My answer is: Haven't you got Legal-Aid yet (or a lawyer on retainer)? This is procedural stuff here than criminal lawyers know like the back of their hands, but hunch is "no, not unless they have a warrant" but my hunch is also that the Misuse of Drugs Act (I think thats the one you hear them quoting a lot on Police Ten-7) for instance has a ton of non-warranted search provisions for say cars etc if the Police suspect something that there could be easily a provision. So again, you need to ask a lawyer not Geekzone.
Generally though, if the Police really care about what is on something, they'll get a warrant.
(Side note, writing this, I do recall overhearing an interesting dialogue ~5 months back between a suspect (just released out of the cells) and a cop at Henderson while in their Reception (I was after a form, nothing bad ;)), the cops had done the guy for breaking into a car, and taken the guy's phone, but wouldn't release it back to him until (and rough quotes) "we've had the techies break the lock code and look at your texts" (i.e. 'we want to see if you were stupid enough to document your crime on your phone'), certainly didn't seem to sit right with me, it certainly seems the cops have more powers than they used to when it comes to accessing technical data without a warrant, because surely if the guy consented, he would've given them his unlock code...)
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