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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2017); ABA Journal Blawg 100 (2015-16) (discontinued 2018)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-24,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 425,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 45,000 posts since 2003 (26,730+ on WordPress as of 12/31/23) -
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--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
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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) -
“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 -
"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] -
“You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew "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)
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Category Archives: Cell site simulators
techdirt: DOJ Tells Court There No Need To Establish A Warrant Requirement For Stingray Devices
techdirt: DOJ Tells Court There No Need To Establish A Warrant Requirement For Stingray Devices by Tim Cushing:
ars technica: FBI didn’t need warrant for stingray in attempted murder case, DOJ says
ars technica: FBI didn’t need warrant for stingray in attempted murder case, DOJ says by Cyrus Farivar Prosecutors: “signals emitted from a phone are… not by their nature private.”
Courthouse News Service: Albuquerque Police Call Spying Tech So Secret They Can’t Even Say They Have It
Courthouse News Service: Albuquerque Police Call Spying Tech So Secret They Can’t Even Say They Have It by Victoria Prieskop:
Albuquerque Journal: ACLU: Albuquerque Police mum on cellphone spying technology
Albuquerque Journal: ACLU: Albuquerque Police mum on cellphone spying technology by Maggie Shepard:
WaPo: D.C. appeals court poised to rule on whether police need warrants for cellphone tracking
WaPo: D.C. appeals court poised to rule on whether police need warrants for cellphone tracking by Tom Jackman: Last year, a Maryland appeals court agreed and ruled that Baltimore police could not use evidence collected by a cell-site simulator in … Continue reading
Tenth Amendment Center: Massachusetts Bill Would Ban Warrantless Stingray Spying
Tenth Amendment Center: Massachusetts Bill Would Ban Warrantless Stingray Spying by Mike Maharrey: BOSTON, Mass. (March 10, 2017) – A Massachusetts bill would generally prohibit the warrantless use of stingray devices and the collection of electronic data stored by service … Continue reading
New Law Review Article: A Modern Major Statute: Illinois Raises the Bar in Protecting Citizen Privacy from Cell Site Simulators
New Law Review Article: Jeremy Greenberg, A Modern Major Statute: Illinois Raises the Bar in Protecting Citizen Privacy from Cell Site Simulators, 1 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 147 (2016)
NPR: Local Police Departments Invest In Cell Phone Spy Tools
NPR: Local Police Departments Invest In Cell Phone Spy Tools, All Things Considered: As we depend on our cell phones more and more, the tools to peek into our phones are getting better. Local police departments across the country are … Continue reading
Richmond County Daily Journal: StingRay is why the 4th Amendment was written
Richmond County Daily Journal: StingRay is why the 4th Amendment was written by Olivia Donaldson:
Tenth Amendment Center: Arizona Committee Passes Bill to Prohibit Warrantless Stingray Spying
Tenth Amendment Center: Arizona Committee Passes Bill to Prohibit Warrantless Stingray Spying by Mike Maharry: PHOENIX, Ariz, (Feb. 10, 2017) – An Arizona bill that would ban the use of “stingrays” to track the location of phones and sweep up … Continue reading
Cato: Stingray: A New Frontier in Police Surveillance
Cato: Stingray: A New Frontier in Police Surveillance by Adam Bates. From the executive summary:
Tenth Amendment Center: New Mexico Bill Takes on Stingray Spying, Bulk Warrantless Data Collection; Would Also Hinder Some Federal Surveillance Programs
New Mexico Bill Takes on Stingray Spying, Bulk Warrantless Data Collection; Would Also Hinder Some Federal Surveillance Programs: SANTA FE, N.M. (Jan. 12, 2017) – A electronic data privacy bill introduced in the New Mexico Senate would ban the use … Continue reading
Tribune-Review: Equal enforcement for all: Set StingRay standard (Editorial)
Tribune-Review: Equal enforcement for all: Set StingRay standard (Editorial): A new, bipartisan House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report rightly calls for a national standard governing all federal, state and local law enforcers’ use of devices that mimic cellphone towers … Continue reading
The Hill: Report on warrantless surveillance shows Congress must update privacy laws
The Hill: Report on warrantless surveillance shows Congress must update privacy laws by Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX):
Tenth Amendment Center: South Carolina Bill Would Ban Stingray Spying, Hinder Federal Surveillance Program
Tenth Amendment Center: South Carolina Bill Would Ban Stingray Spying, Hinder Federal Surveillance Program: COLUMBIA, S.C. (Dec. 19, 2016) – A bill prefiled in the South Carolina House would ban the use of “stingrays” to track the location of phones … Continue reading
CA7: Where there already was PC for def’s arrest warrant, the use of a Stingray to find him didn’t violate any 4A rights
Officers had a warrant for defendant’s arrest for a state parole violation, and they found him in a public place and arrested him. They used a Stingray device to locate him rather than rely on the cell phone company to … Continue reading
The Intercept: Long-Secret Stingray Manuals Detail How Police Can Spy on Phones
The Intercept: Long-Secret Stingray Manuals Detail How Police Can Spy on Phones by Sam Biddle: HARRIS CORP.’S STINGRAY surveillance device has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in law enforcement for more than 15 years. The company and … Continue reading
Morning Consult: Potential FCC Probe of Police Cellphone Trackers Could Serve as Proxy for Congressional Battle
Morning Consult: Potential FCC Probe of Police Cellphone Trackers Could Serve as Proxy for Congressional Battle by Amir Nasr:
M.D.Fla.: CSLI information captured by Stingray would be unreasonable under 4A except defs had no standing in burner phones they disassociated themselves from
Use of a Stingray to capture defendants’ cell phone location information in real time was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment [without much discussion], but the defendants lack standing to complain. The mere fact the government referred to the phones as … Continue reading
New American: New Illinois Law Nullifies Expansion of Surveillance State
New American: New Illinois Law Nullifies Expansion of Surveillance State by Joe Wolverton, II: A new law in Illinois works to protect citizens of that state from being subjected to electronic surveillance that violates their right to be free from … Continue reading