It is evident that mobile phones and other handheld devices are rivals of desktop and laptop computers, because they are portable, relatively affordable, and easy to use. Storage size is no longer a barrier to using these smaller devices because of the compactness of external storage media and the trend to store more personal and organizational data on remote servers such as the cloud.
This raises a number of scenarios. Those countries whose jurisdictions provide no safeguard for the privacy of data stored or transferred to and from these devices have unbridled access to private data, the main problem being the difficulty of recovering encrypted data. Other jurisdictions are more mindful of their citizens' right to privacy but still face the problem of recovering evidence from encrypted devices. The discipline is now probably at a watershed, with the storage of data being transformed into remote network hubs, less convenient to access...