有影響。他寫道：“手機已成爲犯罪團伙成員協調和溝通的重要輔助工具，能夠提供極有價值的危險罪行定罪信息。但保護隱私還是要付出代價的。”