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 smart phone — a vast storehouse of digital information — is similar to, say, rifling through a suspect’s purse. The court has ruled that police don’t violate the Fourth Amendment when they sift through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one’s smart phone is more like entering his or her home. A smart phone 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 the easier.
Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life医学 全在.线提供www.med126.com. 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 onerous 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 a warrant is pending. 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.
26. The Supreme Court will work out whether, during an arrest, it is legitimate to
[A] prevent suspects from deleting their phone contents.
[B] search for suspects’ mobile phones without a warrant.
[C] check suspects’ phone contents without being authorized.
[D]prohibit suspects from using their mobile phones.
27. The author’s attitude toward California’s argument is one of
[A] disapproval.
[B] indifference.
[C] tolerance.
[D]cautiousness.
28. The author believes that exploring one’s phone contents is comparable to
[A] getting into one’s residence.
[B] handling one’s historical records.
[C] scanning one’s correspondences.
[D] going through one’s wallet.
29. In Paragraph 5 and 6, the author shows his concern that
[A] principles are hard to be clearly expressed.
[B] the court is giving police less room for action.
[C] citizens’ privacy is not effectively protected.
[D] phones are used to store sensitive information.
30. Orin Kerr’s comparison is quoted to indicate that
[A] the Constitution should be implemented flexibly.
[B] new technology requires reinterpretation of the Constitution.
[C]California’s argument violates principles of the Constitution.
[D]principles of the Constitution should never be altered
Text 3
The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today医学全在线www.med126.com. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.
“Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal,” writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors(SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.
Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: “The creation of the ‘statistics board’ was motivated by concerns poadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science’s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish.”
Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group. He says he expects the board to “play primarily an advisory role.” He agreed to join because he “found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science.”
John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is “a most welcome step forward” and “long overdue.” “Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review,” he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.
Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, “engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process”. Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians “has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify ‘the papers that need scrutiny’ in the first place”.
31. It can be learned from Paragraph 1 that
[A] Science intends to simplify their peer-review process.
[B] journals are strengthening their statistical checks.
[C] few journals are blamed for mistakes in data analysis.
[D] lack of data analysis is common in research projects.
32. The phrase “flagged up” (Para. 2) is the closest in meaning to
[A] found.
[B] marked.
[C] revised.
[D] stored.
33. Giovanni Parmigiani believes that the establishment of the SBoRE may
[A] pose a threat to all its peers.
[B] meet with strong opposition.
[C] increase Science’s circulation.
[D]set an example for other journals.
34. David Vaux holds that what Science is doing now
[A] adds to researchers’ workload.
[B] diminishes the role of reviewers.
[C] has room for further improvement.
[D]is to fail in the foreseeable future
35. Which of the following is the best title of the text?
[A] Science Joins Push to Screen Statistics in Papers.
[B] Professional Statisticians Deserve More Respect
[C] Data Analysis Finds Its Way onto Editors’ Desks
[D] Statisticians Are Coming Back with Science
