Archive for the ‘International’ Category

This is the sort of topic that those of us in a fairly offbeat line of work, with a twisted sense of the world -which pretty universally applies to private investigators- can appreciate and put to practical use. Let’s start with terrorism, shall we?

The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), “a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects”, maps real-time global terrorist threats and events. MIPT also has resources on terrorism-related court cases and terrorist groups and leaders. See all types of worldwide calamities, suspicious activities and threats on the Global Incident Map.

Global health outbreaks, derived from multiple sources, are tracked on HEALTHMap, a project of John Brownstein, Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Clark Freifeld, Research Software Developer at the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program. View by disease type, country and recent incidents.

Incident1 is a start-up emergency incidents and crime mapping site. Drawn from law enforcement and highway patrol sources, it aims to be national but is currently limited to a few regions. Search by zip code or the drop-down menu of regions to see recent crime and accidents. IncidentLog covers many local crime, traffic and fire events that aren’t at Incident1. Plot events by type and/or region, state, city or street. IncidentLog also has a running list of the events by selected criteria and provides a link to the source Web site.

A collection of federal agencies collaborated on the live mapping of wildfires, which lists date the fire started and the number of acres involved, as well as a link to the source agency. View fire locations back to 2002. The USDA Forest Service active fires map shows the location of large fires in the US and Canada but seems to have data that is a subset of the wildfires map. Other maps of active fires are found at Geodata.gov.

The new Google My Maps feature enables anyone to easily configure a map with selective features. Google Maps Mania discovered this Google My Maps creation of wildfires in Waycross, Georgia.

Locate recent earthquakes, active volcanoes and tropical storms on the Asia Pacific Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlas.

Volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, floods, power outages, epidemics and other unpleasant occurrences are noted on this global map provided by the National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications, Emergency and Disaster Information Services (EDIS), Budapest Hungary. Scroll beyond the map image for a list of events by date and time.

The National Hurricane Center has lots of live maps of weather patterns.

The International Chamber of Commerce, Commercial Crime Services has a news service of piracy alerts and maps global piracy events. Additional maritime incident data can be gathered from the International Maritime Organization, which provides detailed incident descriptions with free registration.

Even a map of wars and violent conflicts doesn’t cover all disaster events but I wanted to leave room for you to add your own resources!

The laws of conducting surveillance on insurance claimants can vary by state and even by country.

An article appearing in Out-Law.com highlights the potential conflict of British laws that involve government surveillance and verifying the validity of an insurance claim.

In August 2002, the UK police instructed a private detective firm to observe a former sergeant to see if he was doing anything that was inconsistent with his claimed injuries. Nine minutes of video footage showed the ex-policeman mowing the lawn and in his car.

The former policeman wanted the Tribunal to rule against the police force under RIPA, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, but the Tribunal has found that it has no jurisdiction to do so because the filming of the former policeman did not constitute the kind of surveillance that RIPA governs.

The Tribunal is where individuals who think that their rights have been infringed can complain about the actions of public bodies. The Tribunal, though, only has jurisdiction if the surveillance dealt with is “directed surveillance” within the meaning of sections 26 and 48 (1) and (2) of RIPA.
See: The ruling (27-page / 231 KB PDF)

Search the Puerto Rico Sex Offenders Registry in Spanish or English.

The Nevada Appeal News reports…

The Churchill County Recorder’s Office began in August alerting those who do business with the office, such as title companies, that beginning Jan. 1, Social Security numbers would not be allowed on public documents.

New Hampshire courts are slowly implementing a new case tracking system that will link all of the state courts – in about 3 years. The Supreme Court is still debating which personal identifying details will be masked in the Internet site.

It also will improve public access to court records. For the first time, court dockets _ including the names of the parties, the type of case or criminal charges, and the dates of filings, hearings and decisions _ will be publicly available, going as far back as 1988.

But public access won’t improve immediately. That’s because the Supreme Court is still working on rules governing what records should be available only on paper, what information would be on public computers at courthouses, and what would be on the Internet.

A number of local town councils in Australia have reportedly paid thousands of dollars to private investigators to visit brothels in an effort to gather evidence.

“But honey, I was just doing my job…really!” (..now a ‘divorced’ PI)

It’s hard to beleive, but many community leaders have found that hiring private investigators to infiltrate and pose as regular bloks to determine if illegal brothels are operating within their jurisdiction.

Since local police can not “go all the way” to get the evidence to catch these prostitution locations and promoting unprotected sex, PIs have become the latest tool in fighting this growing problem.

However, a member with the Sydney’s Willoughby Council says it is worrying councils have had to pay private investigators to have sex with prostitutes, so they can gather enough evidence to shut down illegal brothels.

Looking for unusual types of assets? Search the Canadian Stallion Directory for pedigree horses by the first initial of the owner or farm.

Ancestors On Board is a database of ship passengers traveling from the British Isles from the years 1890 through 1960. Search by name, port or country.

With ancestorsonboard, you can search for records of individuals or groups of people leaving for destinations including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA featuring ports such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Passengers include not only immigrants and emigrants, but also businessmen, diplomats and tourists.

Canadian private investigator, Kevin D. Bousquet has an extensive analysis of the detrimental effects of privacy regulation on the public and the everyday work of attorneys. [Thanks: Ca Privacy Law]

The public is in panic over crimes like impersonation, bank fraud, mortgage fraud and insurance fraud all things the private sector investigates every single day. They are the answer to the problem not the cause. All of the tools that hold personal data are needed to investigate but are slowly cutting off the private sector slowly over time.

In Provinces like Quebec and Alberta, PI’s have no access to government motor vehicle information. They can’t even run a license plate to follow an insurance claimant or a driver’s record to see previous driving infractions.

How are we expected to do insurance claim investigation if we have no access to vehicle or driver information? How is a PI supposed to help a person enforce a judgment or child support order when for the most part credit bureaus make it virtually impossible for PIs to have access even if they have a certified copy of a Judgment or Support Order?

The legal is community is in big trouble they just haven’t realized it yet. Sooner or later would be Plaintiffs and the general public are going to realize that when they sue in court attempting to recover their losses even if they win their case if defendant simply refuses to pay there is every likelihood their court ordered judgment or monetary award could be nothing more then a worthless piece of paper.