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- Volokh: How Should Flock Cameras Be Regulated Under the Fourth Amendment?
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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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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: Facial recognition
404 Media: Surveillance Company Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras
404 Media: Surveillance Company Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras by Jason Kobler (keep in mind it only requires a software update):
Reason: AI Facial Recognition Didn’t Put This Tennessee Grandma in Jail for 6 Months. Bad Policing Did.
Reason: AI Facial Recognition Didn’t Put This Tennessee Grandma in Jail for 6 Months. Bad Policing Did. by Autumn Billings (“Angela Lipps is suing for $10 million after a Fargo police detective ignored evidence that she was innocent and arrested … Continue reading
Jail searches: (1) body scan led to SW for body cavity search and (2) biometric scans reasonable
Plaintiff was subjected to an electronic body scan that led to a body cavity search with a warrant for an apparent mass inside him. This search was reasonable. Brown v. Suess, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 220823 (W.D.N.Y. Sep. 28, 2026). … Continue reading
Wired: Wrongful Arrest Exposes Failures in One of the Oldest Police Face-Recognition Tools in the US
Wired: Wrongful Arrest Exposes Failures in One of the Oldest Police Face-Recognition Tools in the US by Dell Cameron (“A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for attempting to illegally lure a child after police relied on a face-recognition match that … Continue reading
WaPo: Police explore teaming up with a new crime-fighting partner: AI
WaPo: Police explore teaming up with a new crime-fighting partner: AI by Katie Mettler (“The Oklahoma City Police Department is one of 35 law enforcement agencies across the country in the early stages of adopting Longeye, which its San Francisco-based … Continue reading
CNN: Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited
CNN: Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited by Zoe Sottile (“A Tennessee grandmother spent more than five months in jail after police used an AI … Continue reading
NPR: Live cameras are tracking faces in New Orleans. Who should control them?
NPR: Live cameras are tracking faces in New Orleans. Who should control them? by Martin Kaste (“New Orleans, home of Bourbon Street revelry, has become the first American city known to have a live facial recognition network. How that came … Continue reading
The Intercept: The FBI Wants AI Surveillance Drones With Facial Recognition
The Intercept: The FBI Wants AI Surveillance Drones With Facial Recognition (“The FBI is looking for ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into drones, according to federal procurement documents. On Thursday, the FBI put out the call to potential vendors of … Continue reading
MSNOW: ICE’s biometric dragnet is a 21st century general warrant for your body
MSNOW: ICE’s biometric dragnet is a 21st century general warrant for your body by Robert Frommer (Detained persons are having DNA, fingerprints, and photographs collected despite no charges (“In addition to our DNA, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has … Continue reading
NPR: Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people
NPR: Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people by Jude Joffe-Block (“Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is acquiring powerful new surveillance tools to identify and monitor people. They include apps that let federal agents point a cell … Continue reading
404 Media: DHS Gives Local Cops a Facial Recognition App To Find Immigrants
404 Media: DHS Gives Local Cops a Facial Recognition App To Find Immigrants by Joseph Cox:
Substack: Breaking: Trump Used AI to Scan U.S. Generals’ Faces for Loyalty — and to Root Out Whistleblowers
Substack: Breaking: Trump Used AI to Scan U.S. Generals’ Faces for Loyalty — and to Root Out Whistleblowers by Lev Parnas. (Don’t know whether to credit this or not.)
techdirt: Activists Are Using AI To ‘Identify’ ICE Officers And That’s Definitely Not Good News
techdirt: Activists Are Using AI To ‘Identify’ ICE Officers And That’s Definitely Not Good News by Tim Cushing:
404 Media: ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers
404 Media: ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers by Joseph Cox:
AP: Woman wrongly accused of carjacking loses lawsuit against Detroit police who used facial tech
AP: Woman wrongly accused of carjacking loses lawsuit against Detroit police who used facial tech by Ed White (“ A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Detroit police in the wrongful arrest of a pregnant woman who was charged in … Continue reading
Bolts: New Orleans May Hand Its Police Live Facial Recognition Tech. Critics Warn It’ll Help ICE.
Bolts: New Orleans May Hand Its Police Live Facial Recognition Tech. Critics Warn It’ll Help ICE. by Piper French:
RawStory: ‘Horrible!’ Trump accused of using immigrants as guinea pigs for terrifying tech trial
RawStory: ‘Horrible!’ Trump accused of using immigrants as guinea pigs for terrifying tech trial by Matt Lasso:
Cleveland.com: Did Cleveland police cut corners when they used AI to recover a suspected murder weapon? Appeals court to decide
Cleveland PD used AI for facial recognition to get probable cause for a search warrant. Cleveland.com: Did Cleveland police cut corners when they used AI to recover a suspected murder weapon? Appeals court to decide. Oral argument August 22. Since … Continue reading
WaPo: New Orleans pushes to legalize police use of ‘facial surveillance’
WaPo: New Orleans pushes to legalize police use of ‘facial surveillance’ by Douglas MacMillan(“New Orleans is considering easing restrictions on the police use of facial recognition, weeks after The Washington Post reported that police there secretly relied on a network … Continue reading
WaPo: Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches
WaPo: Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches by Douglas MacMillan, David Ovalle & Aaron Schaffer (“Confident in unproven facial recognition technology, sometimes investigators skip steps; at least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested.”):