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Blogs by Mac Hermann
Search and Seizure of your manuscripts 5/1/2014 3:57:18 PM
Don't save your manuscripts on mobile phones. Just don't do it! Supreme Court justices during recent arguments signaled discomfort at the prospect of granting police unlimited power to search suspects' cellphones without first obtaining a warrant. There was no apparent consensus about how to draw rules for phone searches in a way that would provide law enforcement enough leeway to deal with rapidly advancing mobile technology, which is as much a part of criminal activity as it is everyday life.
The issue arose in separate appeals from Boston and San Diego that give the Supreme Court the opportunity to set guideposts governing the privacy of data stored on smart phones and other mobile digital devices. Lower courts are in disagreement about when a warrant is required to search a phone seized at the time of an arrest, and when doing so violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
What if you save a manuscript on your smart phone and the phone is seized during a search, and somehow your work which you hadn’t had a chance to copyright, is stolen and published somewhere in this world wide web?
Who then would have the burden of proof to show it was your baby? That is the question, and unfortunately the answer is U!
