Nude phonecam pix put cops in a fix

A police officer is accused of downloading naked photos of a suspect from her own cell phone after a DWI arrest, according to a report. The officer has been "reassigned" pending the outcome of an internal investigation, as has his partner on the force -- while the department looks into reports that he phoned the suspect's home to ask her out on a date.

Snip from a Houston Chronicle story, via Declan McCullagh's politech:

During the arrest, they discovered that the woman had stored sexually explicit photos of herself in her cell phone, and Green downloaded the images onto his personal digital assistant, according to the search request.

Here's a PDF of the warrant to search the officer's PDA: Link. Politech reader Scott H. says:

[This] sure seems beyond the pale of unreasonable search and seizure (small pun). Hypothetically, what if the phone had a picture of the woman in question standing over a dead person in back of her home? Is this a warrantless search and if they find the body in her home is this fruit from a poisoned tree? Do the police have a right to search through all the "data" a person has in thier possession at the time of arrest? What about a USB flash drive? Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.

Link to EWeek story, and Declan recommends FileVault and PGPdisk as handy encryption utilities. Here are more.

Update: Looks like my blog-mate Mark Frauenfelder covered this item over at The Feature -- Link.