The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has joined several civil rights and civil liberties groups in submitting an amicus brief to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs. The case concerns extensive searches conducted on phones and laptops belonging to an individual charged with simple assault during a protest.
A search warrant granted police broad authority to examine the defendant's digital devices for all photos, videos, messages, emails, and location data sent or received over a two-month period. Additionally, the warrant allowed searches using over two dozen broad keywords such as “officer,” “housing,” “human,” “right,” “celebration,” and “protest.”
"Modern phones and laptops often contain as much sensitive information as individuals’ entire homes," said CDT representatives. "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 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.
