By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai From Mashable

Thanks to a unanimous Supreme Court decision on Wednesday, police officers will no longer be allowed to search your cellphone after an arrest without a warrant — a ruling hailed as “groundbreaking” and “big win for digital privacy.”

The ruling concerning two separate but similar cases could have far-reaching implications on digital privacy, according to experts. The judges argued that cellphones, unlike other physical objects, hold an inordinate amount of personal, private, information and, as such, deserve special protection.

In other words, it seems the Supreme Court has realized that old rules may not be applicable to new technologies.

“The court might be coming to the conclusion that computers just fundamentally change the game,” “The court might be coming to the conclusion that computers just fundamentally change the game,” Adam Gershowitz, a professor at William and Mary Law School specializing in privacy law in the digital age, told Mashable.

In his decision, Chief Justice Roberts makes it clear that cellphones are nothing more than “minicomputers” and that’s one of the reasons why this decision, according to Orin Kerr, “may just be the tip of the iceberg.”

In their ruling, the judges made an almost mocking distinction between the search of physical objects and the search of cellphones.

“The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ‘materially indistinguishable’ from searches of these sorts of physical items,” the decision said. “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.” “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

The ruling might have bearing on other controversial cases making their way through the lower courts, whether it’s cellphone location tracking or NSA surveillance, argues Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights organization.

Both Gershowitz and Fakhoury are quick to point out that this decision doesn’t necessarily set a precedent for any case that could challenge NSA programs. But some of the points made by the justices seem to indicate that they are willing to reconsider older rules in the context of new technologies.

For example, Roberts specifically mentions the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland, where the Supreme Court ruled that personal information (such as telephone numbers) held by a third party (such as a phone company) is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The so-called ‘third party doctrine’ forms the basis for the NSA argument that the agency doesn’t need a warrant to obtain telephone metadata. But as Roberts wrote in the Wednesday decision: “call logs typically contain more than just phone numbers.”

That interpretation indicates that some forms of metadata “could be constitutionally protected,” even if Roberts was not talking about the NSA, Fakhoury told Mashable.

The decision could also impact another contentious privacy issue: whether police are allowed to obtain your cellphone location without a warrant.

In another passage of the ruling, Roberts notes that it doesn’t matter whether data is stored locally on the cellphone or in the cloud, suggesting that — regardless — the data should have similar legal protection, as Kerr notes. Right now, under the third-party doctrine, data held by a cloud provider is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Two weeks ago, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police can’t track your cellphone location through your phone carrier without a warrant. No similar case has reached the Supreme Court, but lower courts have struggled to find common ground on this issue, leading experts to believe this could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

And when that happens, the nine justices might just sway in favor of privacy once again.

“When the vote is 9 to 0 in the Supreme Court,” Gershowitz said. “That’s enough to make you think maybe they’re shifting in a different direction on this […] The wind seems to be blowing in a certain direction.”

IMAGE: A woman uses her smartphone outside the U.S. Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C., after a major ruling on cellphone privacy on June 25, 2014 IMAGE: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

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