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- Reason: Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists
- CA4: Not having child in a booster seat justified stop
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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 -
Latest Slip Opinions:
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Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct.
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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General (many free):
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www.fd.org
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download)
DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)
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
Privacy Foundation
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.)
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)
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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: Surveillance technology
Reason: Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists
Reason: Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists by J.D. Tuccille (“‘The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about … Continue reading
Cal.L.Rev.: Your Robotaxi Is Watching You. Does the Fourth Amendment Care?
Your Robotaxi Is Watching You. Does the Fourth Amendment Care? by Henry F. Fradella, California Law Review online (Nov. 2026):
NYTimes: Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People
NYTimes: Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People by Bora Erden & Nicholas Nehamas (with hi-res cameras that can look inside houses).
Malwarebytes: Your car’s app could be telling Big Tech who you are and where you go
Malwarebytes: Your car’s app could be telling Big Tech who you are and where you go by Pieter Arntz (“A study testing 21 cars from 19 brands and 30 companion apps found connections to advertising and tracking companies, and evidence … Continue reading
WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows
WaPo: Americans have turned against police cameras that track license plates, new survey shows by Drew Harwell, Douglas MacMillan, Aaron Schaffer and Kevin Crowe (“Fearing the potential for invasive monitoring or abuse, more people now oppose law enforcement’s use of … Continue reading
DNYUZ: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues
DNYUZ: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues:
Privacy Daily: Chatrie’s Clarification to Fourth Amendment a Win for Privacy, Experts Say
Privacy Daily: Chatrie’s Clarification to Fourth Amendment a Win for Privacy, Experts Say by Kara Thompson (“While the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Chatrie v. United States was a win for privacy and clarified Fourth Amendment rights in the … Continue reading
USA Today: Five GA cops used Flock cameras for personal searches, GBI says
USA Today: Five GA cops used Flock cameras for personal searches, GBI says by Irene Wright (“Five police officers have been accused of using Flock license plate camera technology in South Georgia to make personal searches, according to the Georgia … Continue reading
The Guardian: AI surveillance is being supercharged – and it will chill social progress
The Guardian: AI surveillance is being supercharged – and it will chill social progress by Bruce Schneier and Jon Penney (“These systems will soon be able to track our public and private lives. But we can make the policy choices … Continue reading
The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears
The Guardian: ‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears by Jason Wilson (“An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s ‘department of government efficiency’ (Doge) has quietly … Continue reading
The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
The Guardian: ‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools by Sanya Mansoor (“A new report sheds light on the unprecedented growth of the US government’s immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing fresh details about … Continue reading
Reason: Surveillance Tools Intended for Border Control Are Being Used Against Americans
Reason: Surveillance Tools Intended for Border Control Are Being Used Against Americans by J.D. Tuccille (“U.S. citizens are being monitored and punished with technology meant to battle illegal immigration.”)
WSJ: ‘We Know You Live Right Here’: No Secrets in America’s New Surveillance Dragnet
WSJ: ‘We Know You Live Right Here’: No Secrets in America’s New Surveillance Dragnet By Shane Shifflett & Hannah Critchfield (“Technical wizardry used to combat illegal immigration also funnels the personal data and whereabouts of U.S. citizens to federal agents”):
Reason: All New Cars Could Have Mandatory Surveillance Tech Unless Congress Stops This Mandate
Reason: All New Cars Could Have Mandatory Surveillance Tech Unless Congress Stops This Mandate by Meagan O’Rourke (“This week, several House Republicans reignited a yearslong debate over a law that federally mandates cars to have impaired driving technology, raising concerns … Continue reading
N.D.Cal.: Detailed collection of video viewing information survives motion to dismiss
Plaintiff alleged a privacy interest in video viewing information where defendant “collected detailed video viewing information to package individuals into audiences based, for example, on their political leanings because they watched the State of the Union, or ‘liberal affinity news,’ … Continue reading
N.D.Ga.: OnStar’s data collection survives motion to dismiss, at least for now
In a case over OnStar’s data collection of driving information, GM’s motion to dismiss at this stage of the litigation is denied. While there is no reasonable expectation of privacy of what is seen on the highways, more is involved … 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
The Guardian: ‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns
The Guardian: ‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns by George Chidi (“In recent city council meetings in Dunwoody, Georgia, a spokesman for Flock Safety, a Georgia-based firm that provides automated license plate readers, … Continue reading
NPR: Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant
NPR: Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant by Jude Joffe-Block: