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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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Federal Circuit
Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
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LII State Appellate Courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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SCOTUSBlog
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Solicitor General's site
SCOTUSreport
Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
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S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
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General (many free):
LexisWeb
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Findlaw.com
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Westlaw.com $
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)
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
Electronic Frontier Foundation
NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
Electronic Privacy Information Center
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
Al Jazeera America: Trickle down surveillance
Al Jazeera America: Trickle down surveillance How the NSA’s covert surveillance tactics are being employed by local law enforcement.
WaPo: NSA fights preservation of data sought for suit
WaPo: NSA fights preservation of data sought for suit by Andrea Peterson: The National Security Agency recently used a novel argument for not holding onto information it collects about users online activity: it’s too complex.
NYT: Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies
NYT: Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth: Internet companies like Google and Facebook are working to keep governments and especially their spy agencies out of their servers after revelations from Edward J. … Continue reading
WaPo: Another federal judge rules on legality of NSA surveillance
WaPo: Another federal judge rules on legality of NSA surveillance by Orin Kerr: The opinion is Smith v. Obama from Judge Winmill of the District of Idaho. Judge Winmill concludes that the NSA program complies with the Fourth Amendment as … Continue reading
NYT: N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
NYT: N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images by James Risen and Laura Poitras: The National Security Agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown as it has used new software to exploit images in emails, text messages, social … Continue reading
BizPac Review: Electronic privacy battles taking place in 20 states
BizPac Review: Electronic privacy battles taking place in 20 states State lawmakers are pushing back against the surveillance alliance between the executive branch and law enforcement agencies at all levels of society. According to data published by the privacy advocacy … Continue reading
WaPo: Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft say government has no right to suppress data request disclosures
WaPo: Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft say government has no right to suppress data request disclosures by Hayley Tsukayama: Court documents unsealed Friday show Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft are arguing that government gag orders that stop them from disclosing … Continue reading
NYT: House Passes Restraints on Bulk Data Collection
NYT: House Passes Restraints on Bulk Data Collection by Johathan Weisman and Charlie Savage: In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement between the White House and Congress on a major national security issue, the House passed legislation on Thursday that … Continue reading
Politico: House curbs NSA data collection
Politico: House curbs NSA data collection by Alex Byers: Civil-liberties activists and tech companies say the bill doesn’t go far enough.
The Atlantic: NSA Spying Has a Disproportionate Effect on Immigrants
The Atlantic: NSA Spying Has a Disproportionate Effect on Immigrants by Conor Friedersdorf: The consequences of eliminating Fourth Amendment protections for all international communication with foreigners.
NYT: Phone Company Pushed Back Against N.S.A.’s Data Collection, Court Papers Show
NYT: Phone Company Pushed Back Against N.S.A.’s Data Collection, Court Papers Show by Charlie Savage: In 2009 and early 2010, a telephone company raised questions about the legality of the then-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting records … Continue reading
WaPo: House nears deal on bill to end mass collection of phone data
WaPo: House nears deal on bill to end mass collection of phone data by Ellen Nakashima: Key lawmakers in the House are nearing a bipartisan compromise on surveillance legislation that they believe can pass the full chamber and satisfy President … Continue reading
NYTimes: News Analysis: In Surveillance Debate, White House Turns Its Focus to Silicon Valley
NYTimes: News Analysis: In Surveillance Debate, White House Turns Its Focus to Silicon Valley by David E. Sanger: Nearly a year after the first disclosures about the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices at home and abroad, the agency is emerging … Continue reading
The Atlantic: The Shaky Legal Foundation of NSA Surveillance on Americans
The Atlantic: The Shaky Legal Foundation of NSA Surveillance on Americans by Conor Friedersdorf: What the final clause of the Fourth Amendment means in interpreting the government’s rights
Politico: Surveillance orders declined in 2013
Politico: Surveillance orders declined in 2013 by Josh Gerstein: The Obama administration said it filed 1,655 applications with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2013, down from 1,856 the previous year. The court maintained its controversial record of virtually never … Continue reading
eff.org: Campus Activism Against NSA Spying is Growing Fast [Oh? Not so fast]
eff.org: Campus Activism Against NSA Spying is Growing Fast by April Glaser: EFF has been on the road, traveling to cities and towns across the country to bring our message of digital rights and reform to community and student groups. … Continue reading
WaPo: Surveillance court rejected Verizon challenge to NSA calls program
WaPo: Surveillance court rejected Verizon challenge to NSA calls program by Ellen Nakashima: Verizon in January filed a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s program that collects billions of Americans’ call-detail records, but a surveillance court … Continue reading
TechDirt: Unnamed Phone Company Challenges NSA’s Bulk Records Collection; FISC Says It’s Perfectly Legal
TechDirt: Unnamed Phone Company Challenges NSA’s Bulk Records Collection; FISC Says It’s Perfectly Legal: Late on Friday, the FISA Court unclassified a few documents, including a ruling on an until now secret attempt by a telco to challenge the latest … Continue reading
eff.org: In the One-sided Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, It’s Hard to Get The Whole Story
eff.org: In the One-sided Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, It’s Hard to Get The Whole Story by Nadia Kayyali and Kurt Opsahl: While most courts in the United States are adversarial—each party presents its side and a jury, or occasionally a … Continue reading