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- OH12: Officer’s violation of knock-and-announce statute justifies suppression
- 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 -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
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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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
techspot: Amazon’s Ring has partnerships with over 400 US police forces
techspot: Amazon’s Ring has partnerships with over 400 US police forces by Adrian Potoroaca (“The company calls it the ‘new neighborhood watch’”) Arkansas Times: Big brother in your doorbell in Little Rock, other Arkansas cities by Max Brantley Prior post … Continue reading
Reclaimthenet: Google gives police data on all users within 100 feet of bank robbery
Reclaimthenet: Google gives police data on all users within 100 feet of bank robbery by Tom Parker:
NPR: Privacy Experts Say The Trade-Offs Of Tech To Track Kids In School Aren’t Worth It
NPR: Privacy Experts Say The Trade-Offs Of Tech To Track Kids In School Aren’t Worth It by Anya Kamenetz and Jessica Bakeman: The use of tech to track and police our kids in school is growing and privacy experts say … Continue reading
The Recorder: Commentary: Is Privacy Dead in the World of the Internet of Things?
The Recorder: Commentary: Is Privacy Dead in the World of the Internet of Things? by Brian Kint: There may have been a time where it was possible to go through life while remaining relatively anonymous with respect to the products … Continue reading
FoxNews: Turn off your Bluetooth, warn security experts
FoxNews: Turn off your Bluetooth, warn security experts by Brooke Crothers: Your Bluetooth connection is unsafe. Very unsafe. That’s the message from the largest hacker convention.
NYTimes: Opinion: No, Facebook Is Not Secretly Listening to You
NYTimes: Opinion: No, Facebook Is Not Secretly Listening to You (Except when it is.) by Sarah Jeong
Bloomberg Law: Location Data Privacy Protection Expanding in Judges’ Hands
Bloomberg Law: Location Data Privacy Protection Expanding in Judges’ Hands by Daniel R. Stoller: Courts have been expanding privacy protections for law enforcement access to real-time cell tower data, a trend attorneys say eventually could include other location-based information. . … Continue reading
Forbes: Surveillance Technology And Cultural Notions Of Privacy
Forbes: Surveillance Technology And Cultural Notions Of Privacy by Julian Vigo:
Bloomberg: Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats
Bloomberg: Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats by Sara Frier: Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.
CNS: Facial Software Test Falsely Flags 26 California Lawmakers
Courthouse News Service: Facial Software Test Falsely Flags 26 California Lawmakers by Matthew Renda: When the American Civil Liberties Union used facial recognition software to cross-check 120 California legislators against a database of 25,000 publicly available mugshots, the algorithm falsely … Continue reading
Wired: This Tesla Mod Turns a Model S Into a Mobile ‘Surveillance Station’
Wired: This Tesla Mod Turns a Model S Into a Mobile ‘Surveillance Station’ by Andy Greenberg: Automatic license plate reader cameras are controversial enough when law enforcement deploys them, given that they can create a panopticon of transit throughout a … Continue reading
HuffPo: Newark’s Surveillance System Puts Communities Of Color Under Constant Watch
HuffPo: Newark’s Surveillance System Puts Communities Of Color Under Constant Watch by Kiara Alfonseca: The Citizen Virtual Patrol, a 24/7 public surveillance system, lets anyone watch the city’s streets from anywhere at any time, through as many as 127 cameras.
CNBC: Amazon is developing high-tech surveillance tools for an eager customer: America’s police
CNBC: Amazon is developing high-tech surveillance tools for an eager customer: America’s police by John Schuppe: Amazon’s Ring subsidiary doesn’t just make the wireless security cameras — it also accesses police data to alert residents of potential crimes, encourages users … Continue reading
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.