The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up a hot-button issue of privacy in the digital age: Can police, without a warrant, rummage through the cell phones of people they arrest?

It's an important case, given that more than 90 percent of American adults now own a cell phone and 58 percent have a smart phone.

And more than 12 million people are arrested in the U.S. each year, most of them for minor offenses, such as drunk driving or getting in fights.

Police also have authority to make arrests for fine-only infractions like driving without a seat belt, littering, or jaywalking.

So, allowing police to search the text, photo, and video files on all of those smart phones would severely compromise personal privacy, says Jeffrey Fisher of Stanford Law School.

"Such files hold exponentially greater amounts and types of sensitive personal information than any physical item" an arrested person could carry.

While the Constitution ordinarily requires police to get a search warrant before looking at someone's personal possessions, the courts have granted an exception when a person is taken into custody.
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