By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

While delivering the main message at one of the city's Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances in mid-January, the Rev. John Blackwell was interrupted by the tweedle of a cell phone.

"Unless it's from God, let it go to voice mail," Blackwell quipped, using humor to get past a potentially awkward situation.

It was the same strategy employed by President George W. Bush several years ago, during a meeting with members of the National Governors Association. Then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' cell phone sounded, prompting Bush to say something to the effect of, "You'd better get that, it might be somebody important."

Cell phones are becoming almost ubiquitous, and with experience, people should know better -- but accidents do happen, Blackwell said.

Generally, such accidents are far less frequent than when phones were new, only the cool kids had them -- and maybe wanted to show off.

But with new capabilities, such as texting, and phones equipped with video cameras, new issues arise.

"I think the problems have changed, and in talking with people at other theaters, they agree," said Michael Spicer, executive director of Salina Community Theatre.

He's seen a significant decline in the number of phones ringing during performances, as people become more familiar with their phones' features -- such as the "silent" or "vibrate only" features.

"We haven't really had much of that over the past year, year and a half," Spicer said. "I think people are more technically astute than they used to be."

But a recent intrusion he has noticed is actors, especially younger ones, carrying their phones with them "in their costume, and then it falls out and clatters onto the stage."

"Where it's changed is people texting during a show," he said. "If you stand in the back, you see that little blue-white light shining on people's faces.

"It's not as intrusive as a cell phone ringing. But it can be intrusive to people nearby -- having that light there."

Texting and the use of other "smart phone" tools also are on the rise on the floor of the Kansas House, said Rep. Charlie Roth, R-Salina.

"Cell phones are pretty handy," Roth said, explaining that he can easily slip out of a committee meeting to take an important call without having to go back to his office.

But "what's really handy for me is the texting feature," Roth said. "People can tell if you're using your desk phone to call somebody else on the floor -- they see you pick up your phone and then who picks up their phone -- so now people are texting each other instead."

Texting allows him to send a quick question or comment to another lawmaker and get an instant reply, he said.

Laptop computers and more-portable devices have become common throughout the Legislature, Roth said.

"It's common to walk by somebody with a laptop, an iPad or something, and they're looking up bills or amendments and following what's going on," he said. "I don't know how this place operated without computers. Most information comes to us that way."

Before computers became common, he said, lawmakers had "bill books -- these three-ring binders with all the bills that would be discussed" on their desks on the floor, and what people often referred to as "snappers" would circulate, placing proposed amendments and other information into its proper place in each binder.

"That's all gone," Roth said. "It's all on the computer now, and that's a good thing."

Ringing at a bad time

As for cell phones going off at the wrong time?

"If your phone goes off, you are admonished -- in session or in a committee meeting," Roth said, with punitive measures usually involving having to bring treats for everyone at a future meeting.

These days, Roth said, that only happens "a couple of times a session."

One of the few other House rules involving new technology, Roth said, is a ban on taking pictures of the tote board at the front of the chamber that shows each member's vote on a given issue.

Roth explained that on many votes, only a final tally is entered into the permanent record; how each representative voted is recorded only on major votes.

He said part of the reason for the rule is that sometimes members will cast a vote and then change their mind while voting is still under way -- and a picture of the board might not reflect each member's final vote.

"I don't think I've ever changed my vote, but some people do," he said.

No video, please

Visual recording also is part of Spicer's new set of problems.

"Another issue, especially when we do children's shows, youth productions, is parents using a cell phone to record the show," Spicer said. "We have to tell them, 'We can't allow you to do that.' "

"What we hear a lot is, 'Grandma can't make it,' " Spicer said. "We say, 'We wish we could, and if we could, we'd do it for you and for better quality.' "

And he means that quite literally.

Restrictions against video recordings are generally part of the license when theaters buy the rights to produce a play.

Spicer said those restrictions are intended to prevent someone from recording a production and broadcasting it, or selling DVDs -- and not aimed at keeping Grandma from seeing a shaky, grainy version of a play -- but, technically, it's not allowed.

"It's so convoluted to get that permission that we don't do it," Spicer said. "Copyrights sometimes are enormously restrictive."

He noted that J.M. Barrie's play "Peter Pan" was granted a copyright "in perpetuity" by the United Kingdom, with all royalties going to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. European Union copyright laws grant copyrights for 70 years after the author's death, which would have put Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Wendy and the rest in the public domain in 2007.

The legal issue remains unresolved.

Phones tell a story

And if it sounds like copyright law has a way to go to catch up with the times, consider this:

Once upon a time, if the police wanted to see your bank records, your phone records or your appointment calendar, or shuffle through your photo albums and know what books you've been reading, it usually meant getting search warrants and subpoenas.

Today, much of that information can be found on people's phones.

Salina attorney Bobby Hiebert not long ago had a client who discovered that firsthand.

His client's cell phone was found alongside a rural road in Dickinson County, not far from the site of a suspected arson.

"Dickinson County contacted the (I-135/I-70) drug task force, to see if they could unlock the phone to find out who it belonged to," Hiebert said.

That's not uncommon, he said -- but then law enforcement officers found text messages that appeared to be referring to drug transactions, and the phone's owner was arrested.

"The law says to search beyond finding the owner, to search beyond that needs a warrant," Hiebert said. His motion to quash the text messages as evidence was denied in court, though he said, "We would have won on appeal."

In just the past couple of years, the Kansas Court of Appeals has heard a handful of similar cases. In one 2009 ruling most directly on a warrantless search of the data on a smart phone, the court ruled that except in certain situations, "a search warrant is necessary to retrieve information stored on a cell phone."

The primary exceptions, the court went on to state, include searches that are normally done as part of an arrest, including protecting officers from attack, preventing the person arrested from escaping and preventing evidence from being destroyed.

In reaching that decision, the court looked to a 2005 Kansas Supreme Court case, dealing with warrantless search of the data on a desktop computer.

In that case, the Supreme Court determined that police could seize the computer because of concerns the owner might delete evidence -- but needed a warrant to search through the data.

Other courts around the country have made a further distinction, saying that taking the phone into police custody is enough to prevent data on the device from being erased -- and police must still get a warrant before searching its contents.

"I believe it's reasonable for law enforcement to crack a phone to ID the owner," Hiebert said. "But unless they have reasonable suspicion," that's as far as they should go.

An important distinction, Hiebert said, is whether the phone is locked -- with the phone password-protected or data encrypted.

"If it's locked, there's an expectation of privacy," Hiebert said. "If it's not locked, there's a lower expectation of privacy" similar to the lower expectation of privacy in a car, where passers-by can easily see in, as compared to a home.

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by e-mail at mstrand@salina.com.