Taking an iPhone 6 apart, putting it back together, and installing new firmware to make it work was not a “search” because that process was not to obtain information. [Well, that was the ultimate goal, wasn’t it?] United States v. Rohani, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 215029 (D. Or. Nov. 26, 2024):
Defendant’s argument is unavailing because none of the activities he describes with respect to the iPhone 6 constitute a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. A search must be “done for the express purpose of obtaining information.” United States v. Dixon, 984 F.3d 814, 820 (9th Cir. 2020). In Sam, Dixon, and the other cases Defendant relies on, the government’s action led directly to the discovery of information relevant to the case. In Sam, powering on the phone let officers discover a name that appeared on the phone’s lock screen. 2020 WL 2705415, at *1. In Dixon, inserting a key into a vehicle’s lock allowed officers “to learn whether [the defendant] exercised control over the minivan.” 984 F.3d at 820. And in Jardines, the canine sniff search alerted police to the presence of drugs within the home. 569 U.S. at 3-4.
Here, by contrast, the officers’ actions were not undertaken to obtain information. They were simply done to see if they could make the phone work, so that it could later be searched pursuant to a warrant. Law enforcement did not obtain any information by disassembling the phone, replacing the circuit board, booting it up in recovery mode, or re-flashing the firmware. The only possible thing Detective Clay could have learned was that the phone was inoperable, which the Government already knew. In order to obtain the information contained on the phone—data confirming that Defendant owned the phone, whether the phone contained any contraband, and evidence of Defendant’s internet use—the officers here, unlike in Dixon, Sam, and Jardines, had to take additional steps. The officers’ preliminary steps to render the phone functional did not independently produce any information.
Taking such preliminary steps to attempt to power up a phone is distinct from using electronic tools to download the contents of devices, allowing the Government to pierce some “privacies regarding the [devices],” which may constitute a search. See United States v. Kopankov, 672 F. Supp. 3d 862, 867 (N.D. Cal. 2023); see also United States v. Salazar, 598 F. App’x 490, 491 (9th Cir. 2015) (defining the “search” of a phone as “the download of [its] electronic data”). But Defendant does not dispute that the Government obtained a search warrant before it extracted the devices’ contents. The preliminary steps of determining whether the devices could be searched were not done for the purpose of obtaining information, and therefore do not constitute a search. Defendant’s phone was not “searched” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment until agents unlocked the phone and extracted its files, for which the Government had obtained a warrant.
Update:
techdirt: Federal Court Says Dismantling A Phone To Install Firmware Isn’t A ‘Search,’ Even If Was Done To Facilitate A Search by Tim Cushing (“This is probably the correct conclusion to arrive at, at least at this point in extremely limited jurisprudence, but it still raises some questions courts will likely have to confront in the future. Is manhandling a phone to make it responsive to a search itself a search, or does the Fourth Amendment not kick in until after the search of the phone’s contents occurs?”)
