Several years ago I had the opportunity to observe when a detective came to a magistrate's office to petition for a search warrant. The warrant sought to search the contents of a person's phone, essentially without any limitations. The alleged crime was assault and battery on a family member. When asked "What is your probable cause that the phone is likely to contain evidence of the commission of this crime?" the detective had basically nothing to say (having put nothing to that effect in the affidavit for the search warrant) other than some vague (cooked up on the spot?) statements about the "mobile nature of our modern society and the fact that cell phones are everywhere and everyone has one." The magistrate denied the warrant, but it's a sad testament to the propensity of law enforcement to cut corners that that search warrant affidavit was far from the last one I saw that targeted the cell phone of an accused and claimed that it was necessary to search the entire contents of the phone.
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