No ‘essentially unlimited right’ To Search Student Mobile Phone

The digital age raises difficult privacy issues. The Supreme Court of Canada recently said that the expectation of privacy in text messages precludes the use of a general search warrant to obtain them prospectively from a customer's telco; the cops need to seek authorisation for a wiretap, which is more onerous, necessarily time limited and requires notification of the subject of the wiretap: Telus Communications Co v The Queen, 2013 SCC 16. The Supreme Court has also held that a teacher had a legitimate (if 'diminished') expectation of privacy in the school-owned laptop on which he stored child porn: R v Cole, 2012 SCC 53. On the other hand, a warrantless search of a mobile phone with no password protection was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal in R v Fearon, 2013 ONCA 106.