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- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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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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"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: Computer and cloud searches
Law.com: What the DreamHost/DOJ Battle Says About Search Warrants in the Digital Age
Law.com: What the DreamHost/DOJ Battle Says About Search Warrants in the Digital Age by Rhys Dipshan:
Forbes: What The Fight Between DreamHost And The DOJ Means For Technology And Freedom
Forbes: What The Fight Between DreamHost And The DOJ Means For Technology And Freedom by Frank Miniter:
NY Times: DreamHost Ordered to Release Some Trump Protest Website Data to U.S.
NY Times: DreamHost Ordered to Release Some Trump Protest Website Data to U.S. by Tiffany Hsu A Superior Court judge in Washington on Thursday ordered the web hosting company DreamHost to turn over data associated with a Trump protest website to … Continue reading
ZDNet: DOJ amends request for data from anti-Trump site
ZDNet: DOJ amends request for data from anti-Trump site by Stephanie Condon The Justice Department attempts to allay First and Fourth Amendment concerns but continues to seek data on visitors to an anti-Trump website. Infosecurity: DoJ Narrows Demands for Anti-Trump … Continue reading
W.D.Wash.: The mosaic theory is rejected as to P2P computer searches
A search warrant is not required before using a P2P child pornography acquiring program Roundup eMule. The mosaic theory is rejected as to P2P computer searches. United States v. Blouin, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 129886 (W.D. Wash. Aug. 14, 2017). … Continue reading
American Conservative: Feds Searching Record Number of Our Personal Devices at the Border
American Conservative: Feds Searching Record Number of Our Personal Devices at the Border by Frank Miniter In the name of ‘Homeland Security.’
MA: Riley applies under state const. to digital cameras
A digital camera, like a cell phone, can be seized incident to an arrest, but it can’t be searched without a warrant. While SCOTUS hasn’t applied Riley to digital cameras, the state constitution here affords the same protection to digital … Continue reading
Mother Jones: Justice Department Accused of Breaching Constitution by Seeking Info on Visitors to Anti-Trump Website
Mother Jones: Justice Department Accused of Breaching Constitution by Seeking Info on Visitors to Anti-Trump Website by Pema Levy The website hosting company calls the move a “clear abuse of government authority.”
LA2: A host of RS: (1) no DL or paperwork on car; (2) suspicious travel plans; (3) extensive criminal history of driver and passenger; (4) not knowing passenger’s name
“As previously noted in [the first appeal of this case,] Tpr. Sharbono’s testimony provided the articulable facts that raised his suspicions of other illegal activity: (1) Manning had no driver’s license or paperwork for the vehicle he was driving; (2) … Continue reading
How to Respond to Cops Who Want Your Passwords
How to Respond to Cops Who Want Your Passwords by Stephanie Lacambra of EFF (Prezi presentation)
NYLJ: Executing Search Warrants in the Digital Age: ‘United States v. Wey’
NYLJ: Executing Search Warrants in the Digital Age: ‘United States v. Wey’ by Robert J. Anello & Richard F. Albert:
CAAF: Digital SWs have to expire sometime, so here it was with def’s conviction; search after that unreasonable
A search warrant had issued for defendant’s thumb drive, but it hadn’t been searched. He was convicted of the crime for which the search warrant had issued. There are no specific time limits for when a digital search has to … Continue reading
CA8 upholds Playpen warrant strictly on GFE despite Rule 41 violation
Playpen warrant upheld purely on good faith exception of Davis and Herring. Rule 41 was violated, but the court finds the costs of exclusion outweight deterrence, particularly where the rule was modified to permit such later warrants. United States v. … Continue reading
W.D.N.C.: The time limit for execution of a SW doesn’t apply to the off-site search of a computer seized
The time limit for the search to occur in the warrant is for the place to be searched. When computers are seized under the warrant to be searched elsewhere, they are not subject to that time limit. United States v. … Continue reading
W.D.Ky.: Laptop in car was in plain view for seizure where there was PC it contained evidentiary information
Defendant’s laptop was in plain view when it was seized from his car when defendant was arrested because the police believed that stolen credit card information would be on it. United States v. Prado, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111954 (W.D. … Continue reading
CAAF: “Though a temporal limitation is one possible method of tailoring a search authorization, it is by no means a requirement.”
A temporal limitation on a computer search isn’t practical because it could unreasonably limit investigators’ ability to search for files within the search authorization. “Though a temporal limitation is one possible method of tailoring a search authorization, it is by … Continue reading
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data
CNET: US Border Patrol says it won’t search travelers’ cloud data by Steven Musil Clarification came in response to the senator’s questions about border agents pressuring Americans into providing device credentials. Endgadget: US Customs can search phones but not data … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Email and computer SWs were necessarily broad, but not unreasonably broad
“These were not warrants to search for ‘any and all information’ or ‘all computer information’ in defendant’s house. See Christie, 717 F.3d at 1165. Rather, the attachments effectively limited the scope of the searches to material relevant to specific federal … Continue reading
D.D.C.: Google has to produce e-mails on server in Ireland, declining to follow 2d Cir. in Microsoft II
After Second Circuit split 4-4 on whether Google could be compelled to provide e-mails stored in a server in Ireland by a warrant, a USMJ in D.C. holds that Google has to produce e-mails stored on that server. In the … Continue reading
CA2: Computer SW was sufficiently particular; broad doesn’t mean necessarily unreasonable
In the Silk Road “drug kingpin” conviction, whether the third party doctrine succumbs to technology is going to have to come from SCOTUS since the doctrine came from it. The search warrant for defendant’s computer was sufficiently particular. Broad for … Continue reading