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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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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)
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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
New book: Cell Phone Investigations
Cell Phone Investigations by Thomas Manson via Police Technical, shipping about Dec. 1.
arstechnica: AT&T demands clarity: Are warrants needed for customer cell-site data?
arstechnica: AT&T demands clarity: Are warrants needed for customer cell-site data? by David Kravets Legal uncertainty surrounds a law compelling disclosure of location information. AT&T has entered the legal fracas over whether court warrants are required for the government to … Continue reading
EFF Fights Government’s Effort to Get Cell Location Records Without a Warrant
EFF Fights Government’s Effort to Get Cell Location Records Without a Warrant by Hanni Fakhoury and Jennifer Lynch: Once again, a federal court will decide whether police can track your movements over an extended period of time without a search … Continue reading
Baltimore Sun: Judge threatens detective with contempt for declining to reveal cellphone tracking methods
Baltimore Sun: Judge threatens detective with contempt for declining to reveal cellphone tracking methods by Justin Fenton: Baltimore prosecutors withdrew key evidence in a robbery case Monday rather than reveal details of the cellphone tracking technology police used to gather … Continue reading
ACLU: Americans’ Confidence in Privacy of Electronic Communications is Very Low
ACLU: Americans’ Confidence in Privacy of Electronic Communications is Very Low by Jay Stanley: Pew has a new poll out on Americans’ attitudes toward privacy, and it is full of interesting findings. A New York Times blog piece on the … Continue reading
D.S.D.: Community caretaking entry must be objectively reasonable and still be wrong
Officers’ legitimate concerns that a person inside a house was in danger or restrained, although wrong, were reasonable, and that authorized an entry under the community caretaking function. The fact they were wrong doesn’t matter if their belief was reasonable. … Continue reading
ACLU: AT&T Comes Out in Support of Stricter Standards for Police Cell Location Phone Tracking
ACLU: AT&T Comes Out in Support of Stricter Standards for Police Cell Location Phone Tracking (press release): MIAMI – In a landmark move in the battle over privacy rights and new technologies, AT&T has filed a federal court brief arguing … Continue reading
NYTimes: Privacy Concerns for Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren
NYTimes: Privacy Concerns for Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren by Natasha Singer: Many teachers say the ClassDojo app helps them automate the task of recording classroom conduct, but some critics say such apps are being adopted without enough consideration for data … Continue reading
arstechnica: Judges impose rare, stricter requirement for “stingray” use by police
arstechnica: Judges impose rare, stricter requirement for “stingray” use by police by Cyrus Farivar Washington judges: Locals cops must not collect data from innocent people. Judges in Pierce County, Washington, have now begun requiring law enforcement agencies to ask for … Continue reading
D.N.H.: Probable cause permits seizure of a cell phone and getting IMEI no. off back under Riley
Law enforcement officers with probable cause do not need a search warrant to seize a cell phone, such as in a search incident situation where they know that the phone was used to arrange drug deals, but they most probably … Continue reading
Airborne stringray: AP from WSJ: Report: Planes used to gather cellphone data
AP from WSJ: Report: Planes used to gather cellphone data WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department is collecting data from thousands of cellphones through high-tech gear deployed on airplanes that mimics communications towers, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The … Continue reading
NYTimes: The Upshot: Americans Say They Want Privacy, but Act as if They Don’t
NYTimes: The Upshot: Americans Say They Want Privacy, but Act as if They Don’t by Claire Cain Miller: Americans say they are deeply concerned about privacy on the web and their cellphones. They say they do not trust Internet companies … Continue reading
Lexology: iSpy: tracking employees with GPS technology on mobile devices
Lexology: iSpy: tracking employees with GPS technology on mobile devices by Wilson Elser, Dean A. Rocco and Christopher A. Gelpi: More than 90 percent of the 322 million cellular phones in use in the United States contain global positioning system … Continue reading
Slate: Stingrays: Not Just for Feds!
Slate: Stingrays: Not Just for Feds! by Kate Klonick: How local law enforcement uses an invasive, unreliable surveillance tool. From Ferguson to Senate hearings, the news of local police arming themselves with federal-grade equipment—tanks, riot gear, M16 rifles—has captivated everyone … Continue reading
W.D.N.Y.: Cell phone found in automobile exception search could be seized for SW
Defendant’s cell phone found in a car searched under the automobile exception could be seized pending getting a search warrant for it. There was probable cause to believe evidence of the crime would be found there. United States v. Palermo, … Continue reading
S.D.Cal.: An order to obtain historical cell site location information does not require probable cause
An order to obtain historical cell site location information does not require probable cause because it is a mere business record. Real time information does. United States v. Martinez, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 153485 (S.D. Cal. October 28, 2014):
The Hill: Court: Police can use your fingerprint to search your phone
The Hill: Court: Police can use your fingerprint to search your phone by Cory Bennett: The police can get your fingerprint, but not your password, to unlock your smartphone, a Virginia judge ruled this week. A password is constitutionally protected … Continue reading
The Hill: New phones will help criminals, says Asst. AG
The Hill: New phones will help criminals, says Asst. AG by Cory Bennett: New technology from Apple, Google will be used “to evade law enforcement.” Isn’t that what privacy used to be for?
D.Minn.: Nexus shown to search cell phone in a child abuse investigation
In a child abuse investigation on an Indian reservation, the government showed probable cause to believe that information relevant to the investigation would be found on defendant’s cell phone. A search warrant for Verizon for text messages and telephone calls … Continue reading