Archives
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Recent Posts
- E.D.Mich.: Officer seeing a firearm in the car on a stop justified extending the detention
- TN: Passenger’s DL could be checked during traffic stop
- E.D.Mich.: A case dealing with the Sixth Circuit’s rebuttable presumption guns are usually kept at home; and the GFE swallows the rule
- E.D.Va.: Carpenter and Chatrie did not completely vitiate the third-party doctrine; it applies to social media account records
- E.D.Ky.: Computer SW was overbroad but necessary, and GFE saves it
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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 -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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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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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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
WSJ: Sealed Court Files Obscure Rise in Electronic Surveillance
WSJ: Sealed Court Files Obscure Rise in Electronic Surveillance by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries: Data obtained by The Wall Street Journal from the Justice Department and various federal district courts suggest that electronic-surveillance orders have increased over the past decade and that … Continue reading
news.gnom.es: Quantifying Privacy: A Week of Location Data May Be an “Unreasonable Search” & New Law Review Article: Mosaic Theory and Machine Learning
News Gnomes: Quantifying Privacy: A Week of Location Data May Be an “Unreasonable Search” When does the simple digital tracking of your location and movements — the GPS bleeps from most of our smartphones — start to be truly revealing? … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh: Answering Justice Alito’s question: What makes an expectation of privacy ‘reasonable’?
WaPo: Volokh: Answering Justice Alito’s question: What makes an expectation of privacy ‘reasonable’? by Orin Kerr: During the recent oral argument in United States v. Wurie, the pending cell phone search case, Justice Alito asked an important question about the … Continue reading
Politico: The Founding Fathers Would Have Protected Your Smartphone
Politico: The Founding Fathers Would Have Protected Your Smartphone by Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Chris Coons: Privacy is a core American value. For 235 years, the Fourth Amendment has protected us from unwarranted searches of our personal belongings. All … Continue reading
WaPo: Updates on Magistrate Judge Facciola’s cases
WaPo: Updates on Magistrate Judge Facciola’s cases by Orin Kerr: I’ve blogged several times about Magistrate Judge Facciola’s recent opinions denying government applications for warrants and court orders involving digital evidence. Here are three updates for readers who are following … Continue reading
consitutioncenter.org: Warrantless Cellphone Searches At Center of Fourth Amendment Program At the National Constitution Center
consitutioncenter.org: Warrantless Cellphone Searches At Center of Fourth Amendment Program At the National Constitution Center: Philadelphia, PA (May 19, 2014) – Can the police search the digital contents of a cellphone without a warrant or does it violate the Fourth … Continue reading
BLT: Court: Privacy Outweighs Public Interest in Dispute Over Cell Tracking Records
BLT: Court: Privacy Outweighs Public Interest in Dispute Over Cell Tracking Records by Zoe Tillman: The public doesn’t have a right to information on criminal cases involving warrantless cell phone tracking if the defendant was acquitted or had their case … Continue reading
Grits for Breakfast: Virginia, Utah, require warrants for phone location data, Tennessee bill awaiting gov’s signature
Grits for Breakfast: Virginia, Utah, require warrants for phone location data, Tennessee bill awaiting gov’s signature: More states have approved legislation requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants to track cell-phone location data, measure that passed the Texas House last year … 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
SCOTUSBlog: Argument analysis: Limiting a search? Sure, but how?
SCOTUSBlog: Argument analysis: Limiting a search? Sure, but how? by Lyle Denniston: Trying to imagine all of the things that an individual might keep stored on a cellphone, and trying to decide how much privacy – if any – each … Continue reading
Journal-Advocate (CO): Protections for e-data clear Senate committee
Journal-Advocate (CO): Protections for e-data clear Senate committee by Marianne Goodland: A resolution to add “electronic data” to the Colorado constitution’s equivalent of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution got unanimous support this week from a Senate committee. The … Continue reading
D.Mass.: Court doesn’t believe officer smelled marijuana; car search of computer and cell phone suppressed
The district judge disbelieves that the officer smelled marijuana, and suppresses the search of defendant’s car. The officer felt something was up but couldn’t articulate it. Inevitable discovery by inventory fails because there was no true inventory–no inventory was produced. … Continue reading
SCOTUSblog: Argument preview: Police and cellphone privacy
SCOTUSblog: Argument preview: Police and cellphone privacy by Lyle Denniston: Next Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will hold back-to-back, one-hour hearings on cases testing the authority of police to search the contents of cellphones they take from people they have … Continue reading
WaPo: Low-level federal judges balking at law enforcement requests for electronic evidence
WaPo: Low-level federal judges balking at law enforcement requests for electronic evidence by Ann E. Marimow and Craig Timberg: Judges at the lowest levels of the federal judiciary are balking at sweeping requests by law enforcement officials for cellphone and … Continue reading
Reuters: Cell phone search case is easy call for Supreme Court
Reuters: Cell phone search case is easy call for Supreme Court by Jack Shafer: (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
M.D.Tenn.: Warrantless seizure of text message from cell phone valid under GFE
Without a case in point, warrantless seizure of a text message from a cell phone which was Overt Act 8 in the indictment was not unreasonable under the good faith exception. Defendant relies on Wurie, which is from the First … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh: Choosing between ‘never search’ and ‘sometimes search’ in the cell phone search cases
WaPo: Volokh: Choosing between ‘never search’ and ‘sometimes search’ in the cell phone search cases by Orin Kerr: This is the hardest issue that the Supreme Court must decide in trying to determine how the Fourth Amendment applies to search … Continue reading
M.D.Pa.: Police recording the one side of a telephone conversation they could already hear did not implicate ECPA
Police recording the one side of a telephone conversation they could already hear did not implicate the Electronic Communications Privacy act. United States v. Ray, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49647 (M.D. Pa. April 10, 2014):