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- CA7: Jail officials holding plaintiff under a valid court order aren’t liable for not releasing him sooner after a sentencing error
- Volokh: Do Fourth Amendment Protections Change When Property Is Moved?
- M.D.Pa.: Def was neither shipper nor recipient of USPS parcel, so he had no standing in it
- WI: Obtaining def’s DNA by ruse wasn’t an illegal search
- WaPo: Apple, Google and Venmo fight new U.S. plan to monitor payment apps
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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,
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--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) -
“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
Slate: “Creepiness” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Privacy
Slate: “Creepiness” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Privacy by Neil Richards:
Engadget: The Treasury Department is buying sensitive app data for investigations
Engadget: The Treasury Department is buying sensitive app data for investigations by Jon Fingas (“There are concerns investigators are bypassing due process” and the Fourth Amendment. This isn’t new information.)
N.D.Ill.: No REP in automatic license plate reader records in state database
The FBI querying the state automatic license plate reader database to connect a car to two bank robberies was not an unreasonable search. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the information. United States v. Brown, 2021 U.S. Dist. … Continue reading
WaPo: I found my stolen Honda Civic using a Bluetooth tracker. It’s the latest controversial weapon against theft.
WaPo: I found my stolen Honda Civic using a Bluetooth tracker. It’s the latest controversial weapon against theft. (“AirTags and other Bluetooth trackers can find stolen cars, bikes and bags. But what happens when you find the person who took … Continue reading
WaPo: License plate scanners were supposed to bring peace of mind. Instead they tore the neighborhood apart.
WaPo: License plate scanners were supposed to bring peace of mind. Instead they tore the neighborhood apart. By Drew Harwell:
The Lens: Neighborhoods Watched
The Lens: Neighborhoods Watched, Project by Michael Isaac Stein, Caroline Sinders and Winnie Yoe (“New Orleans has spent millions to expand its police surveillance powers in recent years, providing the city with an unprecedented ability to monitor public spaces and … Continue reading
NY Times: How the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers
NY Times: How the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers by Ali Watkins (“Two decades after the attack on New York City, the Police Department is using counterterrorism tools and tactics to combat routine street crime.”)
NY Times: Hear That? It’s Your Voice Being Taken for Profit.
NY Times: Hear That? It’s Your Voice Being Taken for Profit. by Joseph Turow (“Based on voice signatures, patented Google circuitry infers gender and age. A parent can program the system to turn electronic devices on or off as a … Continue reading
Ars Technica: LA police ask people they stop for their Facebook and Twitter account info
Ars Technica: LA police ask people they stop for their Facebook and Twitter account info by John Brodkin (“Data is fed into Palantir and helps enable “large-scale monitoring.”)
S.D.Ind.: IU’s CrimsonCard key card system has no REP in user movements
Indiana University’s CrimsonCard, a key card, that tracks movement into University buildings and facilities, does not carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. This case arose from an investigation of a hazing incident, and the University was corroborating alleged alibis. There … Continue reading
WaPo: We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous
WaPo: We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous by Jonathan Mayer and Anunay Kulshrestha (“We wrote the only peer-reviewed publication on how to build a system like Apple’s … Continue reading
NYTimes: The Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell
NYTimes: The Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell by Greg Bensinger:
WaPo: Apple plans to scan iPhones to find sexual predators. Some fear the software could be weaponized.
WaPo: Apple plans to scan iPhones to find sexual predators. Some fear the software could be weaponized. By Reed Albergotti (“The new push pits Apple against civil liberties activists and appears to contradict some of the company’s own long-held assertions … Continue reading
WaPo: Opinion: Privacy is a fiction in the Internet age. A priest’s case proves it.
WaPo: Opinion: Privacy is a fiction in the Internet age. A priest’s case proves it. (“The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned last month after a newsletter used data from his cellphone to confirm his use … Continue reading
Star Tribune: Opinion: We must face up to the dangers of surveillance technology
Star Tribune: Opinion: We must face up to the dangers of surveillance technology (“Every day that goes by without effective oversight makes it that much harder to rein the technology back in.”)
WaPo: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide
WaPo: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide by Dana Priest, Craig Timberg, and Souad Mekhennet (“NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, licensed to governments around the globe, can infect phones without a click”):
Vox: From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere
Vox: From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere by Rebecca Heilwell (“Facial recognition is popping up at our favorite stores, but customers are largely unaware.”)
MLive: Michigan man misidentified by facial recognition technology warns Congress of risks posed by police surveillance
MLive: Michigan man misidentified by facial recognition technology warns Congress of risks posed by police surveillance by Malachi Barrett (“A Michigan man who was wrongly arrested after being misidentified by facial recognition technology joined expert witnesses who warned a congressional … Continue reading
WaPo: Editorial: Want to know how federal law enforcement uses facial recognition? Tough luck.
WaPo: Editorial: Want to know how federal law enforcement uses facial recognition? Tough luck. (“How is federal law enforcement harnessing facial recognition technology? We don’t know the half of it — because federal law enforcement doesn’t know itself.”)