Court Rules No Privacy for Cellphone with 1-2-3-4 as Passcode

The Associated Press (June 13, 2018) reported that a SC Court has held that: "A man serving 18 years in prison in South Carolina for burglary was rightfully convicted in part because he left his cellphone at the crime scene and a detective guessed his passcode as 1-2-3-4 instead of getting a warrant, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Lawyers for Lamar Brown argued detectives in Charleston violated Brown’s right to privacy by searching his phone without a warrant.

After storing the cellphone in an evidence locker for six days in December 2011, the detective guessed right on Brown’s easy passcode, found a contact named “grandma” and was able to work his way back to Brown.

The justices ruled in a 4-1 decision that Brown abandoned his phone at the Charleston home and made no effort to find it. The law allows police to look at abandoned property without a court-issued warrant allowing a search.

But in his dissent, South Carolina Chief Justice Don Beatty said Brown likely didn’t consider his cellphone abandoned and his passcode showed he wanted to protect the contents inside and police should have gotten a warrant for a search like they would the home or car of someone suspected in a crime.

It “is not that the information on a cellphone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally required before such a search,” Beatty wrote, quoting U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts from an earlier case."
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Barring exigent circumstances (an emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect, or destruction of evidence) a warrant is always required when law enforcement seizes property or attempts to access information in which you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The court's decision in the above case is a slippery slope. What determines whether a password is sufficient to demonstrate that you truly wanted to protect the information on your smartphone / computer? If the police are able to guess your password, does that now mean you had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the data the password was meant to protect?

If someone hacks your computer network, can it be now argued that you had no reasonable expectation of privacy if you did not change the default admin passwords when you set up the network?