Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Supreme Court in the case of Riley v California this morning established an important precedent about the need for law enforcement officers to secure a warrant before searching someone's cell phone.
He also established a crucial cultural precedent by ruling, accurately, that iPhones and Androids and such aren't really phones at all (emphasis added):
Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee's person. The term "cell phone" is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.
This makes the decision not just a win for privacy, but an important victory for those of us who hate phone calls but love our iPhones. Steve Jobs did many great things, but giving that particular device that particular name was a mistake.
