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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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Fourth Amendment cases,
citations, and links -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
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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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
Website design by Wally Waller, Little Rock 
Category Archives: Surveillance technology
Reason: Government Misuse of Data Rightly Worries Americans
Reason: Government Misuse of Data Rightly Worries Americans by J.D. Tuccille (“Federal agencies frequently buy their way around the Fourth Amendment.”) But not Congress.
WSJ: How Ads on Your Phone Can Aid Government Surveillance
WSJ: How Ads on Your Phone Can Aid Government Surveillance by Byron Tau, Andrew Mollica, Patience Haggis, and Dustin Volz (“Information from mobile-phone apps and advertising networks paints a richly detailed portrait of the online activities of billions of devices. … Continue reading
NPR: ‘Too dangerous’: Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
NPR: ‘Too dangerous’: Why even Google was afraid to release this technology by Bobby Allyn (“Imagine strolling down a busy city street and snapping a photo of a stranger then uploading it into a search engine that almost instantaneously helps … Continue reading
Guardian: TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones
Guardian: TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones (“It’s a practice public defenders, privacy advocates and many lawmakers have criticised, arguing it violates fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches. … Continue reading
Malwarebytes: How the cops buy a “God view” of your location data
Malwarebytes: How the cops buy a “God view” of your location data, with Bennett Cyphers: Lock and Code S04E09:
techdirt: CBP Tells Senator Ron Wyden It Will Stop Buying Location Data From Third Parties
techdirt: CBP Tells Senator Ron Wyden It Will Stop Buying Location Data From Third Parties by Tim Cushing:
Daily Kos: Your car is spying on you
Daily Kos: Your car is spying on you by Dartagnan:
NBC: Detroit woman sues city after being falsely arrested while 8-months pregnant due to facial recognition technology
NBC: Detroit woman sues city after being falsely arrested while 8-months pregnant due to facial recognition technology by Mirna Alsharif & Cristian Santana (She was alleged to have committed a carjacking three weeks earlier despite being 7½ months pregnant. “‘Ms. … Continue reading
Interesting Engineering: AI cameras are watching millions of cars in the US to nab criminals
Interesting Engineering: AI cameras are watching millions of cars in the US to nab criminals by Sejal Dharma (“A drug trafficker was arrested last year after an AI camera watched it move across states for two years.”)
WIRED: Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
WIRED: Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras by Adrienne So (“They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.”):
Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Sheriff is sharing license plate reader data with anti-abortion states, records show
Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Sheriff is sharing license plate reader data with anti-abortion states, records show by Andrew Sheeler:
The Intercept: LexisNexis Is Selling Your Personal Data to ICE So It Can Try to Predict Crimes
The Intercept: LexisNexis Is Selling Your Personal Data to ICE So It Can Try to Predict Crimes by Sam Biddle (“ICE uses LexisNexis to track cars, gather information on people, and make arrests for its deportation machine, according to a … Continue reading
Wired: An Anti-Porn App Put Him in Jail and His Family Under Surveillance
Wired: An Anti-Porn App Put Him in Jail and His Family Under Surveillance by Dhruv Mehrotra (“A court used an app called Covenant Eyes to surveil the family of a man released on bond. Now he’s back in jail, and … Continue reading
NYT: One of the Last Bastions of Digital Privacy Is Under Threat
NYT: One of the Last Bastions of Digital Privacy Is Under Threat by Julia Angwin:
Forbes: U.S. Government Buying ‘Intimate’ Data About Americans, Report Finds
Forbes: U.S. Government Buying ‘Intimate’ Data About Americans, Report Finds by Katherine Hamilton of the Forbes Staff (“Data brokers that collect information from Americans’ phones, web browsers and cars have contracts with numerous government agencies to sell them that data, … Continue reading
EFF: Victory! New Jersey Court Rules Police Must Give Defendant the Facial Recognition Algorithms Used to Identify Him
EFF: Victory! New Jersey Court Rules Police Must Give Defendant the Facial Recognition Algorithms Used to Identify Him by Karen Gullo (“In a victory for transparency in police use of facial recognition, a New Jersey appellate court today ruled that … Continue reading
NACDL: 4 articles on electronic searches
Clare Harvie, What Defense Counsel Should Know About Facial Recognition Technology, 47 Champion 16 (No. 3, May 2023) Jennifer S. Granick, Marking Warrants Great Again: Avoiding General Searches in the Execution of Warrants for Electronic Data, 47 Champion 28 (No. … Continue reading
NYT: Bad facial recognition match
NYT: Police Relied on Hidden Technology and Put the Wrong Person in Jail by Kashmir Hill and Ryan Mac (“Randal Reid spent nearly a week in confinement, falsely accused of stealing purses in a state he said he had never … Continue reading
Reason: Senators Ask DEA To Stop Buying Its Way Around Civil Liberties
Reason: Senators Ask DEA To Stop Buying Its Way Around Civil Liberties by Elizabeth Nolan Brown (“‘DEA agents were regularly paying for and receiving private customer information.’ Rather than obtain a warrant for some mailed packages or consumer travel data, … Continue reading
Even burner phones can be sometimes traced
Detroit News: Woman guilty in threats case after 2020 presidential election by Robert Snell: