Two on cell phone password consent

Consent to get defendant’s cell phone password didn’t require a Miranda warning. United States v. Ricks, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59859 (E.D. Tex. Apr. 8, 2019).

Defendant was in custody at the police station with his cell phone which the police had. He asked them twice to call his girlfriend about taking care of his property, and he twice provided the password to the phone. A little later the police decided to get a search warrant for the phone. Defendant’s previously provided password could be used by the police to get access to his phone. His consent wasn’t that limited. People v. Davis, 2019 CO 24, 2019 Colo. LEXIS 262 (Apr. 8, 2019):

¶31 The limited scope of Davis’s consent to use the passcode does not alter this analysis. In general, an individual does not retain an expectation of privacy in “information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose.” See United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976) (emphasis added); see also People v. Gutierrez, 222 P.3d 925, 935 (Colo. 2009) (recognizing this principle as generally true). Here, where Davis voluntarily disclosed his passcode directly to law enforcement, this principle holds especially true. Once an individual discloses the digits of his passcode to law enforcement, we conclude that it is unreasonable to expect those digits to be private from the very party to whom he disclosed them, regardless of any limitations he might be said to have implicitly placed upon the disclosure.

¶32 Because Davis had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the digits of his passcode after providing them to Officer Woodbury, law enforcement’s use of that passcode was not a search protected by the Fourth Amendment.