Quote Quoting knoman
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A friend of mine is on probation in CA. While walking down the street, a Berkeley police officer stopped him, and exercised his right to do a probation search. While one of the cops was running his license, the other cop took my friend's cell phone, and started writing down all of his contact's names and numbers out of it. His name came back clear, and when the cop wrote all of them down, he gave back the phone and said that he could go. Is this legal? I've never heard of the police doing such a thing.
Even the US Supreme Court admitted in a ruling that CA had among the most sweeping 4th waiver regulations in the country. Yes, what happened to your friend is lawful. He waived his 4th Amendment protections as a condition of his release and as such, law enforcement and probation can exercise that waiver even without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. That includes a search of his cell phone.

If your friend does to like the scrutiny, he can always violate his probation and seek to do all of his time in custody rather than be out on probation.