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 -
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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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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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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
Slate: Congress Put the CLOUD Act in Its Spending Bill. What Does That Mean For Data Privacy?
Slate: Congress Put the CLOUD Act in Its Spending Bill. What Does That Mean For Data Privacy? by Aaron Mak:
NYTimes: Opinion: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
NYTimes: Opinion: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine by Zeynep Tufekci: Facebook makes money, in other words, by profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors and others. These are Facebook’s true customers, whom it works hard to please.
NPR: Critics Concerned About Privacy Issues As Biometric Scanning Increases
NPR: Critics Concerned About Privacy Issues As Biometric Scanning Increases by Brian Naylor: The government is steadily increasing the use of facial or biometric scanning at the nation’s airports. Airlines say it can speed the boarding process, but critics say … Continue reading
NYTimes: Customer Faces Get Scanned at Madison Square Garden
NYTimes: Customer Faces Get Scanned at Madison Square Garden by Kevin Draper:
Gizmodo: Georgetown Lawyers Sue NYPD to Reveal Its Secret Face Recognition Programs
Gizmodo: Georgetown Lawyers Sue NYPD to Reveal Its Secret Face Recognition Programs by Sidney Fussell: Researchers at the Georgetown Center of Privacy and Technology have filed suit against the NYPD for more details on the department’s highly secretive face recognition … Continue reading
The Intercept: New Orleans Surveillance Program Gives Powerful Tools to a Police Department with a History of Racism and Abuse
The Intercept: New Orleans Surveillance Program Gives Powerful Tools to a Police Department with a History of Racism and Abuse by Michael Isaac Stein:
ACLU: TSA Tests See-Through Scanners on Public in New York’s Penn Station
ACLU: TSA Tests See-Through Scanners on Public in New York’s Penn Station by Rashida Richardson, New York Civil Liberties Union & Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project:
Forbes: The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence
Forbes: The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence by Thomas Fox-Brewster: In what appears to be a major breakthrough for law enforcement, and a possible privacy problem for Apple customers, a major U.S. government contractor claims … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Fitbit Could Prove a Man’s Innocence. Google Could Send Another to Prison for Murder
Daily Beast: Fitbit Could Prove a Man’s Innocence. Google Could Send Another to Prison for Murder by Kate Briquelet: A troubled boyfriend. A hard-drinking felon. And a young mom bludgeoned to death steps from her own home. Now smart technologies … Continue reading
NOLA considering ordinance to put surveillance cameras in and outside all bars feeding to a city central server
New Orleans has proposed ordinance 32,107 regulating bars, and part is about surveillance systems. This caught my eye because, in college, I first considered the privacy concerns of street cameras being installed here. That was probably 1969-70, and Katz was … Continue reading
NYTimes: Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy
NYTimes: Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy by Steve Lohr: When the person in the photo is a white man, the software is right 99 percent of the time. But the darker the skin, the more errors … Continue reading
Legal IntBeware: Texts and Wearable Data Must Be Preserved, Too
Legal IntBeware: Texts and Wearable Data Must Be Preserved, Too by Joseph Francoeur, Michelle Vizzi and Sade A. Forte: Attorneys need to be aware of technological advances in terms of preservation of evidence and new avenues for seeking relevant evidence. … Continue reading
Ars Technica: Why cops [think they] won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car
Ars Technica: Why cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car by Cyrus Farivar. Said a local law enforcement officer: “It’s like instant replay in the NFL; I can tell what happened.”
NYTimes: Opinion: What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State
NYTimes: Opinion: What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State by James A. Millward:
WaPo: U.S. soldiers are revealing sensitive and dangerous information by jogging
WaPo: U.S. soldiers are revealing sensitive and dangerous information by jogging by Liz Sly: An interactive map posted on the Internet that shows the whereabouts of people who use fitness devices such as Fitbit also reveals highly sensitive information about … Continue reading
The Intercept: Transparency Advocates Win Release of NYPD “Predictive Policing” Documents
The Intercept: Transparency Advocates Win Release of NYPD “Predictive Policing” Documents by Ali Winston: Late last month, a Manhattan judge ordered the New York City Police Department to release documentation about the department’s use of secretive and highly controversial ‘predictive … Continue reading
NYTimes: Tech Giants Brace for Europe’s New Data Privacy Rules
NYTimes: Tech Giants Brace for Europe’s New Data Privacy Rules by Sheera Frankel: The tech giants are preparing for a stringent new set of data privacy rules in the region, called the General Data Protection Regulation. Set to take effect … Continue reading
D.Nev.: There is no REP from a govt license plate reader’s collection of one’s movements
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy from a government license plate reader collecting information on the movements of one’s car. It can’t be compared to GPS tracking, and it’s not an electronic trespass. United States v. Yang, 2018 U.S. … Continue reading
The Verge: Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US
The Verge: Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US by Russell Brandom:
Motherboard: Florida Cop Bought Powerful Phone Malware That Can Intercept Emails and WhatsApp
Motherboard: Florida Cop Bought Powerful Phone Malware That Can Intercept Emails and WhatsApp by Joseph Cox: