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- WaPo: They confided in ChatGPT. Their secrets ended up in court.
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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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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)
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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. 
Monthly Archives: February 2016
Boston Globe: Public kept in the dark about BPD’s use of covert cell trackers
Boston Globe: Public kept in the dark about BPD’s use of covert cell trackers by Shawn Musgrave: The Boston Police Department is keeping the public largely in the dark about how it uses covert cellphone trackers — devices that have … Continue reading
USA Today: U.S. Marshals secretly tracked 6,000 cellphones
USA Today: U.S. Marshals secretly tracked 6,000 cellphones by Brad Heath: Federal marshals have secretly used powerful cellphone surveillance tools to hunt nearly 6,000 suspects throughout the United States, according to newly-disclosed records in which the agency inadvertently identified itself … Continue reading
WaPo: Constitutionality of StingRay use by D.C. police is challenged
WaPo: Constitutionality of StingRay use by D.C. police is challenged by Spencer S. Hsu: Public defenders and civil liberties groups are challenging the constitutionality of the first-known use by local police in the nation’s capital of covert cellphone-tracking technology without … Continue reading
Criminal Law Reporter: Apple, FBI iPhone Fight Reveals Fourth Amendment Flaws
Criminal Law Reporter: Apple, FBI iPhone Fight Reveals Fourth Amendment Flaws by Jessica DeSilva: Apple Inc.’s public refusal to comply with a court order requiring the company to assist the FBI in gaining access into an iPhone belonging to one … Continue reading
Today is the 255th anniversary of the “Writs of Assistance Case” and the 13th anniversary of this blog
See one of the prior posts on Paxton’s case, the original Writs of Assistance case, argued today in 1761. John Adams credited James Otis’s argument, which he witnessed and attempted to transcribe, as helping foment the Revolution and led directly … Continue reading
E.D.Pa.: No First Amd. right to video police on the job in CA3, but excessive force claim goes to trial
There is no First Amendment right to record police on the street doing their job in the Third Circuit. The First Amendment claim has to include expressive conduct, and this isn’t. The plaintiffs’ excessive force and false arrest claims, however, … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Searching a Bible during a house drug search was reasonable in case it was hollowed out
Searching a Bible during a house drug search was reasonable in case it was hollowed out. A page was dog eared and noted as potentially relevant to the case. Opening the Bible was reasonable under the circumstance. The case starts … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: Failure to swear affiant doesn’t void SW; GFE applies despite magistrate’s mere alleged cursory review
The issuing magistrate’s failure to swear the affiant officer is a judicial failure, not a law enforcement failure, and it doesn’t void the warrant, and there was probable cause. Also, the magistrate’s apparently cursory review of the affidavit still made … Continue reading
D.Ore.: Fair inference shown in affidavit that cell phone used in drug trafficking for its SW
The affidavit for the cell phone search warrant provides at least a fair probability of a connection between defendant’s cell phone and his drug activity. “Many, if not most, people who use cell phones with storage capabilities keep important information … Continue reading
WaPo: Court: No First Amendment right to videorecord police unless you are challenging the police at the time
WaPo: Court: No First Amendment right to videorecord police unless you are challenging the police at the time by Eugene Volokh:
CA5: Search issue reserved in conditional plea is a limitation, and issues not specified are abandoned
Defendant’s conditional plea reserved “the issue of the validity of the search warrant,” and it limits the appeal. Thus, issues of consent and probable cause are outside the issues reserved in the conditional plea and thus abandoned. United States v. … Continue reading
NYTimes: Editorial: The Supreme Court and Police Searches
NYTimes: Editorial: The Supreme Court and Police Searches: Should incriminating evidence be used against a defendant if it was discovered in the course of an illegal police stop? That was the question before the Supreme Court on Monday, the first … Continue reading
NLJ: In First Arguments Since Scalia’s Death, Two Textbook Cases for the Justice
NLJ: In First Arguments Since Scalia’s Death, Two Textbook Cases for the Justice by Marcia Coyle: On their first day on the bench after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, eight justices of the U.S. Supreme Court found themselves in … Continue reading
WaPo: Apple tells Justice Dept. to withdraw demands for help, says its objections are ‘absolutely not’ about marketing
WaPo: Apple tells Justice Dept. to withdraw demands for help, says its objections are ‘absolutely not’ about marketing by Mark Berman: The public dispute between the Justice Department and Apple continued Monday as the tech giant called on the government … Continue reading
ME: Four failed breath tests in 90 min was exigency for warrantless blood draw
The state showed exigent circumstances for a warrantless blood draw. The officer took defendant to a nearby police station where he had after hours access to get a breath sample, but the machine wasn’t working and he didn’t know it. … Continue reading
KY: Def’s trailer in the woods was observed from open fields; no crossing of the curtilage
KSP officers received an anonymous tip defendant was manufacturing methamphetamine on his rural property. They went to the address given to find that it was his mother’s house, and he lived down a gravel road in the woods. They went … Continue reading