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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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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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www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
Section 1983 Blog -
"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: FISA
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
USA Today: U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades
USA Today: U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades by Brian Heath: The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a … Continue reading
The Hill: Lawmakers in cybersecurity rush
The Hill: Lawmakers in cybersecurity rush by Cory Bennett: Lawmakers are rushing to pass a major cybersecurity bill this month before a divisive debate over reauthorizing the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs bogs them down. Lawmakers have maintained that their … Continue reading
The Hill: Advancing cyber bills spark fresh NSA worries
The Hill: Advancing cyber bills spark fresh NSA worries by Cory Bennett: A bipartisan plan to merge elements of competing legislation has privacy advocates worried.
The Atlantic: When Will the NSA Stop Spying on Innocent Americans?
The Atlantic: When Will the NSA Stop Spying on Innocent Americans? by Conor Friedersdorf: The law cited as the justification for the phone dragnet will expire on June 1 unless Congress acts to extend it.
Just Security: How a Case of Stolen Corn Seeds Shows the Problem with the FISA Court
Just Security: How a Case of Stolen Corn Seeds Shows the Problem with the FISA Court by Faiza Patel: As collateral challenges to the mass surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden like US v. Moalin, US v. Muhtorov, and US … Continue reading
AP Exclusive: Before leak, NSA mulled ending phone program
AP Exclusive: Before leak, NSA mulled ending phone program by Ken Dilanian: WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, … Continue reading
Washington Times: What if the government fears freedom?
Washington Times: What if the government fears freedom? by Andrew P. Napolitano Violating the Fourth Amendment is not the president’s prerogative What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan … Continue reading
NJLJ: AG Ordered to Explain Denial of Records Related to NYPD Spying
NJLJ: AG Ordered to Explain Denial of Records Related to NYPD Spying by Michael Booth: A New Jersey appeals court has ordered the state Attorney General’s Office to provide more detailed reasoning as to why it refused to comply with … Continue reading
Just Security: Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know
Just Security: Surveillance and the Vanishing Right to Know by Brett Max Kaufman & Patrick C. Toomey: Despite the continuing torrent of disclosures concerning previously secret and wide-ranging government surveillance efforts, many criminal defendants are not getting notice of the … Continue reading
National Journal: Judge Upholds Legality of NSA Internet Surveillance
National Journal: Judge Upholds Legality of NSA Internet Surveillance by Dustin Volz: A California district judge found that “the Plaintiffs’ version of the significant operational details of the Upstream collection process is substantially inaccurate.” TechDirt: Court Rejects EFF’s Arguments Over … Continue reading
Politico: Official: NSA phone records surveillance could end in June
Politico: Official: NSA phone records surveillance could end in June by Josh Gerstein: A controversial program that collects data on billions of telephone calls to, from and within the U.S. will shut down if the legal authority for it runs … Continue reading
Just Security: Homeland Insecurity: Checkpoints, Warrantless Searches and Security Theater
Just Security: Homeland Insecurity: Checkpoints, Warrantless Searches and Security Theater by Patrick Eddington: Since June 2013, the American public, press, and policy-makers have been debating the implications of Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass U.S. government surveillance programs, most established after … Continue reading
WaPo: DEA v. NSA – the podcast
WaPo: DEA v. NSA – the podcast by Stewart Baker In this week’s episode, our guest is Rebecca Richards, NSA’s director of privacy and civil liberties. We ask the tough questions: Is her title an elaborate hoax or is she … Continue reading
Politico: Administration highlights surveillance reforms
Politico: Administration highlights surveillance reforms by Josh Gerstein: With legislation to overhaul a key surveillance program stalled on Capitol Hill, the Obama Administration issued a report Tuesday highlighting reforms it has made to the nation’s snooping efforts since Edward Snowden … Continue reading
On the Media: Too Little, Too Late
On the Media: Too Little, Too Late, Hosted by Brooke Gladstone, Guest: Ed Pilkington: On Christmas Eve, Google informed WikiLeaks that personal information for three of its employees had been handed over to the Department of Justice over three years … Continue reading
WaPo: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case
WaPo: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case by Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate: Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their e-mails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in … Continue reading
NYTimes: Documents Show N.S.A.’s Moves on Surveillance Before Congress’s Approval
NYTimes: Documents Show N.S.A.’s Moves on Surveillance Before Congress’s Approval by Charlie Savage: WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled in 2007 that the U.S.A. Patriot Act empowered the National Security Agency to collect foreigners’ emails and phone calls from domestic … Continue reading
ArsTechnica: If the Supreme Court tackles the NSA in 2015, it’ll be one of these five cases
ArsTechnica: If the Supreme Court tackles the NSA in 2015, it’ll be one of these five cases by Cyrus Farivar How a church, terror suspects, and some lawyers are pushing privacy on the legal front.
The New American: NSA Admits Ongoing Violations of Americans’ Privacy
The New American: NSA Admits Ongoing Violations of Americans’ Privacy by Thomas R. Eddlem: The NSA has been forced to admit it has violated American citizens’ personal privacy thousands of times — and even transgressed its own insanely loose rules … Continue reading