Private Investigator Blog - Public Records, Internet Search - PI Buzz » Personal Data

Public Records, Not Public Records and Private Investigators

Tamara Thompson — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:35:45 +0000

Government agencies won’t put public records on the Internet but the former Santa Bernardino County Assessor found a technological runaround to making his emails a public record.

A private investigator and the former supervisor of the Worthless Check Division in the St.Tammany (Louisiana) District Attorney’s Office were sentenced to three years’ probation for buying and selling criminal information from the National Crime Information Center database. The DA employee got the heavier sentence — she also lost her job.

Nebraska Supreme Court ruling: Burial records from a state run cemetery are a public record. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) claimed that the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) applied because the cemetery was for residents at a former psychiatric hospital. But the court noted that HIPAA allows for the disclosure of protected health information when required by state law, and that Nebraska’s public records laws trumped HIPAA because these are death records, which are open records. Reported by RCFP.

Texas media, private investigators and genealogists are opposing the efforts of the Texas legislature to exempt the dates of birth of government employees from disclosure as a public record. The media has uncovered misdeeds by employees of the Texas Youth Commission — matching dates of birth with employee names — involving abuse of people and the public trust. Shielding dates of birth in public records does not protect the public from identity theft, as legislatures claim when attempting to carve out more public record exemptions.

New York Chills Employment Investigations

Tamara Thompson — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:15:42 +0000

The phrase “personal information” and “identity theft” have become so intertwined that legislatures have rushed to implement laws which have detrimental outcomes for investigations. Recently codified New York law would subject employers to a $500 penalty for disclosing “personal identifying information” on employees. This will have a chilling effect on release by employers of other information on current or past employees, such as name and job title. This is reminiscent of the California legislature’s failed attempt in 2007 to penalize the release of “personal information about a customer or employee contained in the records of a business…”

It is now a violation of New York law to,

Communicate an employee’s personal identifying information to the general public. For purposes of this section, “personal identifying information” shall include social security number, home address or telephone number, personal electronic mail address, Internet identification name or password, parent’s surname prior to marriage, or drivers’ license number.

Hat Tip: Lexology

Facebook, Criminal Records and People Finders

Tamara Thompson — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:59:23 +0000

A new feature has been introduced at the most popular social networking site, Facebook — which it’s calling Truescoop –, a name search that identifies people by their state of residence and date of birth and, for some, criminal record history. Get more tailored results by qualifying your name search with the person’s year of birth or full date of birth. Nothing at the site spells out the source of the data, but Facebook warns that this is an application merely for fun.

TrueScoop is for entertainment only. TrueScoop is not a substitute for a background check that you would pay money for.

TrueScoop should not be used to make any employment decisions. TrueScoop is not to be used for any reason covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or any state or Federal laws related to the FCRA.

TrueScoop is a criminal history check similar to that at Criminal Searches. Both aggregate criminal records index information that is available for free online from state and county government court sites. Each display their data differently so you might find one format more usable. The data varies between individual records on each site; sometimes only one site will list AKAs, but then the other site will do so for other records. Sometimes Facebook identifies the local court in which the charge was filed but not the court docket number, and Criminal Searches gives the court number but not the local jurisdiction, but it’s not consistent within or between the sites. Comprende? Mix and match, if you can! The best advise might be to head to the court Web site once you find a lead from either of these other applications. Locate courts and lots of other public records through a fee-based service, this free-trial site or at the free sites offered by BRB Publications or Online Searches.

TrueScoop also shows names that have been searched by others and the number of times. Select the name link to populate the search field and get record results. A name search may also return records of unclaimed money and sex offenders (with photos), in addition to the state locator showing date of birth.

A Facebook account is required to use TrueScoop, but this application is separate from Facebook and there’s no link between it and Facebook profiles.

Mashable writes, TrueScoop Offers Free Public Record Search on Facebook.

Do Public Records Belong To the Public?

Tamara Thompson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:35:36 +0000

The Iowa legislature is chewing over the notion that open government records may be responsible for identity theft and should be restricted. The Identity Theft Prevention Study Committee met last month and developed a collection of recommendations, including redacting certain “personal information” — that fuzzy term has yet to be defined — in public records. One of the panelists, Dan Combs of The Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access , a consortium of commercial public records aggregators, argued that redaction of public records is ineffectual and misses the supposed objective of curtailing “identity theft”, another fuzzy term. The Coalition site has position papers and summaries on public records access, such as this one on the important uses of the Social Security number by businesses and government.

What other constructive uses of the SSN identifier would you add?

Now, head down to Arizona where the Phoenix City Attorney has advised the police department to restrict disclosure of police records on the handy claim that thieves are scouring public records for personal information. The police department will start redacting victim names, birth dates of suspects AND those who are convicted and sitting in jail, and the addresses where crimes are committed. The dictum is being unevenly enforced, different types of data being excised, or not at all. Phoenix may expand this scattered policy to include code enforcement records. Which state law is this suppose to comport with?

This week in public records: Alaska Social Security number protection

Tamara Thompson — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:47:08 +0000

Alaska is purported to have instituted one of the strongest identity theft protection laws through HB 25.

Although the bill sets out restrictions on the collection, sale and distribution to third parties of Social Security numbers, the exceptions should cover the normal course of business for private investigators.

A transfer of an individual’s social security number for the sole purpose of identifying a person about whom a report or database check is ordered, received, or provided is not a sale, lease, loan, trade, or rental of a social security number under this section.

Providing your clients an individual’s social security number is permitted if the purpose is regulated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act or by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Disclosure is permissible if it’s “for a background check on the individual, identity verification, fraud prevention, medical treatment, law enforcement or other government purposes, or the individual’s employment, including employment benefits.”

Also, the police department may create a database of identity theft victims. If it does, it “shall provide a victim or the victim’s authorized representative access to a data base established under this section to establish that the individual has been a victim of identity theft. Access to the a data base established under this section is limited to criminal justice agencies, victims of identity theft, and individuals and agencies authorized by the victims.”

FTC Reaches Settlement With Investigators Involved In The HP Spy Scheme

Jimmie Mesis — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:23:04 +0000

The FTC reached an agreement on Wednesday for $600,000 in settlements and judgments against several private investigators others involved in the Hewlett-Packard Co. boardroom scandal.

The FTC settlement imposed a $67,000 penalty against Matthew DePante, his father, Joseph DePante, and their now-defunct company, Action Research Group Inc., which was based in Clearwater, Fla. All but $3,000 was suspended due to their inability to pay.

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando division, also entered default judgments against DePante’s subcontractors, Bryan Wagner, who must pay $428,085, and Cassandra Selvage and her company, Eye in the Sky Investigations Inc., who must pay $110,762.

More details on this topic can be found at the FTC website as well as other published articles. You can read the actual FTC complaints here.

What are your comments on this topic?

Jimmie Mesis, Editor-in-Chief
PI Magazine