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- IN: Overdose call led to EMS telling police what they saw and that led to SW
- NY1: A mental health defense waives REP in the medical records about it
- MA: When a likely Franks violation comes out at trial, def gets to reopen the suppression issue
- RI: Challenge to one sentence of 8-page cell phone records SW fails; totality has to be considered
- WaPo: Subpoena bill would curtail secretive tool used to target government critics
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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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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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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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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: National security
Reason: Giving Government Vast Snooping Authority Is One Thing Democrats and Republicans Both Like
Reason: Giving Government Vast Snooping Authority Is One Thing Democrats and Republicans Both Like by J.D. Tuccille (“‘The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement’s surveillance and investigative powers and represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, … Continue reading
techdirt: Supreme Court’s Warrant Requirement For Cell Site Location Info Apparently Killed Another Domestic Surveillance Program
techdirt: Supreme Court’s Warrant Requirement For Cell Site Location Info Apparently Killed Another Domestic Surveillance Program by Tim Cushing:
Democracy Now: FBI Carried Out Thousands of Unconstitutional Searches of NSA Archives
Democracy Now: FBI Carried Out Thousands of Unconstitutional Searches of NSA Archives:
WSJ: FBI’s Use of Foreign-Surveillance Tool Violated Americans’ Privacy Rights, Court Found
WSJ: FBI’s Use of Foreign-Surveillance Tool Violated Americans’ Privacy Rights, Court Found by Dustin Volz and Byron Tau (“U.S. discloses ruling last year by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that FBI’s data queries of U.S. citizens were unconstitutional.”) NTImes: F.B.I. Practices … Continue reading
TechCrunch: NSA says warrantless searches of Americans’ data rose in 2018
TechCrunch: NSA says warrantless searches of Americans’ data rose in 2018 by Zack Whittaker: The data, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), revealed a 28% rise in the number of targeted search terms used … Continue reading
Politico: Judge cites state secrets risk in dismissing warrantless wiretapping suit
Politico: Judge cites state secrets risk in dismissing warrantless wiretapping suit by Josh Gerstein:
InfoSecurity: Congress Stops NSAs Collecting Phone Records
InfoSecurity: Congress Stops NSAs Collecting Phone Records by Kacy Zurkus. It’s a bill, not an act: The US Congress has proposed an act that would repeal the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) authority to access basic business records and the phone … Continue reading
Washington Examiner: The NSA stopped collecting bulk phone data, and nothing bad happened
Washington Examiner: The NSA stopped collecting bulk phone data, and nothing bad happened by Dan King:
NY Times: Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says
NY Times: Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says by Charlie Savage: WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican … Continue reading
ACLU blog: William Barr Helped Build America’s Surveillance State
ACLU blog: William Barr Helped Build America’s Surveillance State by Neema Singh Guliani & Brian Tashman:
Lawfare: Carpenter and the End of Bulk Surveillance of Americans
Lawfare: Carpenter and the End of Bulk Surveillance of Americans by Sharon Bradford Franklin:
NYT: N.S.A. Purges Hundreds of Millions of Call and Text Records
NYT: N.S.A. Purges Hundreds of Millions of Call and Text Records by Charlie Savage The National Security Agency has purged hundreds of millions of records logging phone calls and texts that it had gathered from American telecommunications companies since 2015, … Continue reading
Motherboard: This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About You
Motherboard: This Is the Secret Court Order That Forced the NSA to Delete the Data It Collected About You The court found an “institutional lack of candor on NSA’s part and emphasized that this is a very serious Fourth Amendment … Continue reading
NYTimes: Reined-In N.S.A. Still Collected 151 Million Phone Records in ’16
NYTimes: Reined-In N.S.A. Still Collected 151 Million Phone Records in ’16 by Charlie Savage: The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls last year via a new system that Congress created to end … Continue reading
PC World: US surveillance law may see no new protections for foreign targets
PC World: US surveillance law may see no new protections for foreign targets by Grant Gross: The law that authorizes NSA surveillance overseas expires in December, but lawmakers are focused on its impact on US residents.
D.Utah: Ptfs alleged enough to stay in court against NSA sweeping up all calls in SLC during 2002 Winter Olympics
Plaintiffs plead enough to stay in court. They claimed that the NSA, with the authority of President Bush, intercepted and still stores all communications in the Salt Lake City area during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Amnesty International v. Clapper is … Continue reading
LawFare: The Surprisingly Weak Reasoning of Mohamud
LawFare: The Surprisingly Weak Reasoning of Mohamud by Orin Kerr: In a recent post here at Lawfare, April Doss argues that the Ninth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Mohamud “got it right.” In her view, the critics of the … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: Protecting the Fourth Amendment in the Information Age: A Response to Robert Litt
New Law Review Article: Protecting the Fourth Amendment in the Information Age: A Response to Robert Litt by Cindy Cohn (short form here without footnotes)
USA Today: New House coalition fights rise in government surveillance
USA Today: New House coalition fights rise in government surveillance by Erin Kelly. They’ve never been interested before. And 25 is still only a handful of the 435 members of the House.
WaPo: FBI wants access to Internet browser history without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases
WaPo: FBI wants access to Internet browser history without a warrant in terrorism and spy cases by Ellen Nakashima: