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- CA11: Yahoo not a govt actor in scanning emails for CSAM
- Treatise 25% off through 7/8
- SCOTUS: Geofence warrants governed by Carpenter and are a search; remanded for resolution of issues (interesting take on third party doctrine, too)
- The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears
- W.D.N.Y.: Possibility of co-conspirators in mass murder justified emergency disclosure request to Apple, Verizon, and Facebook
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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
Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG, SF
State courts (and some USDC opinions)
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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"On the Docket"–Medill
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S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
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General (many free):
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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
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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: Surveillance technology
Reason: COVID19 Exposes the Shallowness of Our Privacy Theories
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: COVID19 Exposes the Shallowness of Our Privacy Theories by Jane Bambauer:
EFF: EFF, ACLU & CDT Argue Five Months of Warrantless Covert 24/7 Video Surveillance Violates 4A
EFF: EFF, ACLU & CDT Argue Five Months of Warrantless Covert 24/7 Video Surveillance Violates Fourth Amendment by Jennifer Lynch (“Should the fact that your neighbors can see the outside of your house mean the police can use a camera … Continue reading
Law.com: Understanding the Privacy Implications of Digital Technology
Law.com: Understanding the Privacy Implications of Digital Technology by Leonard Deutchman (“In this month’s article, we will examine the Superior Court’s reasoning in Dunkins and compare it to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Carpenter. As with so many Fourth … Continue reading
WaPo: Tracking coronavirus by our smartphones
WaPo: Smartphone data reveal which Americans are social distancing (and not) by Geoffrey A. Fowler (“D.C. gets an ‘A’ while Wyoming earns an ‘F’ for following coronavirus stay-at-home advice, based on the locations of tens of millions of phones”):
NYTimes: As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets
NYTimes: As Coronavirus Surveillance Escalates, Personal Privacy Plummets by Natasha Singer and Choe Sang-Hun:
lawfare: Is ICE’s Use of a Maryland Facial Recognition Database Lawful?
lawfare: Is ICE’s Use of a Maryland Facial Recognition Database Lawful? by Nathaniel Sobel (“The Washington Post reported recently that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have accessed, without obtaining judicial process, a Maryland facial recognition database that contains … Continue reading
EFF: Unchecked Smart Cities are Surveillance Cities. What We Need are Smart Enough Cities.
EFF: Unchecked Smart Cities are Surveillance Cities. What We Need are Smart Enough Cities. By Jamie Williams (“Cities across the U.S. are forcing operators of shared bikes and scooters to use dangerous and privacy invasive APIs developed by the Los … Continue reading
Protocol: Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’ allows federal law enforcement to track phones
Protocol: Through apps, not warrants, ‘Locate X’ allows federal law enforcement to track phones by Charles Levinson (“Federal agencies have big contracts with Virginia-based Babel Street. Depending on where you’ve traveled, your movements may be in the company’s data.”)
EFF: Hundreds of New Yorkers Demand a Ban on NYPD Face Surveillance
EFF: Hundreds of New Yorkers Demand a Ban on NYPD Face Surveillance by Nathan Sheard (“Over two hundred New York City residents—including workers, parents, students, business owners, and technologists—have signed a petition calling to end government use of face surveillance … Continue reading
The Hill: Opinion: Ring gets ‘dinged’ for its video doorbell privacy
The Hill: Ring gets ‘dinged’ for its video doorbell privacy by Joel Schwarz (“IoT devices have also given rise to a number of new privacy concerns. For example, Ring has taken heat for sharing users’ video with over 600 law enforcement … Continue reading
WaPo: My car was in a hit-and-run. Then I learned it recorded the whole thing.
WaPo: My car was in a hit-and-run. Then I learned it recorded the whole thing. by Geoffrey A. Fowler (“The car is becoming a sentry, a chaperone, and a snitch”)
WaPo: ICE has run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers
WaPo: ICE has run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers by Drew Harwell & Erin Cox (“The agency’s unlimited access to drivers’ photos has alarmed immigration and privacy activists, who fear it is being used to target immigrants who … Continue reading
WaPo: ICE runs facial-recognition searches on millions of Md. drivers, alarming immigration and privacy activists
WaPo: ICE runs facial-recognition searches on millions of Md. drivers, alarming immigration and privacy activists by Drew Harwell and Erin Cox (“Maryland defied federal guidelines in 2013 when it created driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. But in recent years, Immigration … Continue reading
Security Boulevard: Personal Data Collection: Outsourcing Surveillance
Security Boulevard: Personal Data Collection: Outsourcing Surveillance by Mark Rasch (“The buying and selling of personal data means more entities are able to conduct surveillance without needing a warrant”)
IEEE Spectrum: AI Deception: When Your Artificial Intelligence Learns to Lie
IEEE Spectrum: AI Deception: When Your Artificial Intelligence Learns to Lie by Heather Roff (“We need to understand the kinds of deception an AI agent may learn on its own before we can start proposing technological defenses”)
The Guardian: Rules urgently needed to oversee police use of data and AI – report
The Guardian: Rules urgently needed to oversee police use of data and AI – report (“Report warns that technology, uptake of which has largely been driven by cuts, could lead to discrimination”)
techdirt: Ring Continues To Pitch Facial Recognition To Law Enforcement While Claiming It Won’t Be Adding Facial Recognition To Its Cameras
techdirt: Ring Continues To Pitch Facial Recognition To Law Enforcement While Claiming It Won’t Be Adding Facial Recognition To Its Cameras by Tim Cushing (“Ring continues to insist it is not adding facial recognition to its sadly super-popular doorbell cameras. … Continue reading
Mother Jones: California Cops Are Collecting Info on Millions of Drivers Who Have Done Nothing Wrong
Mother Jones: California Cops Are Collecting Info on Millions of Drivers Who Have Done Nothing Wrong (“With few rules and no oversight, California’s biggest law enforcement agencies are sharing millions of driver records.”)
Vice: This Senate Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Facial Recognition
Vice: This Senate Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Facial Recognition by Edward Ongweso Jr. (“Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker have introduced a Senate bill to place a moratorium until regulations are passed by Congress.”)
WaPo: Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs
WaPo: Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs by Drew Harwell (“For all the worries about hacking, owners of Internet-connected cameras say they love watching people silently from afar — often their … Continue reading