Computer Forensic professionals are quickly finding out that several states are now requiring them to be licensed as private investigators.

A recent article in Baseline Magazine details how legislators in South Carolina have introduced pending legislation where “digital forensic evidence gathered for use in a court in this state must be collected by a person with a PI license or through a PI licensed agency.”

The Texas Private Security Board recently made a ruling regarding the licensing regulations which effect computer security consultants and computer forensic examiners. They felt that it is important that these computer related practitioners, as well as the entities hiring their services, are familiar with the licensing regulations, as violations carry steep financial and legal penalties.

There is no doubt that these regulations will cause computer forensic experts to create strategic business alliances with private investigators to insure that evidence they collect is not thrown out of court over licensing issues.

What do you think about this? Should computer forensic experts be required to have a PI license? Do private investigators have the necessary training and expertise to conduct computer forensic examinations?

Search the online records of disciplinary actions from 2000 to 2007 for funeral homes and funeral practitioners at the Maine Board of Funeral Service. Use this advanced search query at the Google search engine. In this example, I’ve searched the name “Fernald”. Note the Web address in the search bar.

Use the same Google search format to identify Pennsylvania professional license disciplinary actions, including for funeral directors and funeral homes, from 1999 to 2007.

The Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board has images of Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action and Consent Order for cases filed from 2005 to 2007.

The Texas Funeral Service Commission has a one page list of disciplinary actions taken against licensees since September 2006. The record has a name, violation, action taken and date.

This document has hyperlinks to all the state funeral regulatory boards.

The California Supreme Court seems to be leaning toward the interpretation of state law granting the public access to the names and salaries of government employees, including police officers. A ruling is expected within 3 months. A favorable ruling for the newspapers that filed the lawsuits could help private investigators in police misconduct cases track the employment of officers across departments.

The Computer Services Bureau of the California Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) Commission maintains a database of peace officer records to track employment training.

California criminal defense attorneys and investigators, and crime reporters will want to consult the 2007 Legal Update, a 150 page guide to legislation, case law and Attorney General Opinions enacted in the past year related to law enforcement.

Idaho has received a grant to expand its victim notification service (VINE) beyond the state prison system to its county jails. The complete network should be operational by next year.

Photos for inmates at the Utah County, Utah jail are back online after being removed because someone downloaded a bunch of photos and posted them to another site. To their credit, the County Attorney and Sheriff emerged from their huddle with a wise decision: fix the technological problem and get the public records back online.

Jennifer LaFleur discusses some of the troubling legislation that passed and failed in Texas recently, including the closure of the concealed gun registrations database to public inspection.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the courts, not government entities determine which emails generated by agencies are public records. Calaveras County, California, seems to be taking a serious look at its electronic records storage policy. Check out the Federal Judicial Center “Links” page for electronic discovery resources.

Illinois has unveiled its Illinois Child Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth Registry.

Search by name, city, zip code, county or offender status. Perhaps the kinks aren’t worked out, but I couldn’t get search results by any criteria. You can also map offenders, but only if you know the street address and zip code. Here’s what the database covers.

The CMVOY registry contains individuals convicted of specific crimes in which the victim was a minor, but the crime was not sexually motivated. The crimes – as defined by HB 4193, signed by Governor Blagojevich on June 27, 2006 – include kidnapping, aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, aggravated unlawful restraint, and any attempt to commit any of these offenses when the victim is under 18 years of age and when the defendant is not a parent of the victim. Other offenses include forcible detention, child abduction or murder when the victim was a person under 18 years of age and the defendant was at least 17 years of age.

A Santa Clara County, California Superior Court judged has ordered the county to make its GIS property parcel mapping database available to the public at minimal cost. The California First Amendment Coalition took the county to court, upending the government’s myriad excuses for keeping the map data out of public reach. Reported by AP

A new Texas Administrative Rule institutes a prohibition in the recording of personal information by notary publics.

There’s been much debate in legislatures and government administration about which public records should be sealed. The Texas legislature is considering whether to withhold search warrant affidavits for 60 days from public view. The Nevada Legislature failed to set guidelines or restrict judges from sealing court records and now the state Supreme Court may establish its own requirements.

Iowa State regulatory boards that license professionals such as doctors, nurses, dentists and psychologists will be required to release the record of formal charges against medical professionals that stem from patient complaints.

Philadelphia will be the first region in Pennsylvania to implement an automated inmate release telephone notification. The service, which just covers local jails, will be available to anyone, not just crime victims, when it goes into operation in June 2007. The Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification (SAVIN) alert program will add the other counties over the next 18 months, and may later add state inmates.

The Houston Independent School District is the most recent Texas school district to post its payments to vendors online. Expenses can be identified by vendor but not by type of expenditure. Other districts have some payment information online as well.

A law under consideration in the Nevada legislature would prevent sealing of court cases involving high-profile litigants, which the judges had been doing, according to a survey by the Nevada Appeal.

The Texas Secretary of State Athlete Agent search has been added to the other business activity registration database searches at the Texas SOS Web site. The other types of entities that can be searched by name or business name are: Debt Collector Bonds, Health Spas, Public Safety Solicitations, Telephone Solicitors, Veterans Solicitations and Notary Public.

Search by partial first or last name, business name, address or telephone number.

A Wisconsin federal jury concluded that a police officer unlawfully disclosed a woman’s address to her ex husband, a violation of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act. An exception is made for the service of legal papers, which was a ruse used by the ex husband, who was subject to a restraining order, which the police officer neglected to see when he checked a court index. The case has had a chilling effect on other police departments, one of which is no longer allowing the public to view traffic violation citations.

The Texas House passed HB 2061, Relating to the acquisition or disclosure of the social security number of a living person by a governmental body, including by a district or county clerk, which allows county clerks to release documents that have social security numbers on them.

The Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on this Bill is taking place Monday, March 12. County clerks and real estate title company representatives are speaking in support of the Bill and the recording of only the last 4 digits of the social security number on all documents, which are usually only on federal tax liens and child support tax liens. One clerk has stated that the new federal tax liens only contain the last 4 numbers. Several clerks have pointed out that they don’t have the resources to redact SSNs or to digitize records.

The urgent legislation was necessary because of the disruption to government activity brought about by the recent opinion by the Texas Attorney General. The bill also allows clerks to redact social security numbers, when requested. One clerk said “she plans on requiring a notary public’s seal on all redaction requests submitted to her office.” Will the redaction requests be released as a public record, with the social security number redacted, of course?

Also reported at: Bizjournals, TVC Alert

The Idaho State Death Index has been updated to include an additional 3 years. Coverage now runs from 1911-1956.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion that county clerks are required to remove social security numbers from documents before releasing them to the public. The outcry from county clerks, subsequently from legislators, has forced him to put a 60 day hold on enforcement while the legislators review the consequences of this sweeping directive.

Administrative rules adopted by the Arkansas Supreme court affirm public access to court records while shielding Social Security numbers. The Arkansas courts were also directed to make dockets, judgments, orders, or decrees accessible to the public online. Reported by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

The Plumas County California GIS Parcel Viewer application is online. Construct a topographical map of terrain features, locate real property by APN or street address and label and measure distances between features.

Minnesota state Sen. Julianne Ortman, has sponsored legislation that “would explicitly allow under statute the sealing of most conviction, arrest and other criminal justice documents held by the courts and state and local government agencies” according to the Star Tribune. Some serious felonies would be excluded. SF 294 would require employers tell prospective employees that expunged records do not have to be identified.

The Texas Department of State Health Services has downloadable files of marriage license application and divorce indexes, organized by year. These are records that are available through other sources, usually for a fee, but if you want to work directly with the data yourself, this is the source. The marriage index covers 1966 through 2005; divorces include records filed from 1968 through 2005 . The marriage files have 140,000 to 166,000 records; each divorce file has between 50,000 to 87,000 records. The files are compressed and require a zip extractor but can also be purchased on CD, which may be a better option if you don’t want to store them on your hard drive.

A federal bill to establish a nationwide drug dealers registry has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. HR 304, quaintly entitled, Clean Town Act of 2007, if enacted, would set forth “guidelines and incentives for States to establish criminal drug dealer registries and to require the Attorney General to establish a national criminal drug dealer registry and notification program…” From the point of view of a private investigator this would be another research tool, but for the criminally charged it’s another nudge toward a public national criminal offender database.

Other introduced federal legislation would expand on the recently enacted Telephone Records and Privacy Act of 2006. S.92, Protecting Consumer Phone Records Act would make it unlawful to “acquire or use the customer proprietary network information of another person without that person’s affirmative written consent…”

Continuing on the consumer privacy theme Senator Feinstein has submitted two bills related to the release of personal information. S. 238, concerns the misuse of Social Security numbers; S. 239 would “require Federal agencies, and persons engaged in interstate commerce, in possession of data containing sensitive personally identifiable information, to disclose any breach of such information.” Text is not yet available for either measure.

The Texas legislature is entertaining a number of bills that could impact private investigators. SB 123 would block release of certain personal information on minors; SB 48 would redact social security numbers from county public records; HB 73 prohibits acquisition of telephone records without the subscriber’s permission; HB 87 is similar to a bill private investigators and the motion picture industry defeated in California that would have prevented anyone from acquiring personal information in a business record.

Indiana House Bill 1046 will prohibit “a person from transmitting false or misleading caller ID information through a caller ID service.”