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- CA11: Service of SW without attachments isn’t 4A violation
- KS: Running warrants on a passed out person is reasonable
- M.D.Fla.: Unidentified pills in driver’s lap may have been RS but it wasn’t PC for arrest
- D.C.Cir.: It was reasonable for officers to conclude that evidence or instrumentalities of the crime would be found in the car used in a robbery
- CA7: Officer’s warrantless view of CSAM flagged by hash value was not unreasonable
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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F.R.Crim.P. 41
www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Category Archives: Border search
ABAJ: Traveling lawyers get new protections in device searches at border
ABAJ: Traveling lawyers get new protections in device searches at border by Lee Rawles. The ABA is meeting soon in Vancouver. What about protecting privileged information at Customs when they return:
Just Security: Customs and Border Protection’s New Policy for Searching Devices Offers Thin Protection
Just Security: Customs and Border Protection’s New Policy for Searching Devices Offers Thin Protection by Carrie DeCell:
NYTimes: Cellphone and Computer Searches at U.S. Border Rise Under Trump
NYTimes: Cellphone and Computer Searches at U.S. Border Rise Under Trump by Ron Nixon:
NYTimes: Privacy Complaints Mount Over Phone Searches at U.S. Border Since 2011
NYTimes: Privacy Complaints Mount Over Phone Searches at U.S. Border Since 2011 by Charlie Savage and Ron Nixon: Grievances over lost privacy run through a trove of roughly 250 complaints by people whose laptops and phones were searched without a … Continue reading
Just Security: Warrantless Border Searches: The officer ‘searched through every email and intimate photos of my wife’
Just Security: Warrantless Border Searches: The officer ‘searched through every email and intimate photos of my wife’ by Carrie DeCell:
NYTimes: Seeing Danger in a Face
NYTimes: Seeing Danger in a Face by Alex Bastian SF ADA detained at SFO coming back from Greece and Armenia
NACDL: Protecting Your Digital Devices at the Border, A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Primer
NACDL: Protecting Your Digital Devices at the Border, A Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Primer (October 2017): Courts have long made it clear that agents can search the bags of people entering the country. For the past decade or so, U.S. Customs … Continue reading
The Hill: Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act
The Hill: Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act by Adam Schwartz and Sophia Cope:
Just Security: We Need to Know More About Government Searches of Traveler’s Electronic Devices
Just Security: We Need to Know More About Government Searches of Traveler’s Electronic Devices by Carrie DeCell:
American Conservative: Feds Searching Record Number of Our Personal Devices at the Border
American Conservative: Feds Searching Record Number of Our Personal Devices at the Border by Frank Miniter In the name of ‘Homeland Security.’
ABAJ: Traveling out of the country? Lawyers should consider using ‘burner’ devices
ABAJ: Traveling out of the country? Lawyers should consider using ‘burner’ devices by Debra Cassens Weiss:
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data by Steven Musil Clarification came in response to the senator’s questions about border agents pressuring Americans into providing device credentials. Endgadget: US Customs can search phones but not data … Continue reading
D.P.R.: Secondary border inspection of def’s cell phone for evidence of dog fighting was reasonable
Defendant’s alleged fighting dogs and his cell phone were validly the subject of secondary border inspections in San Juan. United States v. Castro-Correa, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90966 (D.P.R. June 12, 2017).* Defendant didn’t have standing to challenge the search … Continue reading
Law.com: Fourth Amendment Exception Allows Customs to Search Personal Devices
Law.com: Fourth Amendment Exception Allows Customs to Search Personal Devices by Joe Martini & James Glasser: CBP agents can search cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices of those entering or leaving the country, regardless of citizenship and despite the vast … Continue reading
ABAJ: ABA expresses concern about border searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices
ABAJ: ABA expresses concern about border searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices by Debra Cassens Weiss: ABA President Linda Klein is expressing serious concern about standards that permit searches of lawyer laptops and other electronic devices at the … Continue reading
Yahoo! Tech: A Former NSA Lawyer Explains Why Searching Phones at the Border Is a Waste of Time
Yahoo! Tech: A Former NSA Lawyer Explains Why Searching Phones at the Border Is a Waste of Time by Brian Feldman
Forbes: US Immigration Splurged $2.2 Million On Phone Hacking Tech Just After Trump’s Travel Ban
Forbes: US Immigration Splurged $2.2 Million On Phone Hacking Tech Just After Trump’s Travel Ban by Thomas Fox-Brewster:
WaPo: Border agents can look at everything on your cell phone. Congress should change that (editorial)
WaPo: Border agents can look at everything on your cell phone. Congress should change that (editorial): PRETTY MUCH everyone can agree that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents should be able to freely search travelers’ bags at the border. Their … Continue reading
NYTimes: Border Officers Nearly Double Searches of Electronic Devices, US Says
NYTimes: Border Officers Nearly Double Searches of Electronic Devices, US Says by Ron Nixon:
NPR: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Step Up Cell Phone Searches
NPR: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Step Up Cell Phone Searches: The border patrol has almost tripled the number of people it demands turn over their cell phones coming into and leaving the U.S. Some in Congress now want to require … Continue reading