Smartphones and tablets are gradually making their way towards gaining a significant place in every user’s personal cloud, from utility apps to playing a role in state-wide riots, and are subsequently storing more and more personal data and files. This, however, means that this data is exposed from another angle, and one of the main privacy concerns here is the involvement of law enforcement agencies.

Thousands officers take courses instructing them how to retrieve info from suspects’ handsets, and until recently, they were able to do just that without even a warrant in the state of California. Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to warrant the “search of cell phones during an arrest, regardless of whether the information on the phone is relevant to the arrest or if criminal charges are ever filed” was overridden this week.

“Under this legislation, California law enforcement officers must first obtain a search warrant when there is probable cause to believe a suspect’s portable electronic device contains evidence of a crime.”

This is a major push towards ensuring user  unencrypted data about users’ location, and the revelation of this news was quickly followed by an FCC review and even a lawsuit or two. These came along a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy Apple had to attend, which was one of the reasons the company quickly released a patch to iOS fixing its location tracking loophole.