DENVER — In this digital age, proving your identity still requires you to manually dig through your purse or wallet and find your license or ID.
“One question would be, can the officer, then, search what’s on your phone?” Farrell said. “They can only do that if you’ve given them consent to search what’s on your phone.”“Whether handing the officer your phone for these purposes counts for consent is, kind of, unclear. If I was a judge, I would say, ‘no, you were handing it over for a fairly clear purpose,’” Farrell said.
“Just like the law is currently, if I see evidence of a crime that’s inside the vehicle as I’m standing at the door, the same principle would play here. If I’m looking at your phone to get your ID and all of a sudden, a message shows up about the load of cocaine in the trunk, then we’re going to do some further investigation,” Packard said.