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Federal Court Says Dismantling a Phone to Install Firmware Isn't a 'Search'

This is probably the correct conclusion to arrive at, at least at this point in extremely limited jurisprudence, but it still raises some questions courts will likely have to confront in the future…

As is often the case when Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns are raised during evidence suppression efforts, this one involves alleged possession of child sexual abuse material. One would think a court would need to be apprised of this opportunity before it became a reality, if for no other reason than the original warrant only authorized a search, not the literal cracking of a cell phone (or its casing, at least) to replace a circuit board and install new firmware. It’s quite another thing to perform a series of physical and digital acts on a device — all without informing the court of your intentions — and pretend the circumstances are the same as they were more than a year earlier.

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