Police should be required to obtain a search warrant before combing through the text messages, emails and other data on a suspect's smartphone after arrest, a defence lawyer told British Columbia's highest court on Monday.
The B.C. Appeal Court case, involving a kidnapping nearly eight years ago, is the latest to consider when police should be able to search the vast amounts of private information stored on modern-day cellphones.
Rajan Singh Mann was convicted two years ago for a June 2006 kidnapping in Richmond where Gary Kwong was taken by gunpoint and held for a $100,000 ransom. Kwong was released the next day.
Following the kidnapping, Mann was arrested twice, and each time police seized a BlackBerry smartphone.
Both phones were protected by passwords, but investigators were able to recover data from them.
At trial, the judge saw dozens of text messages and concluded whoever used the phones was involved in the kidnapping, and that Mann could be linked to both phones.
