Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest.

    California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies.

    The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California’s advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justices can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants.

    They should start by discarding California’s lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect’s purse. The court has ruled that police don’t violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one’s smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee’s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of “cloud computing,” meanwhile, has made that exploration so much easier.

    Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches.

    As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn’t ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom.

    But the justices should not swallow California’s argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution’s protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

答案精析：根据题干中的California’s argument可定位至原文第三段第一句，对应原文中的California’s advice。第二段内容也出现了California，是对加利福尼亚州观点的解释。第二段说到，加州希望警方在没有搜查令的情况下可以搜查嫌疑人手机里的内容。紧接着第三段作者认为如果最高法院默许了加州的建议，那将是过于鲁莽的谦虚，由此可推断作者在暗示最高法院不应听从加州的建议。原文第四段首句也表明了，作者认为针对此问题，最高法院应该先抛弃加州蹩脚的观点。所以作者对加利福尼亚州的观点持反对态度，故正确答案为A。

错项排除：作者在原文中非常清晰的说明自己反对加州的观点，并对他们的观点进行批判，所以态度不会是“冷漠”、“宽容”或者“谨慎”的，故排除B、C和D。

长难句分析：California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest.

本句主干为California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling，refrain from (doing) sth.表示“克制（不做）某事”。后半句为a sweeping ruling的同位语，用于对ruling进行补充说明。第一个that引导定语从句，修饰前面的one，one指代ruling。第二个that引导同位语从句，修饰assumption，用于进一步解释assumption的内容。

句意为：加利福尼亚州已经要求法官们不要作出一刀切的裁决，尤其是不要推翻以前警方可以在嫌疑人被捕时搜查他们所有物的假定。