May 2026 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Archives
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Recent Posts
- OR: Even if original served warrant wasn’t the one returned, it doesn’t warrant suppression
- Two on suicide calls as exigency
- W.D.N.Y.: Civil discovery dispute denies access to other employees’ cell phones as 4A issue
- Reason: All New Cars Could Have Mandatory Surveillance Tech Unless Congress Stops This Mandate
- CA3: In seeking arrest warrants, officers need not present all exculpatory evidence to issuing magistrate unless it’s “conclusive”
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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.
FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
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"On the Docket"–Medill
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General (many free):
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F.R.Crim.P. 41
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
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NACDL’s Domestic Drone Information Center
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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: Surveillance technology
EFF: COVID-19 Patients’ Right to Privacy Against Quarantine Surveillance
EFF: COVID-19 Patients’ Right to Privacy Against Quarantine Surveillance by Adam Schwartz (“Governments around the world are using surveillance technologies to monitor whether COVID-19 patients are complying with instructions to quarantine at home. These include GPS ankle shackles, phone apps … Continue reading
Business Insider: Civil liberties groups are urging Congress to block the FBI from viewing Americans’ web-browsing history without a warrant
Business Insider: Civil liberties groups are urging Congress to block the FBI from viewing Americans’ web-browsing history without a warrant by Aaron Holmes (“More than 50 groups from across the political spectrum urged lawmakers to block legislation that would let … Continue reading
WSJ: Coronavirus Demands a Privacy Law
WSJ: Coronavirus Demands a Privacy Law by Christine Wilson (“Silicon Valley’s role in contact tracing and social-distancing enforcement has Americans worried.”):
FL5: Trial court’s order suppressing warrantless black box search affirmed for lack of a record
The trial court granted a motion to suppress the search of defendant’s car’s black box (“event data recorder”). The state on appeal seeks to depart from State v. Worsham, 227 So. 3d 602, 603 (Fla. 4th DCA 2017), that there … Continue reading
MA: Fixed license plate readers on bridge to Cape Cod did not provide “a mosaic of location information” sufficiently detailed to violate REP
Although the widespread use by Massachusetts police departments of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) could implicate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, the positioning of four cameras in fixed positions on the ends of the two bridges leading to Cape Cod … Continue reading
EFF: Courts Issue Rulings in Two Cases Challenging Law Enforcement Searches of License Plate Databases
EFF: Courts Issue Rulings in Two Cases Challenging Law Enforcement Searches of License Plate Databases by Jennifer Lynch:
reason.com: How to Track COVID-19 Without Mass Surveillance
reason.com: How to Track COVID-19 Without Mass Surveillance by Zach Weissmueller (“Apple and Google’s Bluetooth-based app would reportedly be voluntary and anonymous. Privacy advocates say we should accept nothing less.”)
WaPo: Cellphone monitoring is spreading with the coronavirus. So is an uneasy tolerance of surveillance
WaPo: Cellphone monitoring is spreading with the coronavirus. So is an uneasy tolerance of surveillance by Kareem Fahim, Min Joo Kim and Steve Hendrix (“To the feelings of fear, restlessness, insecurity and sorrow taking hold around the globe, the pandemic … Continue reading
bizjournals.com: Aerial surveillance planes to begin flying over Baltimore Friday
bizjournals.com: Aerial surveillance planes to begin flying over Baltimore Friday by Ethan McLeod (“Camera-equipped surveillance planes will take to the Baltimore skies Friday, kicking off a six-month pilot program testing the technology’s ability to help fight crime. … Ohio-based Persistent … Continue reading
EFF: The Dangers of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals to the Future of Protest
EFF: The Dangers of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals to the Future of Protest by Matthew Guariglia (“Many of the new surveillance powers now sought by the government to address the COVID-19 crisis would harm our First Amendment rights for years to … Continue reading
Tampa Bay Times: Lawmakers warn coronavirus contact-tracing is ripe for abusive surveillance
Tampa Bay Times: Lawmakers warn coronavirus contact-tracing is ripe for abusive surveillance by Tribune News Service (“But as tech firms lay the foundation for a potentially massive digital contact-tracing infrastructure, Washington is grappling with whether such technology can work without … Continue reading
Law360: How Virus Surveillance And Civil Liberties Could Collide
Law360: How Virus Surveillance And Civil Liberties Could Collide by RJ Vogt:
EFF: Thermal Imaging Cameras are Still Dangerous Dragnet Surveillance Cameras
EFF: Thermal Imaging Cameras are Still Dangerous Dragnet Surveillance Cameras by Matthew Guariglia and Cooper Quintin (“As governments around the world continue to seek solutions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, companies are eager to sell their technology as a … Continue reading
Lawfare: Disease Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment
Lawfare: Disease Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment by Alan Z. Rozenshtein (“Like governments around the world, the United States is struggling with the ‘coronavirus trilemma’: It wants to protect lives, ease social isolation, and protect privacy and civil liberties, but … Continue reading
CNN: How the cell phones of spring breakers who flouted coronavirus warnings were tracked
CNN: How the cell phones of spring breakers who flouted coronavirus warnings were tracked by Donie O’Sullivan:
The Intercept: Privacy Experts Say Responsible Coronavirus Surveillance is Possible
The Intercept: Privacy Experts Say Responsible Coronavirus Surveillance is Possible by Sam Biddle (“In less than a decade, whistleblowers like the NSA’s Edward Snowden and Cambridge Analytica’s Christopher Wylie helped spur a global sea change in the public’s attitude toward … Continue reading
Reason: COVID19 Exposes the Shallowness of Our Privacy Theories
Reason: Volokh Conspiracy: COVID19 Exposes the Shallowness of Our Privacy Theories by Jane Bambauer:
EFF: EFF, ACLU & CDT Argue Five Months of Warrantless Covert 24/7 Video Surveillance Violates 4A
EFF: EFF, ACLU & CDT Argue Five Months of Warrantless Covert 24/7 Video Surveillance Violates Fourth Amendment by Jennifer Lynch (“Should the fact that your neighbors can see the outside of your house mean the police can use a camera … Continue reading
Law.com: Understanding the Privacy Implications of Digital Technology
Law.com: Understanding the Privacy Implications of Digital Technology by Leonard Deutchman (“In this month’s article, we will examine the Superior Court’s reasoning in Dunkins and compare it to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Carpenter. As with so many Fourth … Continue reading
WaPo: Tracking coronavirus by our smartphones
WaPo: Smartphone data reveal which Americans are social distancing (and not) by Geoffrey A. Fowler (“D.C. gets an ‘A’ while Wyoming earns an ‘F’ for following coronavirus stay-at-home advice, based on the locations of tens of millions of phones”):