Pennsylvania district judges were upbraided by the administrator for the state courts for redacting court files without any legal authority.

The North Dakota Attorney General ruled against a county Sheriff for rejecting a public records request without citing any legal authority. The AG also noted that the Sheriff obstructed the requester’s objective by not pointing out that the records existed in a form other than the one identified in the record request.

An online database of stolen vehicles in Arizona can be searched by license plate number or VIN. The site is operated by the Arizona Attorney General.

MySpace, the social networking site, has been recognized as the most frequently accessed Web site, more popular than Google or Yahoo. That gives you some idea how important social networking sites are for background research.

Apparently employers are using these sites as part of their background screening, to round out candidate supplied work history, and uncover potentially unsavory personal characteristics.

Last fall, an executive search firm in Connecticut surveyed recruiters, and found that 75% of those surveyed routinely use search engines and networking sites to discover information about job candidates. In the past few months, an assistant district attorney in Florida and a police chief in northern California have lost their jobs due to postings on their MySpace pages.

Also on this topic:
Social-Networking Sites Catch the Eye of Employers, Wall Street Journal

Social Networking Sites Aren’t Commonly Used to Dig Up Dirt, Insider Recruiting

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé, New York Times

The recently enacted national sex offender registry legislation, HR 4472, Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, will add convicted child molesters to the registry and require all states to notify residents of sex offender registrants.

New York adds level 2 sex offenders to its registry. The Florida site has added more details on the convictions of registrants. The future state of the registry for Missouri is in flux since the Missouri Supreme Court decided that current registrants convicted prior to 1995 do not have to update their address information.

Minnesota is now the third state to approve a registry of methamphetamine manufacturers, following on the heels of the Tennessee registry, which is already on the Web. The Illinois registry has been signed into law but is not yet online.

The Yahoo! Real Estate search tool locates addresses, streets or areas by zip code, providing integrated results with a map, real property valuations and census data. While the estimated property values and comparables may not be a sufficiently reliable figure on which to base a selling price, as readers noted in the the Yahoo! Search blog, they offer a sense of the economic status of the neighborhood. The demographic data is filled out by census-based data, showing the cost of living and crime statistics by zip code compared with the national average. The property profiles are provided by Zillow, which I previously wrote about and on which readers commented.

State legislative research offices answer legislators’ questions and provide bill analysis, generating topical reports. These reports can include summaries of state laws that otherwise would take a researcher hours to compile. In June 2006, the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research produced, Public Access to Court Proceedings and Records, a one page response to the legislature’s request “for state laws that permit or require courts to prohibit public access to court records or proceedings.” The response categorizes the state laws that require court records or court proceedings be keep confidential.

The California Senate Office of Research reports are searchable online by keyword or year. The only report issued this year, on privacy, provides a wide ranging summary, with code citations, of laws related to identity theft, confidential court records, financial privacy, telephone subscriber records and surveillance technology, to name a few areas. This is a convenient reference document for every California investigator, and reporter writing about political and social issues.

The California Supreme Court has sided with plaintiffs in their complaint against a bank that recorded telephone conversations that originated in Georgia but terminated in California. Georgia allows one-party consent to audio recording of telephone calls but California requires the permission of all parties.

Although Georgia and most other states permit taping of phone conversations as long as one person consents, Kearney and Levy argued that the bank’s actions violated California’s 39-year-old Invasion of Privacy Act, which — similar to 10 other states — prohibits the recording of any communication without the permission of all affected parties.

The SoCal Law Blog questions the application of the California court’s notion that this state’s privacy law is superior to others.

There are many tasks that computers can do better than the mere shoe leather on the road. Today’s New York Times reports on research suggesting that computers make more accurate choices in decision making than company managers or human intuition. The companies that develop systems to aggregate disperate bits of relevant personal information and make it easily accessible win the day with investigators. ChoicePoint, among other investigative database providers, has recognized the value of computer software and content acquisition in employment screening, background investigations and financial profiling.

The company has recently absorbed established businesses in vital records management and financial tracking software, keeping tabs on financial borrowers’ activity (epolicy, Inc. too).

Information-service provider ChoicePoint is looking to expand its insurance-verification services with the acquisition yesterday of Insuratec Inc.

Danville, Calif.-based Insuratec notifies lenders of changes to borrowers’ auto, mortgage, motorcycle, and watercraft insurance policies.

The mega data broker has sloughed off businesses outside of this model — such as a DNA lab.

The ChoicePoint division, ChoiceTrust, has an online site where you can instantaneously retrieve free profiles of your auto and home insurance. A self-check of public records data is available by mail.

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), a “free national search site to reunite you with your unclaimed property maintained by the state officials who are safeguarding it” links to state, federal, private and Canadian agencies to which personal property and funds have been escheated.

Sites can be searched by name, and will variously provide you with the name of the originating institution, the refund amount, the account holder’s address and the amount owed.

The California State Controller maintains and sells a database of unclaimed property owners, and one listing the decedents and their heirs of estate accounts remitted to the state. Other state Controller Offices and county treasurers also compile this information.

The U.S. Tax Court, the judicial body that hears tax payment disputes, has an online docket inquiry, searchable by indvidual or corporate name or docket number. [Thanks to DetectiveForums.]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued a fine against the Internet-based data broker of cell phone and telephone subscriber call logs, 1st Source Information Specialists (LocateCell). The press release only names one company but at least 40 Web sites were listed in the EPIC petition.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today found that LocateCell apparently “willfully or repeatedly” violated a Commission order by failing to provide information and documents required by a subpoena. For this failure, the Commission issued a $97,500 Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture against LocateCell.

Specifically, the subpoena required LocateCell to provide information and documents relating to its website advertisement for the sale of consumers’ private telephone records and other customer proprietary network information. The company failed to fully respond to the subpoena and a subsequent Citation. Because LocateCell’s response to the subpoena remains deficient, the Commission proposed the maximum forfeiture for a continuing violation by a non-common carrier of $97,500.

The FCC Commissioners provided a recap of the history of their investigation and statements reflecting the basis for this determination. Commissioner McDowell alludes to the possibility of further fines being levied against similar companies.

LocateCell is not the only company from which the Commission has sought information. Our Enforcement Bureau has been actively investigating a number of these data brokers, many of which have
advertised the availability of records of wireless subscribers’ incoming and outgoing telephone calls, as well as certain landline toll call records, for a fee. The Bureau is also investigating the alleged failure of
carriers to certify compliance with our CPNI rules, and is vigorously pursuing non-compliant companies.
These investigations will continue, and I thank the Bureau for its work in moving these initiatives forward.

View the Webcast of the FCC meeting.

Set up an account at CourthouseDirect, a real property index and document retrieval site, and conduct a free search for nationwide real property assets by name, address, city, state or Assessors Parcel Number (APN), or any combination of fields. The same search fields are returned in the results. You can order a property profile for a fee. Many counties have a free index at their Recorder of Deeds site. Some Recorder indices that are not at the counties’ Web sites are available at CourthouseDirect. Documents retained by the county Recorder — deeds, tax liens, financial agreements, Deeds of Trust and Lis Pendens — can be obtained for a fee.