Archive for the ‘California’ Category

It’s frustrating. Have you noticed how varied the California online court index databases are? There are a half dozen different search interfaces and none of the search query functions are the same. And because of this you may have missed cases.

Let’s talk technique. If a search field is “first name” you would generally enter the person’s first name. But what if you only know part of it?

Most counties in California that have an online case index only have it for civil cases. Some that have civil and criminal records split them into separate databases which, of course, function differently. San Joaquin County court is a good example. The civil case inquiry “participant name” selection requires a full last name but no first name. It also works with a partial first name. The “business” selection supports partial entity name search. “Din” returns “Dine”, “Dino”, “Dinesh”, etc. But, you ask, what if the “din” appears somewhere in the string but not at the beginning? Use the query form: %din. This returns “Midland Funding”, “Dolan Building Materials”, etc.

The San Joaquin County Family Law, Criminal and Traffic Case Inquiries screen looks and functions entirely differently. There is one field for the name. Enter “din” and get “Reading” and “Balandin”, among other variations. It also returns results where “din” is in the first name. That’s nice.

Here’s a synopsis of how you can structure your partial name queries at other county court sites.

Siskiyou: You can do a partial name search even though the site tells you, “Do not use punctuation or special characters when searching.” A partial last name search, where “din” appears somewhere in the string: %din. A partial last name and first name search can be done alone or together. The percent symbol isn’t necessary.

Solano: Solano County uses the CourtConnect program. Select “Check for Partial Last Name” to search that string from the beginning of the name. A partial first name can be included. Narrow your search with the “Case Type” feature.

Stanislaus: A partial last name search, where “din” appears somewhere in the string: %din. A partial last name search can include a full or partial first name. A percent sign can be added to a first name string and combined with a last name string. First name “%bin with last name “%air” returns the records for “Robin Adair”. If your result is an active traffic case, select the link “Click Here to pay this citation online” to verify the date of birth.

Shasta: You can perform a partial name search but then you have to guess the year of filing. Ugh.

Contra Costa: The “Open Access” system can be searched by partial last name. Last name “Jon%” returns any string beginning with those letters and “%Jon” will return that string within the last name. Add a first name or initial to limit the results.

Find direct links to each court index at SearchSystems.net.

A few counties have images of case filings online. But even those counties don’t have all images for any one case or for all cases on their website. Most of those that do, link to the pdf of the case document right from the docket. Sacramento County has made that process more complicated.

Then there are the counties that charge for everything from a name lookup to document retrieval. Can I hear some outrage?

The proposed California Senate Bill 501, “Local government: compensation disclosure”, isn’t an earth-shattering transparency measure. Particularly in light of the Bell city government pay debacle.

The measure would require officers and designated employees to annually file a compensation disclosure form listing their salary and non monetary benefits. I thought the payroll department knew these figures. It seems odd that the employee is providing this. And anyway, what’s a “designated employee”?

“Designated employee” means a designated employee of a county, city, city and county, school district, special district, or joint
powers agency formed pursuant to the Joint Exercise of Powers Act
(Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 6500) of Division 7 of Title 1)
who is required to file a statement of economic interests pursuant to
Chapter 7 (commencing with Section 87100) of Title 9.

Get it? Not every employee must file the disclosure form, just the same people who are required to file a Form 700, Statement of Economic Interests. According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission that is “certain state and local elected officials, judges, high level state employees, and certain employees for the assembly and senate.”

Since the names, job classifications, salary, compensation and retirement benefits of every local and state government employee in California are a public record why aren’t they all online? In fact, this almost never happens. Hermosa Beach may be the only California municipality to post names and salaries of all employees. Trawl through these links for starters.

Just as we have seen a scramble by California local governments to claim the moral high ground by posting salary schedules (post Bell, no workers’ names) on their websites, the same sites may come down if they balk at the bill’s mandate:

If the county, city, city and county, school district, special district, or joint powers agency maintains an Internet Web site, it shall post the information contained on the filed compensation disclosure form on that Internet Web site.

Otherwise, it’s back to fighting the local agencies, and paying the designated fees!

A common complaint about search query results from search engines is that too many are unwieldy, returning far more than one can troll though. But that’s also the advantage of search engines — they grab a lot of content. Google makes it easy to build custom search engines of just the websites that you want to search. I’ve created many of these, some of which are in the “Resources” category on PIbuzz.

I’m in California and much of my due diligence work is based here so I have a particular interest in California content. And I want to track California news and issues on public records, open government and law. The newest addition to my search engines is California News, which just searches California newspapers. Select the link, formulate your queries and search content in all California newspapers. Let me know if I’ve missed any.

California legislation that the California Association of Licensed Investigators (CALI) is tracking:

Protection of Consumers through Continuing Education
SB 202 [Harman]

Prohibitions against Use of Credit Report Information
AB 943 [Mendoza]

Meal and Rest Periods & Licensed Private Investigators
SB 287 [Calderon] and SB 380 [Dutton]

Flexible Work Schedules
AB 141 [Tran] and SB 187 [Benoit]

Expansion of Paid Sick Days
AB 1000 [Ma]

Fair Concealed Weapon Application Process
AB 357 [Knight]

Timely Testing of DNA Specimens
SB 439 [Wyland]

Insured’s Access to Accident Reports
AB 470 [Niello]- Support

Peace Officer Identification
SB 169 [Benoit]

Restrictions on Technology
AB 255 [Anderson]

BSIS Posting of Accusations and Disciplinary Actions
SB 599 [Negrete McCleod]

Federal legislation that the National Council of Investigation & Security Services (NCISS) is tracking:

HR-2221 The “Data Accountability and Trust Act” by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL). A hearing was held earlier this spring. Rep. Rush has pledged to work with another subcommittee chairman on this and other issues relating to the Internet, leading to a vote this summer.

S-139 The “Data Breach Notification Act” by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). The bill is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) may introduced his own version of data breach legislation. He pledged earlier this year to make privacy legislation a priority.

HR-122 “Protecting the Privacy of Social Security Numbers Act of 2009″ by Rod Frelinghuysen (R-NJ). We met with the Congressman’s staff to urge that an exemption be provided to permit investigators access to critical information.

S-141 “Protecting the Privacy of Social Security Numbers Act” by Senator Feinstein. Although the bill includes a helpful exception for “business to business” transactions, NCISS is urging a more specific exemption.

HR-1529 “Second Chance for Ex-Offenders Act” by Rep Charles Rangel (D-NY). The bill would provide for expungement of federal criminal records.

S-30 “Truth in Caller ID Act” The bill prohibits “spoofing” with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value”.

HR-1409/S560, the “Employee Free Choice Act” This major labor reform would deny employers the right to obtain a secret ballot vote for organizing efforts and would impose binding arbitration in when no first agreement can be reached. It is labor’s top priority and the fight is led by the SEIU which has attempted to organize guard companies.

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.

Next week the U. S. District Court of California will issue the sentence for Lori Drew, the MySpace “cyberbully” who was convicted of violating the MySpace terms of service when she created a false profile. [See my article, Think Twice Before Going Undercover.] In that piece I talk about some of the considerations for the investigator who is tempted to fabricate an identity on a social networking site in order to gain access to a user’s otherwise private profile.

Here’s a legal issue to mull over. Perhaps this applies in other states, but in California, in criminal cases, the criminal defense investigator or prosecution investigator can’t interview a potential witness without first “clearly identifying himself or herself.” This is found in California Penal Code 1054.8:

1054.8. (a) No prosecuting attorney, attorney for the defendant, or investigator for either the prosecution or the defendant shall interview, question, or speak to a victim or witness whose name has been disclosed by the opposing party pursuant to Section 1054.1 or 1054.3 without first clearly identifying himself or herself, identifying the full name of the agency by whom he or she is employed, and identifying whether he or she represents, or has been retained by, the prosecution or the defendant. If the interview takes place in person, the party shall also show the victim or witness a business card, official badge, or other form of official identification before commencing the interview or questioning.
(b) Upon a showing that a person has failed to comply with this section, a court may issue any order authorized by Section 1054.5.

A violation could lead to the exclusion of the evidence obtained from that interview. Isn’t the investigator attempting to “interview, question, or speak” to a witness when the investigator accesses the witness’s non-public social network profile? The private profile requires the participants be accepted as “friends” and is a mouthpiece for the account holder to speak to her selected audience. The investigator who disguises his identity to pry open that witness’s cyber door could risk the exclusion of any evidence gathered through that pretext, as well as picking up a misdemeanor.