D.Me.: Putting an iPhone into airplane mode was not a violation of any REP

Putting a seized iPhone into “airplane mode” until a search warrant could be issued was not a search or seizure, and it did not offend a privacy interest. What officers did was contemplated by Riley. United States v. Cain, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63936 (D. Me. April 27, 2017):

In this case, in the event Agent Collier’s access to the iPhone’s operating system for the limited purpose of placing it in airplane mode can be construed as a warrantless search or seizure, the minimal intrusion does not offend a privacy interest greater than the Government’s significant interest in preserving evidence contained on the phone. The steps taken by Agent Collier to activate airplane mode, after Defendant told Agent Collier he could look at the phone and after Defendant provided the security code, were no more intrusive than the steps that would be required to “disable a phone’s automatic-lock feature in order to prevent the phone from locking and encrypting data,” a measure the Supreme Court described as one reasonable approach to preserve data on an unlocked cellular phone. Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2487.