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- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
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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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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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"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
NPR: WNYC: Predicting Crime and Enforcing Law Through Big Data
NPR: WNYC: Predicting Crime and Enforcing Law Through Big Data: Cutting-edge technology that uses big data is changing the face of law enforcement, and in ways many Americans don’t know about.
Outside the Beltway: Amazon Would Like The Key To Your House
Outside the Beltway: Amazon Would Like The Key To Your House by Doug Mataconis: · Amazon is preparing to offer a new level of delivery service that would allow delivery persons to gain access to your house so they can leave … Continue reading
Westlaw Insider: The Fourth Amendment in a Digital Age
Westlaw Insider: The Fourth Amendment in a Digital Age:
Police One: Legal, privacy concerns to consider before implementing iris-scanning technology
Police One: Legal, privacy concerns to consider before implementing iris-scanning technology by Val Van Brocklin Looking at some public concerns and legal issues can help law enforcement plan its use of the evolving technology
The Register (UK): ‘There has never been a right to absolute privacy’ – US deputy AG slams ‘warrant-proof’ crypto
The Register (UK): ‘There has never been a right to absolute privacy’ – US deputy AG slams ‘warrant-proof’ crypto by Richard Chirgwin: Continuing the US government’s menacing of strong end-to-end encryption, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told an audience at … Continue reading
techdirt: Three Energy Bills Look To Increase Fourth Amendment Protections For Americans
techdirt: Three Energy Bills Look To Increase Fourth Amendment Protections For Americans by Tim Cushing:
WaPo: Commit a crime? Your Fitbit, key fob or pacemaker could snitch on you.
WaPo: Commit a crime? Your Fitbit, key fob or pacemaker could snitch on you. by Justin Jouvenal: With no witnesses other than Richard, detectives turned to the vast array of data and sensors that increasingly surround us. An important bit … Continue reading
New book: “The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement” | “Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how technology is changing American policing.”
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement (Kirkus 2017) Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how technology is changing American policing. Review by the publisher:
NYTimes: Opinion: The End of Privacy
NYTimes: Opinion: The End of Privacy by Andrew Burt and Dan Geer: Given the constant stream of breaches, it can be hard to understand what’s happening to our privacy over time. Two dates – one recent and one long ago … Continue reading
WaPo: Apple is opening up amid privacy questions about Face ID, personal data collection
WaPo: Apple is opening up amid privacy questions about Face ID, personal data collection by Hayley Tsukayama: Apple released more details about the iPhone X’s Face ID feature when it published a new privacy site Wednesday, addressing some of the concerns … Continue reading
The Hill: iPhone’s facial recognition could lead to real life ‘Minority Report’
The Hill: iPhone’s facial recognition could lead to real life ‘Minority Report’ by Kimberly Wehle: The iPhone X moves us closer to a world in which, by simply walking outside or picking up a personal iPhone, we will be monitored … Continue reading
Weekly Standard: Protecting Privacy; How the Fourth Amendment can keep up with high-tech surveillance.
Weekly Standard: Protecting Privacy; How the Fourth Amendment can keep up with high-tech surveillance by Matthew Feeney:
Electronics 360: Smart Devices Versus Privacy
Electronics 360: Smart Devices Versus Privacy by Tony Pallone:
The ‘Smart’ Fourth Amendment, 102 Cornell L. Rev. 547 (2017)
The ‘Smart’ Fourth Amendment, 102 Cornell L. Rev. 547 (2017) by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. Abstract:
ZDNet et al: Trump administration demands data on over a million visitors to anti-Trump site
ZDNet: Trump administration demands data on over a million visitors to anti-Trump site by Zack Whittaker The EFF, representing Dreamhost in the case, called the Justice Dept’s order ‘unconstitutional’. ACLU: Massive Search Warrant Targets Anti-Trump Website in Clear Threat to … Continue reading
Wired: Warrantless US Spying Is Set to Expire Soon. Let it Die
Wired: Warrantless US Spying Is Set to Expire Soon. Let it Die by Kevin Montenegro and Stephen Renderos:
WIRED: Your Own Pacemaker Can Now Testify Against You In Court
WIRED: Your Own Pacemaker Can Now Testify Against You In Court by Deanna Paul: When Ross Compton had a pacemaker installed, he had a constitutional right to remain silent. One would expect his body to have the same. But when … Continue reading
The Hill: Congress must act to protect data privacy before courts make surveillance even easier
The Hill: Congress must act to protect data privacy before courts make surveillance even easier by Ashley Baker:
LATimes: Privacy trumps the expedience of police technology tools
LATimes: Privacy trumps the expedience of police technology tools (editorial):
The Guardian: ‘Anonymous’ browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal
The Guardian: ‘Anonymous’ browsing data can be easily exposed, researchers reveal by Alex Hearn: A journalist and a data scientist secured data from three million users easily by creating a fake marketing company, and were able to de-anonymise many users.