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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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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
WaPo: Perspective: Don’t smile for surveillance: Why airport face scans are a privacy trap
WaPo: Perspective: Don’t smile for surveillance: Why airport face scans are a privacy trap by Geoffrey A. Fowler: Facial-recognition technology is un proven and largely unregulated — yet it is already arriving at airports all over the United States. At … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service: California Democrats Push to Ban Facial Recognition Tech
Courthouse News Service: California Democrats Push to Ban Facial Recognition Tech: The dispute intensified Tuesday as California Democrats voted to prohibit the use of facial recognition in body cameras, setting the proposed ban up for a final vote on the … Continue reading
The Recorder: Amazon’s Alexa Devices Violate Children’s Privacy, Class Actions Say
The Recorder: Amazon’s Alexa Devices Violate Children’s Privacy, Class Actions Say by Amanda Bronstad: A pair of class actions seek statutory damages on behalf of children in nine states whose conversations were recorded by an Alexa-enabled device, like Echo and … Continue reading
Reason: The Costs of Monitoring Your Prescriptions
Reason: The Costs of Monitoring Your Prescriptions by Jackob Sullum: State databases that track the medications we take invade our privacy without reducing opioid-related deaths.
NYTimes: Opinion: How Facial Recognition Makes You Safer
NYTimes: Opinion: How Facial Recognition Makes You Safer by James O’Neill, New York police commissioner: Used properly, the software effectively identifies crime suspects without violating rights.
Boston Globe: Top court in Mass. to review controversial technology police use to track cars
Boston Globe: Top court in Mass. to review controversial technology police use to track cars by Matt Rocheleau: Massachusetts’ highest court will soon review the legality of controversial surveillance technology that state and local law enforcement use to track vehicles … Continue reading
Engadget: Microsoft discreetly wiped its massive facial recognition database
Engadget: Microsoft discreetly wiped its massive facial recognition database by Rachel England: The database was originally published in 2016, described by Microsoft as the largest publicly available facial recognition data set in the world, and used to train facial recognition … Continue reading
NYTimes: Opinion: Americans Deserve Strong Privacy Laws
NYTimes: Opinion: Americans Deserve Strong Privacy Laws Legislators should seize the moment to pass meaningful protections for the digital age.
FoxNews: OnStar alert leads to rescue of Florida baby from hot car after mom passes out inside: deputies
FoxNews: OnStar alert leads to rescue of Florida baby from hot car after mom passes out inside: deputies by Talia Kaplan The question is: Why were they listening? There was no accident triggering the system.
The Hill: FBI database stokes worries over facial recognition tech
The Hill: FBI database stokes worries over facial recognition tech by Emily Birnbaum:
Roll Call: Lawmakers fear that the FBI and TSA are misusing facial recognition tech
Roll Call: Lawmakers fear that the FBI and TSA are misusing facial recognition tech by Griffin Connolly: Law enforcement and national security agencies implementing new technology ‘without any real guard rails,’ top Democrat warns
The New American: New York Public School District First to Use Facial-recognition System
The New American: New York Public School District First to Use Facial-recognition System by Joe Wolverton, II:
WaPo: Perspective: It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to?
WaPo: Perspective: It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to? by Geoffrey A. Fowler: Apple says, ‘What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.’ Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers … Continue reading
The Hill: Bipartisan thumbs-down to facial recognition technology
The Hill: Bipartisan thumbs-down to facial recognition technology by Dean DeChiaro:
Detroit Deadline: Police Use of Facial ID Video Systems in Detroit and Elsewhere Worries US House Members
Detroit Deadline: Police Use of Facial ID Video Systems in Detroit and Elsewhere Worries US House Members:
Register.co.uk: We listened to more than 3 hours of US Congress testimony on facial recognition so you didn’t have to go through it
Register.co.uk: We listened to more than 3 hours of US Congress testimony on facial recognition so you didn’t have to go through it by Katyanna Quach: Long story short: Models are ineffective, racist, dumb…
Wired: Facial Recognition Has Already Reached Its Breaking Point
Wired: Facial Recognition Has Already Reached Its Breaking Point by Lily Hey Newman: As facial recognition technologies have evolved from fledgling projects into powerful software platforms, researchers and civil liberties advocates have been issuing warnings about the potential for privacy … Continue reading
ACLU blog: Our Cars Are Now Roving Computers. Is The Fourth Amendment Ready?
ACLU blog: Our Cars Are Now Roving Computers. Is The Fourth Amendment Ready? by Nathan Freed Wessler, Jennifer Stisa Granick & Daniela del Rosario Wertheimer:
Biometric Update: Opinions roll in on whether to ban, regulate, or hardly regulate biometric facial recognition
Biometric Update: Opinions roll in on whether to ban, regulate, or hardly regulate biometric facial recognition by Chris Burt:
Bloomberg: Don’t Ban Facial-Recognition Technology. Regulate It.
Bloomberg Opinion: Don’t Ban Facial-Recognition Technology. Regulate It. Concerns are understandable. But with rules in place, the benefits will far outweigh the risks.