Orange County, California one of the most populous in the state, has place its civil court index, back to 1996, on the Internet. Free access. Cases can be searched by partial name, case number or business and return the docket. Read the press release.

This Civil Public Access system returns case information for Unlimited, Limited and Complex Civil case categories. At this time documents imaged or electronically filed are not available via this application. Unlimited and Complex Civil (actions filed for more than $25,000) cases filed since 1996 are available. Limited Civil (actions filed for less than $25,000) cases filed at Central Justice Center since 2004 are available. Limited Civil cases filed at North, West and Harbor Justice Centers since 2005 are available. Information can be retrieved by searching via:
- The Superior Court of California, County of Orange Case number
- A person (or participant) associated with a case
- A business associated with a case

A Non-Computer Lawyer’s Guide to Investigation on the Internet, a portal to investigator guides and useful links, particularly for criminal defense investigators, is hosted by a Massachusetts Public Defender. Some of the material is limited and there are dead links, but much of the information leads to valuable resources. Forensics materials include, New York State Department of Health, Guidelines for Determining Brain Death.

The Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory, at the University of Texas, produced a 2006 study, in conjunction with various Illinois law enforcement agencies, Report to the Legislature of the State Of Illinois: The Illinois Pilot Program On Seqential Double-Blind Identification Procedures.

Find hospitals by state, town or name.

The U.S. Department of Education Web site provides links to each state’s Department of Education, and to private sites that have education related tools. Locate school names and addresses at the Standard and Poors site, SchoolMatters. Search by school or district name, city, state or zip code.

The National Center for Education Statistics has a school locator that includes colleges and public libraries. View school districts and plot Census demographics from 1990 and 2000 on state maps.

Some state Department of Education Web sites include a personnel directory. The New Mexico directory, which can be downloaded, lists schools and districts alphabetically.

The Michigan Department of Education has a Teacher Certification Verification database.

Find the status of a Teacher Certification application in Pennsylvania or New Jersey by SSN.

The earlier flurry of fines and lawsuits against brokers of telephone subscriber records has continued with this recent gust from AT&T. The company has filed suit in federal court in Texas against 25 entities, which are as yet, unnamed.

AT&T, headquartered in San Antonio, where the suit was filed, hopes to learn the defendants’ identities through their Internet protocol addresses. AT&T has “most if not all” of the defendants’ IP addresses and will ask the court to subpoena the Internet providers to disclose the identities linked to those addresses, spokesman Walt Sharp said.

I gather that the suspected data collectors gained unauthorized access by changing account passwords for either AT&T or their customers to be alerted. If so, the targets of this case may differ from those cited in the FCC investigation –entities which advertised on the Internet–, assuming that they were flying under the radar. Or the purchasers of the personal information may have concluded that they were beyond the reach of the government or courts.

The individuals gained access to the records by “pretexting” or fooling AT&T’s computer or interactive voice response phone system into believing they were real customers. This was done by providing the customer’s telephone number and the last four digits of the customer’s Social Security number or the three-digit customer code associated with the customer’s account, the complaint states. The defendants also sometimes used “spoofing” software to make it appear that they were calling from the customer’s telephone, the complaint alleges.

In each instance, the defendant entered an e-mail address to be associated with the fraudulently established account, and AT&T’s computer servers logged the IP address of the computer accessing the account.

The history of this swarm of regulation, litigation and legislation is recounted in InternetNews.

Technology Evangelist is dismayed by the ease with which humans can talk their way into getting facts.

The Placer County, California Assessor site has added parcel map viewing and printing. Enter a parcel number to obtain owner name and associated map page image.

The sex offender and violent offender databases operated by each state are always being tweaked. The Iowa site has added an e-mail notification feature, which is available at many state sites and also at Family Watchdog.

Several states have either created or authorized the development of a Web registry naming people convicted of making or selling methamphetamines. Utah and Oregon may be the most recent states to establish a meth boutique database. Montana includes convicted meth manufacturers in its Sexual and Violent Offender Registry.

State archives, local genealogical societies and State libraries can be unexpected sources for people finder resources. Last year I listed some of the vital records indexes housed at the California State Archive. Gateways to genealogical sites, other state vital records sources and the genealogical associations (which often have more relaxed access to public records than a government office) are collected at this posting.

Find other state or topic specific entries from my archives using the PI buzz search tool.

The Yolo County, California Superior Court Criminal Interactive System is searchable by case number or driver’s license number. It is unclear if the database includes historical records or just currently calendered court appearances. Select the link titled, “Online Criminal Self Service”.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals echoed an earlier ruling by a U.S. District Court that Delaware cannot bar citizens of other states from obtaining documents under that state’s public records law.

The question presented in this appeal is whether Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 29 Del. Code Ann. § 10003, violates the Privileges and Immunities
Clause of the United States Constitution by restricting noncitizens’ rights to access, inspect, and copy public documents. We conclude that it does.

Although other states have similar exclusionary laws, the Third Circuit is reported to be the first to examine their legality.

Read the story: AP; The News Journal; New York Times.

The Vermont Criminal Information Center is now providing statewide criminal history checks to all employers, in accordance with a change in the state law. Requests for criminal conviction history must mailed and include an authorization from the applicant. Increased ease of access to criminal records will relieve employers from searching each of Vermont’s county courts.

Virginia is expanding the types of correctional facilities that will be included in the Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) program. Over the next two years, information on criminal offenders incarcerated at jails will be added to the VINE Web site, which already lists prisoners in state facilities.

Researchers for the Internet service provider, America Online, recently released logs of searches conducted by site subscribers, which has been posted on the Web. The data is searchable by search terms, the domain address from which the searcher came to AOL and user identification number. The collection covers 36,389,567 searches that took place between March 1 and May 31, 2006, according to an Information Today article.

The New York Times article, A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749, unravels how the authors linked a user ID to a person.

A quick search for “private investigator”, sorted by user ID returned a list of queries from someone who may have revealed his or her location as Fenton, Missouri, looking for “field investigator employment”. Click on the user ID to bring up all the search terms entered by that person, including personal names, and you’ll see what a valuable tool this is for background development. It can also be useful for identifying search terms people use to get to your Web site. For example someone who searched for “PI Magazine” also entered these other search phrases.