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- Reason: Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech
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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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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
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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
NPR: It’s Not Just The iPhone Law Enforcement Wants To Unlock
NPR: It’s Not Just The iPhone Law Enforcement Wants To Unlock by Rachel Martin: Manhattan Defense Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. tells NPR’s Rachel Martin that his cyberlab has asked Apple to break into 175 phones.
NYTimes: Opinion: In the Government vs. Apple, Who Wears the Black Hat?
NYTimes: Opinion: In the Government vs. Apple, Who Wears the Black Hat? by Robert Levine: The government, not Apple, should guarantee our privacy rights. But this dispute has arisen precisely because the government hasn’t done so. Instead, it squandered much … Continue reading
WaPo: FBI asked San Bernardino to reset the password for shooter’s phone backup
WaPo: FBI asked San Bernardino to reset the password for shooter’s phone backup by Ellen Nakashima and Mark Berman: In the chaotic aftermath of the shootings in San Bernardino in December, FBI investigators seeking to recover data from the iPhone … Continue reading
NYTimes: Apple’s Line in the Sand Was Over a Year in the Making
NYTimes; Apple’s Line in the Sand Was Over a Year in the Making by Matt Apuzoo, Joseph Goldstein and Eric Lichtblau: WASHINGTON — Time and again after the introduction of the iPhone nearly a decade ago, the Justice Department asked … Continue reading
NYTimes: How Tim Cook, in iPhone Battle, Became a Bulwark for Digital Privacy
NYTimes: How Tim Cook, in iPhone Battle, Became a Bulwark for Digital Privacy by Katie Benner and Nicole Perloth: SAN FRANCISCO — Letters from around the globe began pouring into the inbox of Timothy D. Cook not long after the … Continue reading
The New Yorker: The Dangerous Precedent in the Apple Case
The New Yorker: The Dangerous Precedent in the Apple Case by Amy Davidson: What happens when the government demands that you give it something that you do not have?
The Atlantic: Is Law Enforcement Crying Wolf About the Dangers of Locked Phones?
The Atlantic: Is Law Enforcement Crying Wolf About the Dangers of Locked Phones? by Conor Friedersdorf: The examples put forward by FBI Director James Comey and his defenders are underwhelming.
WaPo: Showdown over iPhone reignites privacy debate
WaPo: Showdown over iPhone reignites privacy debate by Todd C. Frankel and Ellen Nakashima: The Justice Department calculated that it held a winning hand — the passcode-locked Apple iPhone of a terrorist — when it went to a federal court … Continue reading
NYTimes: Justice Department Calls Apple’s Refusal to Unlock iPhone a ‘Marketing Strategy’
NYTimes: Justice Department Calls Apple’s Refusal to Unlock iPhone a ‘Marketing Strategy’ by By Eric Lichtblau and Matt Apuzzo: The Justice Department, frustrated by its inability to unlock the iPhone of one of the attackers in the San Bernardino killings, … Continue reading
POLICE TECHNICAL to Release Controversial Tactical Hacking Book
POLICE TECHNICAL to Release Controversial Tactical Hacking Book by Brianne Hoffman: POLICE TECHNICAL is weeks away from releasing Introduction to Tactical Hacking: A Guide for Law Enforcement on pre-sale. The road to get there, however, has been long and challenging … Continue reading
NYTimes Editorial: Why Apple Is Right to Challenge an Order to Help the F.B.I.
NYTimes Editorial: Why Apple Is Right to Challenge an Order to Help the F.B.I.: It is understandable that federal investigators want to unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in … Continue reading
The Atlantic: The Conscription of Apple’s Software Engineers
The Atlantic: The Conscription of Apple’s Software Engineers by Conor Friedersdorf: The federal government is empowered to compel individuals and corporations to hand over data in their possession upon the presentation of a valid search warrant. Is the FBI also … Continue reading
Salon: The NYPD’s “Big Brother” problem is getting even worse
Salon: The NYPD’s “Big Brother” problem is getting even worse by Daniel Denvir: America’s largest police force has long behaved like an intelligence agency. That hasn’t changed in the Snowden era.
Computerworld: ENCRYPT Act co-sponsor learned tech ropes at Microsoft
Computerworld: ENCRYPT Act co-sponsor learned tech ropes at Microsoft By Matt Hamblen: U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, a former Microsoft executive, is a co-sponsor of a bill to preempt states from enacting separate versions of encryption laws. One of four congressional … Continue reading
Harv.L.Rev.: Digital Duplications and the Fourth Amendment
Harv.L.Rev.: Note, Digital Duplications and the Fourth Amendment, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1046 (2016): The explosive growth of digital data in the twenty-first century has been both a boon and a curse for law enforcement. On one hand this growth … Continue reading
ABAJ: Texas police turn into ‘mobile debt collectors’ with license-reader program
ABAJ: Texas police turn into ‘mobile debt collectors’ with license-reader program by Debra Cassens Weiss:
NPR: Encryption May Hurt Surveillance, But Internet Of Things Could Open New Doors
NPR: Encryption May Hurt Surveillance, But Internet Of Things Could Open New Doors by Alina Selyukh: The report concluded that information from some apps and devices like smartphones may be harder for government investigators to intercept because of stronger encryption. … Continue reading
NY Times: New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds
NY Times: New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds by David E. Sanger: Now, a study in which current and former intelligence officials participated concludes that the warning is wildly overblown, and that a raft of … Continue reading
WaPo: FBI use of hacking tool to find child-porn users affirmed
WaPo: FBI use of hacking tool to find child-porn users affirmed by Ellen Nakashima: Over the past week, two federal judges have found that the government’s use of software in a mass hacking of child-porn websites to identify users is … Continue reading