A little more than a year ago I first wrote about the “Textalyzer,” a device police in many states want to be able to use to perform digital roadside searches of your phone’s recent activity. In the time since, this anti-privacy idea just won’t die.
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NBC News recently produced a segment showing the device in action, and Reason’s Scott Shackford reports state lawmakers in New York are actively considering a bill that would allow police to use the Textalyzer on people’s phones if they’re involved in a crash.
The intentions here may be good, but the logic is fuzzy, and the risk of abuse is serious.
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Supporters say the Textalyzer is necessary to determine culpability in an accident: Did you crash because you were texting or using Facebook behind the wheel?
But police can already follow the Constitution and get a warrant to search drivers’ phones when they believe it’s necessary. Put the Textalyzer in use and suddenly cops have the “power to take and search our phones after almost every fender-bender,” explains Rashida Richardson, an attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“This is a concern because our phones have some of our most personal and private information,” she adds, “so we’re certain that if this law is enforced as it is proposed, it will not only violate people’s privacy rights, but also civil liberties.”
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Also questionable is the Textalyzer’s ability to provide an accurate report. For example, suppose a mom gets into a car crash while her kid is playing with her phone. The other driver could be entirely at fault, but the Textalyzer would cast undue suspicion on the mom’s behavior, even though she wasn’t personally using her phone at all.
Needless to say, texting while driving is a terrible idea that puts innocent lives in jeopardy. But letting our government have digital access to our phones without complying with basic constitutional procedure is dangerous, too. State lawmakers should kill this idea once and for all.