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- N.D.Ala.: SW not invalid because issuing judge previously represented the target
- The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
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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)
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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)
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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: Cell phones
W.D.Wis.: Beware trying to impose Riley on a mere civil discovery request
“Equating a suspected drug trafficker’s assertion of a Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy in his cell phone with plaintiffs’ discovery requests in this case wastes everybody’s time.” Driftless Area Land Conservatory v. Huebsch, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 218934 (W.D. Wis. … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Inventory of duffel bag in hand on arrest was reasonable under FBI regs
The FBI inventory of defendant’s duffel bag on his arrest was reasonable under FBI regulations. Search warrants were used for cell phones found inside. United States v. Ellis, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 215725 (S.D. N.Y. Nov. 17, 2020):
WV: SW not needed to seize cell phone from a person, even when it’s expected to be found
The warrantless seizure of defendant’s cell phone was reasonable. The officers didn’t need to get a search warrant before taking it off his person. State v. Deem, 2020 W. Va. LEXIS 706 (Oct. 20, 2020). The officer’s prior knowledge of … Continue reading
PA: CSLI warrant was particular with phone number and time, without name of owner
CSLI warrant was particular when it described the phone number and time period and didn’t have to name the phone owner. Commonwealth v. Davis, 2020 Pa. Super. LEXIS 885 (Oct. 23, 2020). The officer spent a week corroborating the CI, … Continue reading
WaPo: Senators seek IG probe of border agency’s warrantless use of phone location data
WaPo: Senators seek IG probe of border agency’s warrantless use of phone location data by Drew Harswell (“In August, Customs and Border Protection subscribed to a service that reports the location of cellphones to businesses.”)
TX: Is abandonment of a car also abandonment of the information in a cell phone left in it?
Dissent on denial of a petition for discretionary review: The court should decide whether fleeing a car and leaving one’s cell phone behind is abandonment. The court of appeals below held it was. Wiltz v. State, 595 S.W.3d 930, 936 … Continue reading
PA: Mere presence of cell phones near drugs in a home isn’t PC for their search
The search warrant for defendant’s cell phones, issued months after the seizure of heroin and firearms from his home, completely lacked probable cause. The mere fact cell phones were on defendant in proximity to drugs isn’t enough, and “officer’s experience” … Continue reading
NYTimes: The Police Can Probably Break Into Your Phone
NYTimes: The Police Can Probably Break Into Your Phone (“At least 2,000 law enforcement agencies have tools to get into encrypted smartphones, according to new research, and they are using them far more than previously known.”)
S.D.N.Y. follows majority and holds that a cell phone search starts with “seizure of the media”
The government had possession of defendant’s cell phone and technically started the search within the time limits of Rule 41(e)(2)(B) by “seizure of the media.” The extraction report followed up months later. United States v. Estime, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS … Continue reading
FL4: SW of def’s cell phone authenticated text messages
After a search warrant produced defendant’s text messages, the state was able to authenticate them by the phone. State v. Torres, 2020 Fla. App. LEXIS 14356 (Fla. 4th DCA Oct. 7, 2020). “In addition, ‘[d]uring a valid traffic stop, officers … Continue reading
CA9: No standing to sue to enjoin future border searches of cell phones
Plaintiff cannot obtain prospective injunctive relief against future border cell phone searches because he lacks standing for future searches. As to past searches, he cannot obtain injunctive relief after suing under the FTCA. “Under FTCA’s judgment bar, ‘once a plaintiff … Continue reading
KY: Affidavit for the SW limited the breadth of cell phone warrant
While the search warrant for defendant’s cell phone was arguably overbroad and not well drafted, it was limited by the affidavit in support as to the specific things to be sought. Tucker v. Commonwealth, 2020 Ky. App. LEXIS 112 (Oct. … Continue reading
CA6: QI for workplace search of cell phone
Plaintiff is a police officer who sued over the workplace search of his cell phone (see City of Ontario v. Quon) after his wife grabbed it and turned it in claiming he was having sex with another officer. Qualified immunity … Continue reading
MI: Def’s employer’s ownership of cell phone is only a factor in REP and standing; remanded
The trial court erred in finding defendant had no standing in the cell phone he had that belonged to his employer. Ownership of the phone is only one factor in standing. People v. Paul, 2020 Mich. App. LEXIS 6637 (Oct. … Continue reading
CO: cert. gr.: Whether cell phone details beyond number obtained by illegal arrest should be suppressed; or, is cell phone number particular enough?
“Whether the court of appeals erred in determining that the warrant to search Petitioner’s cell phone and supporting affidavit satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, where all descriptive information about the phone except the telephone number was obtained as a … Continue reading
D.Me.: Admittedly valid state SW for drug evidence on phone led to finding CP and a valid federal SW
Officers got a state search warrant for defendant’s cell phone for drugs and stumbled upon child pornography otherwise linked to him by his tattoos and voice. He admits the warrant was valid for drugs. A later federal search warrant was … Continue reading
TX14: No justification for warrantless seizure of cell phone for fear of deleting its contents
Officers lacked any justification to believe that defendant was deleting or was going to delete evidence from his cell phone to justify a warrantless seizure of the phone in a robbery case. Igboji v. State, 2020 Tex. App. LEXIS 7647 … Continue reading
NJLJ: Analysis: Give Us Your Cell Phone Password and Constitutional Rights, Please
NJLJ: Analysis: Give Us Your Cell Phone Password and Constitutional Rights, Please by Louis Locascio (“The issue, of first impression, was whether requiring a defendant to disclose the passcode of his cell phone violates his protection against self-incrimination provided by … Continue reading
CT Tax & Admin.: Order to DoC employees to search their cell phones for public records was excessive
An agency order to employees to search their personal cell phones for copies of public records is in excess of agency authority. Comm’r of the Dep’t of Corr. v. Freedom of Info. Comm’n, 2020 Conn. Super. LEXIS 1004 (Tax & … Continue reading