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
- NY Columbia Co.: Alleged excessive nervousness when multiple police cars arrive at a traffic stop doesn’t add to RS
- CA4: Backpack dumped in flight in grandmother’s yard was abandoned
- GA: Virtually all-inclusive list of items to be seized wasn’t overbroad
- CA4: Dist.Ct. erred in applying search incident to arrest to suppress bag when inventory was inevitable
- OR: Even if original served warrant wasn’t the one returned, it doesn’t warrant suppression
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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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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
Wired: Hackers Could Decrypt Your GSM Phone Calls
Wired: Hackers Could Decrypt Your GSM Phone Calls by Lily Hay Newman: Most mobile calls around the world are made over the Global System for Mobile Communications standard; in the US, GSM underpins any call made over AT&T or T-Mobile’s … Continue reading
Quartz: A California police robot is flagging “blacklisted” people and cars
Quartz: A California police robot is flagging “blacklisted” people and cars by Justin Rohrlich: An autonomous police robot patrolling the streets of Huntington Park, California is scanning license plates, logging IP addresses, and using facial recognition technology that alerts cops … Continue reading
Vice: These Legit-Looking iPhone Lightning Cables Will Hijack Your Computer
Vice: These Legit-Looking iPhone Lightning Cables Will Hijack Your Computer by Joseph Cox: It looks like an Apple lightning cable. It works like an Apple lightning cable. But it will give an attacker a way to remotely tap into your … Continue reading
WSJ: When battlefield surveillance comes to your town
WSJ: When battlefield surveillance comes to your town by Christopher Mims: All-seeing 24/7 video surveillance technology, first developed for use in war, is now affordable enough to be used domestically to fight crime and terrorism. Some lawmakers are wary.
CA9: Standing shown to sue Facebook under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act
Plaintiffs stated Art. III standing to bring a class action against Facebook for violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Patel v. Facebook, Inc., 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23673 (9th Cir. Aug. 8, 2019).* Summary by the court:
Motherboard: Ring doorbell cameras and the police
Motherboard (Vice): Revealed: The Secret Scripts Amazon Give to Cops to Promote Ring Surveillance Cameras by Caroline Haskins:
WSJ (opinion): Have No Fear of Facial Recognition
WSJ (opinion): Have No Fear of Facial Recognition by Andy Kessler: If it is bound by good legal protections, the technology is a boon, not a tool for tyranny.
Legal Intelligencer: Commentary: Coming Face-to-Face With Facial Recognition Technology
Legal Intelligencer: Commentary: Coming Face-to-Face With Facial Recognition Technology by Jeffrey N. Rosenthal and Huaou Yan: Facial technology identifies an image of a face by breaking down the depicted face into several characteristics (e.g., the relative position, shape, contours and … Continue reading
WaPo:Analysis: The Trump administration wants to be able to break into your encrypted data. Here’s what you need to know.
WaPo:Analysis: The Trump administration wants to be able to break into your encrypted data. Here’s what you need to know. By Tim Maurer and Garrett Hinck: And so do governments around the world.
Motherboard (Vice): Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement
Motherboard (Vice): Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement by Caroline Haskins: The Lakeland, Florida police department is required to ‘encourage adoption’ of Ring products as part of a secret agreement with the company.
10News (KGTV San Diego): Home surveillance company Ring teams with local law enforcement agencies, leading to privacy concerns
10News (San Diego): Home surveillance company Ring teams with local law enforcement agencies, leading to privacy concerns by Jeff Lasky:
The Hill: Opinion: Don’t ban facial recognition
The Hill: Opinion: Don’t ban facial recognition by Amitai Etzioni:
NYT: Your Data Were ‘Anonymized’? These Scientists Can Still Identify You
NYT: Your Data Were ‘Anonymized’? These Scientists Can Still Identify You by Gina Kolata: Computer scientists have developed an algorithm that can pick out almost any American in databases supposedly stripped of personal information.
govtech: Motorola Solutions Buys Body Cam Maker, Consolidating Market
govtech: Motorola Solutions Buys Body Cam Maker, Consolidating Market: The buyout of WatchGuard brings Motorola Solutions into some of the largest police departments in the country, simultaneously creating a potential path for facial recognition to those departments.
Forbes: Social Media Has Primed Us For An Eventual Surveillance State
Forbes: Social Media Has Primed Us For An Eventual Surveillance State by Curtis Silver:
WaPo: Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data
WaPo: Never-Googlers: Web users take the ultimate step to guard their data by Greg Bensinger: As reports surface regarding how the online advertising giant tracks consumers, some try to reclaim their online footsteps.
NYT: Barr Revives Encryption Debate, Calling on Tech Firms to Allow for Law Enforcement
NYT: Barr Revives Encryption Debate, Calling on Tech Firms to Allow for Law Enforcement by Katie Benner: The attorney general, reopening the conversation on security vs. privacy, said that encryption and other measures effectively turned devices into “law-free zones.”
BuzzFeed News: Opinion: Don’t Regulate Facial Recognition. Ban It.
BuzzFeed News: Opinion: Don’t Regulate Facial Recognition. Ban It. by Evan Greer: We are on the verge of a nightmare era of mass surveillance by the state and private companies. It’s not too late to stop it.
The Atlantic: FaceApp Makes Today’s Privacy Laws Look Antiquated
The Atlantic: FaceApp Makes Today’s Privacy Laws Look Antiquated by Tiffany C. Li: Cameras are everywhere, and data brokers are vacuuming up information on individuals. But regulations have not kept pace.
Bloomberg: You’re Home Alone With Alexa. Are Your Secrets Safe?
Bloomberg: You’re Home Alone With Alexa. Are Your Secrets Safe? by Matt Day