Private Investigator Public Records Internet Search Privacy Reporting - PI Buzz

In tip #1 of Finding, Skip Tracing and Locating Women I mentioned one free people finder site and the wildcard tool that can bypass the last name requirement — most helpful in locating women who are probate beneficiaries, potential witnesses in a legal matter or the birth mother of someone relinquished for adoption long ago.

There are many Internet sites for identifying current last names of women — searching by first name only — for whom the investigator may only have a birth name or former married name. Each site returns different results so you’ll want to use more than one, if at first you don’t find what you’re looking for.

At the site, classmates.com, I performed a similar search to the one I did in tip #1, except that there’s no field to restrict the results by year of birth or full birthdate. In that case, I entered just the first name and a state. The results give last names and birth names and the name of the school with the attendance years. You can use this to narrow the birth year. The tip #1 search site returned 17 matches. I supplied first name, age and state. Classmates returned 67 matches associated with first name and state. Very few of these matched the age of the subject, based on the listed graduation years. It’s a limited source but still supplements other sites.

Do you have a favorite website or database that allows searching by first name?

Anyone who finds people for a living, as private investigators do, knows the frustration of locating women. They change their names. Often many times over the course of their lives. This is a challenge to the heir finder who has a name from many years in the past that she has to update in order to locate her subject.

Use the free portion of a people finder site that allows you to search by first name and date of birth. But you also have to use a workaround on sites that require a last name to perform the search. This involves the handy wildcard. In this case, we’ll apply the asterisk.

At the site peoplefinders.com enter a first name in that field and an asterisk (*) in the last name field. Add date of birth or year of birth. This will work until the search interface is changed — which may happen just as soon as the powers that be see this tip!

That’s tip #1 in Finding, Skip Tracing and Locating Women. Do you know of other sites where a skip trace by first name can be performed?

I did have one techie admit that he learned something new at the presentation I did for the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Their Sunny Climate Seminar is held every year in Hawaii, very painful…

Almost as soon as I minted my PowerPoint, So You Think You Know Google? (see an edited version), Google released design changes to Google Maps and added a new feature, SearchWiki, to Web search. SearchWiki — a search results comment feature that can be public or private — is potentially an investigative tool to see what people are saying about incidents and people and companies in the news. But SearchWiki may die before much of a database of comments develops because the addition has been fairly negatively received. Read more about this at Internet News. In a trial search example, enter “searchwiki” in the Google search box then scroll to the bottom of the search results page. Click on “All notes for this SearchWiki” and start reading the comments by selecting the link under the URL of each search result.

There are other blogs that are featuring screenshots and discussing all the new features on Google Maps Street View, but one feature improvement stood out to me — the revamped 360 degree rotate. Now, in the Street View image just hold your mouse button on the “N” on the circular dial as you move around the circle to get smoother, more incremental views of the street scene. An addition that I’ve long wished for has been added, although it’s not as seamless as the new panorama rotate, the “look up”/”look down” function. Remember zooming to get a good shot of a street address only to have it disappear from view? Now you can zoom, then elevate or lower the view for the enjoyment of a tall building (but no simulated scaling of the building) or to get a closer glance at the part of the frame that disappeared in the older Street View version.

One last Google note for those of you who use gmail. You no longer need fear a panic attack on the discovery that your email account has been swallowed by the cybermonster. Thanks to Inter Alia for the pointer to Gmail Backup.

Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives is a wide-ranging guide to the technology, resources, policies and procedures, and trends in employment screening. A road map for Human Resource decision makers who are screening potential hires and current employees or who are evaluating outside background screening companies, Background Screening and Investigations adds depth to the extensive topics covered, without being overly technical.

The target audience is primarily the employer businesses, not the providers of background check services. Private investigators just getting into the background screening business or those smaller providers who want to brush up on recommended practices and the trends in the industry will also find this a valuable guide. Also, the findings from surveys of the screening practices and objectives of employers is essential for anyone who wants to offer a responsive screening service.

Sandwiched within the essays by over a dozen specialists in the legal, standards setting and metrics, service provider and security/risk analysis arenas are short-hand chapter highlights, and summaries from the differing perspectives of those in human resources and workplace security. There’s a lot here.

Background Screening and Investigations helps employers think through setting screening policies and practices and whether to outsource, as the vast majority do. Niche services and the expected components of a thorough background screening process have expanded with innovations in data collection. This book describes and evaluates the value of various services — those that are standard and others that are not as regularly employed — such as identity verification, drug testing, reference checks, hand-checks of court records and international screening. With the proliferation of resellers of aggregated electronic criminal records the public and employers may be lulled by the myth of a national criminal records database. There is no substitute — in either comprehensiveness or accuracy — for examining the criminal records index at the courthouse.

The legal mandates for employers and background screening agencies are sufficiently complex that you’ll want to peruse this guide for pre and post hire tips.

Review the Table of Contents and first chapter.

Sign up for The Background Buzz newsletter to receive news of current events in pre-employment.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project report, Teens and Social Media, supports the continuing importance of the Internet for due diligence, background, employment and skip tracing investigations, as well as, reputation research and even surveillance for legal and insurance matters.

Some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction – a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33% in 2004.

33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 (32%).

28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.

27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004.

In short, most teens are using the Internet and over a quarter of them have Web pages or blogs and even more post photos. Also, commentary by teens can be mined for information on their parents - who may be jurors, experts, plaintiffs, defendants, claimants or witnesses - for background, employment, insurance or locate investigations.

Previously, I wrote about the increasing reliance by employers on Internet research.

In my conference presentations, I give examples of my Internet research that uncovered photographs, identified current employment and personal and business involvements of subjects. At the Annual Meeting of the California Bar, Carole Levitt and I presented, Social Networking Sites: The Newest Investigative Tool On The Internet. Carole cited a University of Wisconsin analysis that found teens limit the personal identifiers they post online. It’s essential in constructing your search queries to know that “40 percent of the profiles included the youth’s first name, and about 9 percent included their full name.” To be effective, the researcher should combine first name with other personal identifiers commonly used at that particular social networking site.

Many online court case name lookups also have document images. Some court indexes, as in the one provided by Alameda County, California, only have search and retrieval of documents by case number.

The Sacramento County Court Case Management System (CCMS) provides access to case file documents for recently filed Civil and Probate cases.

You can view all documents on Trust and Estate cases initiated after February 5, 2007 as well as all Probate Notes for hearings after February 5, 2007. You can view all documents on Civil cases (excluding Small Claims and Unlawful Detainer cases) for cases initiated after November 13, 2007 as well as Case Management Program Tentative Rulings for hearings after November 13, 2007.

It’s not as seamless as it should be. Ideally, you could conduct a name search in the Sacramento Court Name Index System to retrieve a case number and links to the documents. But the current setup requires searching in two steps, if you are searching by name and then want to get the case documents.

View the tutorial by selecting the orange and blue figures in the lower right corner of the image. Then you’ll be directed to the Slideshare site. Look at the full screen slideshow by selecting “Full” in the lower right corner of the image.

| View | Upload your own

What are the parameters at your local court Web site for viewing document images online?

The profile you proudly blast across the Internet today may be one that makes you cringe tomorrow. Perhaps this is more the case as the general use of the Internet grows out of adolescence. You need not quake because for every Web faux pas there is a fee-based solution. DefendMyName claims to “replace negative Internet postings with positive information about you or your business” and to elevate your propaganda above the negative portrayals found through the search engines. Essentially, this service finds relevant social networking sites and adds your profile, and posts your personal image press release on relevant business and industry forums.

ReputationDefender speaks to the fear of the job seeker or parent that there may be some virtual image that needs cleansing. After they find these declarations (much of that, no doubt, created by the subject), reputationdefender sets about contacting “third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content.” The User Agreement addresses any inclination you may have to engage this service targeting someone other than yourself. Search engine optimization is a more technical phrase for much of what these companies do. Here’s another one.

I guess I can classify my work as reputation research, which I do on behalf of others, not for the purpose of scrubbing an online image but to build a biography of admissions and activities. Researchers and investigators have always done this, but the popularity of the Internet has opened an area of specialized research. Social networking sites, which have been mined by companies for background on potential hires, have also connected people who want to find each other.

Authenticating found material may be difficult due to the anonymous uses of the Internet. Inevitably, people will use this shield to present favorable views of themselves while disguised in a persona. Be warned: Those who “anonymously” say nasty things about others may be uncovered and sued. The ability to alter digital content could have important implications for the dissemination and identification of official government documents and information.

Getting concrete about the work of uncovering reputation for professional uses, the authors of, Finding and Researching Experts and Their Testimony, offer a detailed guide to finding background and verifying credentials of various types of experts. Some of the sources discussed are: use of search engines, expert directories, the expert’s Web site, licensing boards, publications, news, discussion board posts, court dockets and other public records.

An older set of articles on researching people on the Internet is a good introduction.

Various sources for finding background on people are listed at People Finder Guide.

There are actually enough bloggers consistently writing on FOIA, open government and access to public records that we now have our own Carnival - a rotating group of writers who do regular round ups of the“Best posts from the FOIA-sphere.”

This week, Leslie Graves of State Sunshine and Open Records is our host. I encourage you to take a glance and discover some new blogs.

While I’m in the referral vein let me introduce you to an invaluable Internet research reference manual, The Lawyer’s Guide To Fact Finding On the Internet. Don’t be put off by the word lawyer. This guide is for hands-on researchers who could benefit from an Internet taming charm. And who couldn’t?

The authors are Internet research trainers and this book reflects their expert training instincts in the way the material is organized and presented. This collection of detailed reviews of Web sites - sorted by subject (not a dread alphabetical list) - is a reference manual any level of information researcher can use to find, well, facts! Chapter topics include search strategies, search engines, public records, government sources, finding and backgrounding people and company research. These are just a few areas covered in this 800 page Internet investigator’s bible. Each listing has the Web site location, whether or not a fee is associated with any part of the site, the content you’ll find here, the authors’ rating and tips on how to use the site. View the Table of Contents, the Index and a sample entry to get a sense of just how fabulous a resource the authors have assembled.

The news that Google is assisting some states with indexing their online public records content has been repeated in the mainstream press, without shedding much light on the what or how. The Arizona Government Technology Agency does a better job, detailing the agency records that are included and the nature of the indexing.

To improve access to State information, Arizona technology managers have been working with Google to implement the Sitemap Protocol for online State databases. This protocol enables a website owner to communicate the contents of a web accessible database to commercial search engines so that information in the database can be indexed and searched by commercial search engines. Pilot Sitemaps have been implemented at the Arizona Governor’s Office, the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, AHCCCS, and the Departments of Administration, Health Services, Public Safety, and Real Estate.

Most public records indexes require the searcher to go to the government site and use that site’s search mechanism to find individual personal information records. But many of these will now be accessible through a general search engine, bringing part of the deep Web to the surface Web.

Here are three different query formulations that you can perform in Google of the Arizona Department of Real Estate licensee records, the first two of which return the same result - pointing to the Arizona government record. The third lists the same result in the 3rd Google entry.

The order of the first and last name has to correspond to that in the public record if you put the terms within quotations.

“STRADLING, REBECCA” arizona real estate license

“STRADLING, REBECCA” site:azre.gov

rebecca STRADLING “real estate”

The State of Arizona also has a Google custom search engine, where you can perform the same search, but only searching Arizona “State Agencies, Boards and Commissions, Legislative Government, Counties, Cities and Towns, and Tribes.” In this case, the same name search, without quotes, returns a manageable 10 records. If needed, you can then refine the results to the appearance of the terms in only legislative, state, county or city Web sites.

Charities and non profit organizations are monitored by state agencies and the Internal Revenue Service, and tracked by many private advocacy groups. Even if you’re not particularly interested in a specific charitable organization you might want to know the people and other entities with which they’re associated. Business journalism reporter Bill Smith developed a guide to analyzing the IRS 990 forms that nonprofits are required to submit. He also links to the advocacy groups, Charity Navigator, BBB Wise Giving Alliance and Guide Star where you can get the document images of the IRS 990 forms filed by the charities. Ministry Watch and The Foundation Center have background on nonprofits that aren’t required to file IRS form 990.

Bookmark this IRS site that lists links to each states’ charity regulator, either the Attorney General or Secretary of State, where you’ll be able to lookup details on the charitable organization.

Search for a tax deductible organization by partial name in all 50 states at once.

The government pursuit of private investigators, lawyers and corporate officers caught in the HP and Pellicano imbroglios have raised awareness of some off-color investigative practices. Many of these - pretexting for customer telephone records and obtaining personal financial documents without authorization - are illegal under federal and some state laws. Despite the close working relationship of attorneys and investigators, “42 percent of organizations responded that they currently do not have written guidelines against the use of of these methods”, according to a Deloitte Financial Advisory Services Online Poll, Many Companies Lack Formal Guidelines Against Pretexting In Internal Investigations.

Fraud and human resource investigations (which are often conducted in-house, not by licensed private investigators) are the primary areas where the illegal activities arise. Deloitte lists recommendations for companies hiring investigators, among which are, “be wary of investigators who say they can get bank account information or information only available to law enforcement.”

Many law firms are now requiring their private investigators sign contracts where there were none before and adding new language to agreements specifying, “investigator will comply with all federal, state and local laws concerning fraud, “pretexting”, privacy, wiretapping and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.” Before long law firms will issue their PI a checklist of acceptable and unauthorized practices!

The article, How Pretexting Helped Serve Divorce Papers on a Runaway Mother, recounts the all too common experience of a process server attempting to get legal papers to a party to a lawsuit, demonstrating why an outright ban on pretexting is bad policy.

Despite the recent media hype surrounding the investigative practice of ‘pretexting’, the fact is that it is a valid and legal technique to locate, catch, and serve legal process onmany people who break the law in avoiding their legal responsibilities.

Other, more generally useful articles, such as, What To Do If You Get Pulled Over By A Cop, can be found in the “Legal” section of Associated Content.

MelissaData, the marketing list service, has free information lookup databases, some drawn from government records, of boundary maps, city and county names and zip codes, public school locators and statistical data. Like most of these free sources, there is a fee component, often overpriced for the value of the information. Among them are people locators - “People Finder” and “Search Expert”, the later of which purports that “Search Expert are people trained in information databases and investigations” - which appear to connect to the Intellius/Confi-chek database.

It’s informative to lookup the domain that the “People Finder” is associated with. I entered “Tamara Thompson” and California in the People Finder Lookup search box, which is at the MelissaData site. The search brings up a list of names, ages, towns and possible associates - a fee is exacted to find out more - at a domain registered to Confi-chek, which looks like the Intellius search result product. This is funny because Confi-chek was sued by Intelius last year for trademark infringement.

A report issued by CareerBuilder concludes that 1 in 4 hiring managers have used the Internet to check the background of prospective employees and what they find is a lot of dirt.

Of those hiring managers who used Internet search engines to research job candidates, 51 percent did not hire the person based on what they found. Of those who used social networking sites to research candidates, the majority (63 percent) did not hire the person based on what they found.

Over 60 percent of the managers who search the candidates on social networking sites didn’t hire them! Litigation attorneys take note, and private investigators who delve into traditional background sources for their clients should add Internet search to their list of services.

I was invited to speak at the Southeast Investigators Conference, hosted by GAPPI this past weekend. In my presentation on Internet search I gave examples of the types of information I’ve uncovered on social networking sites, some of it up-to-the-present messages to “friends” about work schedules and activities. This is an arena to mine for personal and work histories and photographs.

Police detectives have discovered that they can get evidence of gang affiliation searching the pages at MySpace, a social networking site that enables people to link Web pages, forming communities of friends.

Photos are posted by people in gang clothing demonstrating gang signs. They also link to friends who are doing the same thing. Everybody wants to be a star.

Here’s the search query I ran using the term “Victimville”, which Victorville, California Detective Jeremy Martinez said is a gang slang for that town, to extract Web pages that include the term “Victimville”. There are about 350 links so probably other locals besides gang members use this appellation. But a search by a gang name returned a manageable three sites. Visit the links on these sites to connect to the Web pages of friends of Victimville (definitely not a library association) residents.

Public libraries are a free source of periodicals and proprietary databases, many of which can be searched remotely. In Questions? - Answers from the Internet I included links to a list of public library Web sites and a real-time research librarian service. There are also online reference sites for specific regions. If you have a Connecticut library card you can make use of the 24/7 infoAnyTime, an online chat tool that connects you to a reference librarian. An added benefit of infoAnyTime is real-time Web co-browsing, enabling a researcher to guide you through your Internet search.

See a list of many of the virtual reference services available in the United States and internationally.

Legal journals and genealogical databases are a few of the many computerized resources offered by public libraries.

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.

Facebook, MySpace, Linked In and even Yahoo! Groups are part of the booming social networking sites on the Internet that are a hot source of untapped background material. You probably check public records and personal information databases for background screening on a pre employment matter. Surveillance is a standard investigative tool on domestic and insurance claim cases. You may even do a cursory Google search on a company or business executive name. But here are two questions that should be answered in the affirmative –if you want to impress your client and give her more of the available information on your subject– but will likely respond with a unanimous “no”. Do you look behind the major search engines –to the invisible Internet– to gather background on your target? And, are you promoting Internet research, as a specific category of services, to your clients? Your clients are primed for you to offer this service to them because they already know it’s a rich trove of personal information!

Read the rest of this entry »

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

A preliminary study in 2003 found that drivers talking on cell phones were more impaired than those with a blood alcohol content of .08 percent. The peer reviewed article, recently completed, affirms the earlier conclusions.

We used a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the performance of cell-phone drivers with drivers who were legally intoxicated from ethanol. When drivers were conversing on either a hand-held or hands-free cell-phone, their reactions were sluggish and they attempted to compensate by driving slower and increasing the following distance from the vehicle immediately in front of them. By contrast, when drivers were legally intoxicated they exhibited a more aggressive driving style, following closer to the vehicle immediately in front of them and applying more force while braking. When controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, cell-phone drivers exhibited greater impairment than intoxicated drivers.

The University of Utah authors summarized the ongoing problem in a companion piece, Why Do Cell Phone Conversations Interfere With Driving?, stating that “as more cognitively engaging technology makes its way into the vehicle, the potential for even more severe driver distraction will increase.”

Just add this to the list of driver distractions that you ask about in your accident investigations.

If you want to research specific and reliable infomation on the Web you’ll quickly be presented with numerous annoying problems. I ask attendees at my seminars to name their most vexing recurrent difficulties when staring at results from a search engine query. They say just what you’re thinking: There are too many links to sift through to pinpoint the ones that are useful. The Internet is chaotic, but there is an overlay of order, in the form of subject directories, guides and tutorials, much of it provided by University libraries.

The Internet tutorial from the University of California at Berkeley charts the effective ways to structure an Internet search engine query. This Web site also lists the advantages and characteristics of 6 of the major subject directories.

Research guides on assessing the reliability of Web sites are offered by Virtual Chase, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University.

Have you fretted over the appropriate style for identifying Web sources? The Internet Public Library gives examples of the recommended standard for citing Web derived source information.

Writing styles vary, but if you know The Elements of Style, you’re better equipped to make some of your own.

Ten is an arbitrary number, far too few for any list of most useful, everyday research Web sites. It’s a starting point and, if you like this idea, send me requests for other more specialized topics. Favorite surveillance tool site? Most preferred business research sources? Name your area.

While lounging on your desert island waiting to be rescued, or not, you’ll be wirelessly surfing the Internet. Many of you sent me your sites of necessity, from which I’ve compiled this short collection of everyday information sites that have free or low fee access.

Finding services and places featured prominently in your suggestions. Use the USPS database, searchable by city and state, to pull up a list of physical locations of post offices and their fax numbers. Fax your Request for Change of Address or Boxholder Information Needed for Service of Legal Process form to obtain or update the street address of a mailbox holder for Service of Process.

When you need to venture out of the office you’ll want to know all things atmospheric: severe weather, fire danger, air and water temperature, and snow predictions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Web site has an extensive set of tools for weather and climate historical research.

Instead of stumbling around, find the county and state associated with a place name or zipcode. Identify all the states in which there is a particular county name.

After all these necessities are in order, you may want to connect to a government agency or to government generated information through the premier government portal FirstGov. A list of federal and state courts and their addresses and Web site links are organized at the National Center for State Courts. Reach the home page of a state, county or local government Web site.

Whether you choose to go to a government agency to conduct your public records research or you carry it out online may depend on what’s available. Anyway, while you’re on the desert island you’ll want to use the Internet. First you need to determine if an agency - court, Recorder of Deeds Assessor, Building Department, Vital Records, to name a few, - have their records online. Search Systems has the largest, most current directory of public records links on the Internet. This site directly connects you to the search page; you don’t have to hunt from the agency home page to find the link to the public records. Until very recently this site has been entirely free but now has a $50/year access fee.

Search across multiple free reverse telephone and address sites at Argali. The free service is splashed with ads but the low-cost version is only $30/year.

The group edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia, helps you sharpen the concepts you’re trying to convey in your reports and, while you’re on this course of self-improvement, find spelling, synonym, antonym and hyponym help at this encyclodictionalmanacapedia.

There were so many great sites you suggested that I started compiling them at a Wiki, 60 Sites In 60 Minutes for Private Investigators.

Thanks to all the contributors: Jean Kyles, Tim Koster, Jim Magdelano, Bob Taylor, Roy Niles and Wallace Nolen.

The Library of Congress Ask A Librarian is a free service that connects you by phone or the Internet to a reference librarian who will answer your general or topic specific questions. One of their new categories is the law.

AskNow links you to reference librarians in real time and is available 24/7 through many local public libraries.

Highlight a word in a document to get instant spelling, antonyms, synonyms, definitions and suggested usage from Answers.com.

This is more of an Internet research tip than a pointer to a specific site. Many of the County Assessor website’s real property searches don’t return property owner names or enable a search by property owner. The Recorder sites are searchable by owner but don’t associate an address. Some cities have launched their own property databases, with GIS mapping, returning property owner details, in counties where the Assessor site doesn’t.

The City of Emeryville in California has a Mapped Real Estate Parcel Database that is searchable by owner name, and provides an aerial view of the property. You wouldn’t find this resource at the logical landing pad, the County Assessor site. After this post, it might even appear in Searchsystems!

I’ve been exploring the newly configured search portal, Firstgov.gov, a government operated site that searches state and federal websites. Your keyword searches can be restricted to a specific url or a single state.

I was looking for different information databases and discovered several at the Environmental Protection Agency site. One is the Superfund Information Systems. The Facility Registry System “identifies facilities, sites or places subject to environmental regulations or of environmental interest”, plots the selected sites and buildings on an aerial map and gives details on the company owners.

A taming feature of the Firstgov search engine is in the organization of the results, which are segmented into folders that can be arranged by topic, agency or source. Like all web search engines you don’t know what sources you might be missing, but this is a great vehicle to get you on your way finding government resources.