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- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- 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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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
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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
The Guardian: German parents told to destroy doll that can spy on children
The Guardian: German parents told to destroy doll that can spy on children by Phillip Oltermann: German watchdog classifies My Friend Cayla doll as ‘illegal espionage apparatus’ and says shops and owners could face fines.
Orin Kerr on Playpen warrants:
DOJ has filed appellate briefs in 3 Playpen warrant cases– CA1, CA8, CA10. Notably, none of the DOJ briefs argue no search occurred. And, Playpen warrants sustained. United States v. Pawlak, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23100 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 17, … Continue reading
Baltimore Sun: Aerial surveillance by Baltimore police has promise, should be studied more, report concludes
Baltimore Sun: Aerial surveillance by Baltimore police has promise, should be studied more, report concludes by Kevin Rector:
WaPo: How to stop data collection on your Vizio (or other smart) television
WaPo: How to stop data collection on your Vizio (or other smart) television by Hayley Tsukayama:
WaPo: These smart TVs were apparently spying on their owners [mere third party data?]
WaPo: These smart TVs were apparently spying on their owners by Hayley Tsukayama. So, if this is third party data, is it subject to mere subpoena and not a search warrant? Feel free to be creeped out. I have a … Continue reading
Tenth Amendment Center: Michigan Ballot Measure Would Help Protect Electronic Data from Warrantless Spying
Tenth Amendment Center: Michigan Ballot Measure Would Help Protect Electronic Data from Warrantless Spying:
The Legal Intelligencer: Will Technology Change the Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment? Part 2
The Legal Intelligencer: Will Technology Change the Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment? Part 2 by Leonard Deutchman:
Center for Democracy and Technology: Alexa, is Law Enforcement Listening?
Center for Democracy and Technology: Alexa, is Law Enforcement Listening? by Joseph Jerome Just days after Christmas, news broke that police in Bentonville, Arkansas, had issued a warrant to Amazon to turn over audio recordings from an Echo as part … Continue reading
The Legal Intelligencer, Will Technology Change the Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment?
The Legal Intelligencer, Will Technology Change the Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment? by Leonard Deutchman:
New Law Review: “The Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment,” for evaluating new technological problems and the third-party doctrine
New Law Review: “The Positive Law Model of the Fourth Amendment,” 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1821 (2016) by William Baude & James Y. Stern: For fifty years, courts have used a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard to define “searches” under … Continue reading
SW for Amazon Echo: USA Today: Alexa: Who dunnit?
USA Today: Alexa: Who dunnit? by Elizabeth Weise:
Harvard Magazine: The Watchers
Harvard Magazine: The Watchers by Jonathan Shaw “Can the behavior of an entire population, even in a modern democracy, be changed by awareness of surveillance? And what are the effects of other kinds of privacy invasions?”
Reuters: Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy
Reuters: Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy by Joseph Menn: Yahoo Inc’s secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen … Continue reading
NPR: This Doll May Be Recording What Children Say, Privacy Groups Charge
NPR: This Doll May Be Recording What Children Say, Privacy Groups Charge by Brian Naylor: It’s called My Friend Cayla. It’s a doll and looks pretty much like most dolls do. She is available in various skin tones and hair … Continue reading
New law review article: Apple and the American Revolution: Remembering Why We Have the Fourth Amendment,
Clark D. Cunningham, Apple and the American Revolution: Remembering Why We Have the Fourth Amendment, 126 Yale L.J. Forum ___ (2016). Abstract: This essay provides a concise history of events prior to the Revolutionary War that led to the adoption … Continue reading
ACLU.org: In Federal Appeals Court for Wikimedia v. NSA: Here’s How It Went
ACLU.org: In Federal Appeals Court for Wikimedia v. NSA: Here’s How It Went by Jim Buatti & Aeryn Palmer: Originally posted on Wikimedia’s blog.
WaPo: Police are using software to predict crime. Is it a ‘holy grail’ or biased against minorities?
WaPo: Police are using software to predict crime. Is it a ‘holy grail’ or biased against minorities? by Justin Jouvenal:
NPR: It Ain’t Me, Babe: Researchers Find Flaws In Police Facial Recognition
NPR: It Ain’t Me, Babe: Researchers Find Flaws In Police Facial Recognition by Laura Sydell: Nearly half of all American adults have been entered into law enforcement facial recognition databases, according to a recent report from Georgetown University’s law school. … Continue reading
NPR: Police Facial Recognition Databases Log About Half Of Americans
NPR: Police Facial Recognition Databases Log About Half Of Americans: A new report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology says all it takes is a driver’s license to be included in the searchable databases. Rachel Martin talks to … Continue reading
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: The Fifth Amendment and Touch ID
WaPo: Volokh Conspiracy: The Fifth Amendment and Touch ID by Orin Kerr: My recent post on the legality of warrants that permit phone unlocking prompted some reader comments on how the Fifth Amendment might apply to using fingerprint readers such … Continue reading