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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State courts (and some USDC opinions)
Google Scholar
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
Research Links:
Supreme Court:
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Solicitor General's site
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Briefs online (but no amicus briefs)
Oyez Project (NWU)
"On the Docket"–Medill
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S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com
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General (many free):
LexisWeb
Google Scholar | Google
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Lexis.com $
Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $
Findlaw.com
Findlaw.com (4th Amd)
Westlaw.com $
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
Privacy Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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
Forbes: Will Governments Turn Our Smart Devices Into A Massive Surveillance Network?
Forbes: Will Governments Turn Our Smart Devices Into A Massive Surveillance Network? by Kalev Leetaru: Instead of hiding from the devices, we ensure they have the best possible vantage point from which to observe our every move and hear our … Continue reading
NPR: Why The Tech Industry Wants Federal Control Over Data Privacy Laws
NPR: Why The Tech Industry Wants Federal Control Over Data Privacy Laws by Dina Temple-Raston
NYTimes: Police Use Fitbit Data to Charge 90-Year-Old Man in Stepdaughter’s Killing
NYTimes: Police Use Fitbit Data to Charge 90-Year-Old Man in Stepdaughter’s Killing by Christine Hauser:
WaPo: Opinion: The tech industry is suddenly pushing for federal privacy legislation. Watch out.
WaPo: Opinion: The tech industry is suddenly pushing for federal privacy legislation. Watch out. by Neema Singh Guliani: We should be highly skeptical of any proposal that would wipe out existing privacy laws that protect consumers or foreclose states from … Continue reading
Hard|OCP: Invite Police Officers into Your Home with Apple Watch’s Auto-911 Feature
Hard|OCP: Invite Police Officers into Your Home with Apple Watch’s Auto-911 Feature: Legal professionals are warning the Apple Watch could open owners up to criminal liability due to a new feature that automatically dials 911 if it senses the wearer … Continue reading
NYTimes: Just Don’t Call It Privacy
NYTimes: Just Don’t Call It Privacy by Natasha Singer: Amazon, Google and Twitter executives are heading to Congress. Should legislators give consumers control over the data companies have on them?
techdirt: FBI Facial Recognition Expert Helps Denver PD Arrest Wrong Man Twice For The Same Crime
techdirt: FBI Facial Recognition Expert Helps Denver PD Arrest Wrong Man Twice For The Same Crime by Tim Cushing
ABAJ: Class action filed against Google over location tracking
ABAJ: Class action filed against Google over location tracking by Jason Tashea:
NYLJ: Crime Fighting Cyber Surveillance Tools After ‘Carpenter’s’ Adjustment
NYLJ: Crime Fighting Cyber Surveillance Tools After ‘Carpenter’s’ Adjustment by Peter Crusco: In his Cyber Crime column, Peter Crusco discusses ‘Carpenter v. United States,’ describing the case as ‘probably the most important Fourth Amendment case involving new crime fighting cyber … Continue reading
WaPo: New facial recognition system nabs imposter at Dulles International Airport
WaPo: New facial recognition system nabs imposter at Dulles International Airport by Lori Aratani: Officials said a 26-year-old man arriving at Dulles International Airport on Wednesday presented a French passport to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer. Using the … Continue reading
Law360: Airbnb Suit Challenges New NYC Rental Data Collection Law
Law360: Airbnb Suit Challenges New NYC Rental Data Collection Law by Pete Brush Airbnb Inc. sued New York City on Friday claiming a new law requiring online rental companies to share data about their clientele violates the U.S. Constitution, but … Continue reading
WaPo: Google refused an order to release huge amounts of data. Will other companies bow under pressure? [Govt seeking tracking information from phone apps]
WaPo: Google refused an order to release huge amounts of data. Will other companies bow under pressure? by Deanna Paul:
CA7: City’s use of “smart meter” is a search, but it is reasonable because it’s not for criminal purposes and law enforcement never knows
The use of a smart meter to collect energy consumption in homes is a search under the Fourth Amendment under Kyllo. It is, however, a reasonable search because it is purely for the use of the power company and city … Continue reading
WaPo: L.A. begins body-scanning metro riders, with a promise of no ‘anatomical detail’
WaPo: L.A. begins body-scanning metro riders, with a promise of no ‘anatomical detail’ by Allyson Chiu:
AP: Google tracks your movements, like it or not
AP: Google tracks your movements, like it or not by Ryan Nakashima: An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used privacy settings that say they will … Continue reading
The Verge: New facial recognition tool tracks targets across different social networks
The Verge: New facial recognition tool tracks targets across different social networks By Russell Brandom: The open-source program is designed for security researchers.
WaPo Opinion: Facial recognition threatens our fundamental rights
WWaPo Opinion: Facial recognition threatens our fundamental rights by Clare Garvie:
Recode: Your phone is not secretly spying on your conversations. It doesn’t need to.
Recode: Your phone is not secretly spying on your conversations. It doesn’t need to. By Eric Johnson Northeastern University researchers Dave Choffnes and Christo Wilson (mostly) debunk the internet’s favorite conspiracy theory on the latest Too Embarrassed to Ask.
Gizmodo: Microsoft Asks Congress to Regulate Face Recognition
Gizmodo: Microsoft Asks Congress to Regulate Face Recognition by Sidney Fussell: