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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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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)
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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) -
“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: E-mail
Daily Caller: Government ‘Rewrites’ Law To Access Microsoft Emails Stored Overseas
Daily Caller: Government ‘Rewrites’ Law To Access Microsoft Emails Stored Overseas by Giuseppe Macri: In a brief filed late Wednesday, Microsoft said the federal government’s legal argument for seizing user emails stored overseas “rewrites” an almost 30-year-old law to “reinterpret” … Continue reading
D.Alaska: Second SW for everything in six email accounts is overbroad; prior SW was limited and motion to compel should be filed
Google declined to respond to a search warrant for content of six email accounts for a six month range because of overbreadth. There was probable cause. Instead of seeking to enforce the search warrant against Google, the government issues a … Continue reading
NLJ: Reflections On Law and Technology | Q&A with John Facciola, retired magistrate judge
NLJ: Reflections On Law and Technology | Q&A with John Facciola, retired magistrate judge by Zoe Tillman: Judges aren’t generally known for their tech savvy. John Facciola was one of the exceptions. Facciola, 69, retired earlier this year as a … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: The government’s typical seize first, search second normal search protocol doesn’t work with email
The government’s typical seize first, search second normal search protocol doesn’t work with email. This search warrant for a Gmail account is denied. Try again. In re [Redacted]@gmail, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181984 (N.D.Cal. May 8, 2014) (apparently under seal … Continue reading
The Hill: Republican senator pushes bill to require warrants for emails
The Hill: Republican senator pushes bill to require warrants for emails by Mario Trujillo: The senator’s bill limits access to data stored in clouds and overseas.
Ripon Advance: Electronic Communications Privacy bill gains new ally
Ripon Advance: Electronic Communications Privacy bill gains new ally: U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) said on Monday that he has joined the effort to pass House Bill 699, also known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act, which aims to … Continue reading
The Hill: Senators resurrect bill to require a warrant for email searches
The Hill: Senators resurrect bill to require a warrant for email searches by Mario Trujillo Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee plan to re-introduce legislation in the “coming weeks.”
Center for Democracy and Technology: Data Privacy Day: A Reminder of the Need to Update ECPA
Center for Democracy and Technology: Data Privacy Day: A Reminder of the Need to Update ECPA by Chris Calabrese: For years CDT has been leading the charge to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the law that governs how … Continue reading
NYTimes: Holder Fortifies Protection of News Media’s Phone Records, Notes or Emails
NYTimes: Holder Fortifies Protection of News Media’s Phone Records, Notes or Emails By Matt Apuzzo: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday eliminated what journalism groups worried could be used as a loophole in the rules governing how and … Continue reading
EFF: The Faulty Logic at the Heart of Microsoft Ireland Email Dispute
EFF: The Faulty Logic at the Heart of Microsoft Ireland Email Dispute by Hanni Fakhoury: Microsoft has been battling with the federal government over the Department of Justice’s high profile attempt to get access to emails stored abroad in Ireland … Continue reading
The Recorder: Judge Limits Feds’ Email Search Request
The Recorder: Judge Limits Feds’ Email Search Request by Ross Todd: Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal said he wouldn’t approve an indefinite gag order as part of a search warrant for a Hotmail account.
WI decides important Email SW case: Fourth Amendment doesn’t require a higher standard for email warrants
Email search warrants in a public corruption case were “particular” within the Fourth Amendment. They were time limited, and the providers deleted electronic information [header information] from the final production that was not specifically sought. The Fourth Amendment does not … Continue reading
EFF: Automated Mass Surveillance is Unconstitutional, EFF Explains in Jewel v. NSA
EFF: Automated Mass Surveillance is Unconstitutional, EFF Explains in Jewel v. NSA by Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker and Jamie Lee Williams Today EFF filed our latest brief in Jewel v. NSA, our longstanding case on behalf of AT&T customers … Continue reading
D.D.C. USDJ reverses USMJ on refusal to grant particular email warrant
The government successfully appeals one of USMJ Facciola’s orders denying an email search warrant. In the Matter of the Search of Information Associated with [Redacted]@mac.com That Is Stored at Premises Controlled by Apple, Inc., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117040 (D. … Continue reading
CA2: Whether to employ a SWAT team entitled to qualified immunity; rest of raid not
The decision to employ a SWAT team is subject to qualified immunity, but the actions that follow here aren’t. The raid here was overkill [my word], and the officers do not get qualified immunity for how it was conducted because … Continue reading
WaPo: How closely is Google really reading your e-mail?
WaPo: How closely is Google really reading your e-mail? by Hayley Tsukayama: Most users know that Google routinely uses software to scan the contents of e-mails, including images, to feed its advertising and to identify malware. But many may not … Continue reading
Daily Caller: Government’s Crafty New Method Of Accessing Your Email
Daily Caller: Government’s Crafty New Method Of Accessing Your Email by Giuseppe Macri: Microsoft is set to argue in federal court Thursday why the government shouldn’t be able to access customer emails stored in overseas servers, and the company wants … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: SW for email account can be for all emails, disagreeing with D.D.C.
Disagreeing with a USMJ for the District Court for District of Columbia, a USMJ in the Southern District of New York held that an entire email account can be the subject of a search warrant, not just itemized files. The … Continue reading