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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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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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State courts (and some USDC opinions)
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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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
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
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
techdirt: Court Says Government Has To Reveal If It Kept The Data From The DEA’s Mass Surveillance Program
techdirt: Court Says Government Has To Reveal If It Kept The Data From The DEA’s Mass Surveillance Program by Mike Masnick: Back in April, USA Today had a detailed report on a massive DEA phone records surveillance program that pre-dated … Continue reading
techdirt: Hey NSA: Even If AT&T Was Collecting The Info For You, The Fourth Amendment Still Applies
techdirt: Hey NSA: Even If AT&T Was Collecting The Info For You, The Fourth Amendment Still Applies by Mike Masnick: We’ve already written a few articles about the confirmation that AT&T is going above and beyond what’s required by the … Continue reading
The Hill: The quiet battle for privacy in the cloud
The Hill: The quiet battle for privacy in the cloud by Dan Horowitz: Why is the Second Circuit being forced to defend our electronic privacy and preserve an international agreement from the Obama administration? Recently, a Federal Judge in New … Continue reading
NYTimes: AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet Traffic, Files Reveal
NYTimes: AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet Traffic, Files Reveal by Julia Angwin, Charlie Savage, Jeff Larson, Henrik Moltke, Laura Poitras and James Risen: Newly disclosed documents show that the National Security Agency gained access to billions of emails through … Continue reading
EFF: A New Milestone: Appeals Court to Consider NSA’s Mass Seizures and Searches on the Internet Backbone
EFF: A New Milestone: Appeals Court to Consider NSA’s Mass Seizures and Searches on the Internet Backbone by Andrew Crocker: One of the most outrageous ways that the government has violated our Fourth Amendment rights against general seizures and searches … Continue reading
NYTimes: A.C.L.U. Asks Court to Stop Part of N.S.A.’s Bulk Phone Data Collection
NYTimes: A.C.L.U. Asks Court to Stop Part of N.S.A.’s Bulk Phone Data Collection by Charles Savage: The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to partly shut down the National Security Agency program that collects Americans’ … Continue reading
USA Today: New privacy debate focuses on government access to emails, texts, calls
USA Today: New privacy debate focuses on government access to emails, texts, calls by Erin Kelly: Now that Congress has ended the National Security Agency’s controversial dragnet of Americans’ phone records, privacy advocates are pushing to curb a lesser-known surveillance … Continue reading
USA Today: New privacy debate focuses on government access to emails, texts, calls
USA Today: New privacy debate focuses on government access to emails, texts, calls by Erin Kelly: WASHINGTON — Now that Congress has ended the National Security Agency’s controversial dragnet of Americans’ phone records, privacy advocates are pushing to curb a … Continue reading
Legal Intelligencer: The USA Freedom Act and Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence
Legal Intelligencer: The USA Freedom Act and Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence by Leonard Deutchman:
NY Times: Surveillance Court Rules That N.S.A. Can Resume Bulk Data Collection
NY Times: Surveillance Court Rules That N.S.A. Can Resume Bulk Data Collection by Charles Savage: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans’ … Continue reading
ars technica: Warrantless phone tapping, e-mail spying inching to Supreme Court review
ars technica: Warrantless phone tapping, e-mail spying inching to Supreme Court review by David Kravets The FISA Amendments Act allows US spies to vacuum up e-mails and phone calls.
EFF: How USA Freedom Impacts Ongoing NSA Litigation
EFF: How USA Freedom Impacts Ongoing NSA Litigation by Kelsey Harclerode: Digital liberties groups across the country have both celebrated and criticized the recent passage of the USA Freedom Act. Here at EFF, we did a little bit of both. … Continue reading
The Hill: Spy court clears path to renewing NSA powers
The Hill: Spy court clears path to renewing NSA powers by Julian Hattem: The secretive federal court that oversees the nation’s spies is laying the groundwork for temporarily reauthorizing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) sweeping collection of U.S. phone records. … Continue reading
The Hill: Surveillance reform wars continue
The Hill: Surveillance reform wars continue by Patrick G. Eddington: The annual Intelligence Authorization bill has become the latest battleground in the ongoing Surveillance Reform War. The bill’s inclusion of language that would bar the relatively independent Privacy and Civil … Continue reading
The Hill: House votes to further rein in NSA, in sign of continued momentum
The Hill: House votes to further rein in NSA, in sign of continued momentum by Julian Hattem: House lawmakers voted to further rein in the nation’s spies on Thursday, in a signal that legislators aren’t yet done reforming surveillance law. … Continue reading
Exaggeration of the week: The group that gave us the USA PATRIOT Act claims the Fourth Amendment
CHQ: Conservatism: A better future for American liberty, prosperity and security: Two issues being hotly contested at the national level this year — government collection of private records as debated through the Patriot Act sunset provision, and the definition of … Continue reading
Just Security: The (Telephony) Matrix Reloaded
Just Security: The (Telephony) Matrix Reloaded by Julian Sanchez:
techdirt: FISA Court Asked To Shut Down Bulk Collection Of Phone Records During Transition To USA Freedom Act
techdirt: FISA Court Asked To Shut Down Bulk Collection Of Phone Records During Transition To USA Freedom Act by Tim Cushing:
CNN: New conservative legal challenge to NSA phone data program
CNN: New conservative legal challenge to NSA phone data program by Evan Perez: Washington (CNN)–The Obama administration’s effort to save the government’s access to bulk records of phone calls for national security investigations is running into a new conservative court … Continue reading
Time: Sen. Rand Paul: Don’t Trust a Lying Government
Time: Sen. Rand Paul: Don’t Trust a Lying Government by Sen. Rand Paul: The USA Freedom Act, which the Senate approved Tuesday, still threatens the constitutional rights of Americans This week President Barack Obama suffered a serious rebuke. Congress sent … Continue reading