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.

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.

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.

Spock is a fee-based search engine — with a free teaser — for finding social networking profiles. Spock crawls websites, matching the personal information you provide, then returns the links. You’ll probably get more results from snitch.name, Wink or Pipl, and more refined returns from an advanced query at the top search engines. This map gives a rough guide to the most popular social networking sites by country.

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

Do you know of any other Mexico civil or criminal index databases online?

Last year, I wrote about gathering information on domestic partnerships. Washington State has a domestic partnership registry online.

Do you know of any other online civil union or domestic partner registries?

More Sunshine Week state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

Illinois: Public’s access to local data varies

Indiana: Indiana ranks next to last in online records

Maryland: Make transparency permanent Maryland government policy

New York: Sunshine Week: N.Y. seeks cohesion for Web sites

North Carolina: Are records really public?

Ohio: Ohio sunshine law updates online highlights release of the Attorney General’s, Ohio Sunshine Laws, Open Government Resource Manual 2009

Pennsylvania: Civil records free to download in Pennsylvania county

Wisconsin: Shedding light on government activity

More state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

California: California’s middling online record performance

Colorado: Many key records available online, free in Colo.

Illinois: How Illinois fared in Sunshine Week survey

Iowa: Some Iowa counties still chasing the Web

Louisiana: SUNSHINE WEEK: Watchdog groups criticize Jindal administration’s lack of transparency

Minnesota: Survey: 65 percent of Minn. gov’t records online

Nevada: Sunshine Week: A call to keep flow of public information free

Tennessee: Tennessee not putting some public records online

Texas: It’s not the government’s information; it’s your information

Washington: Some, but not all Wash. government records online

Here’s the advance reporting.

Federal government:
FBI finds nothing for 2 out of 3 who seek records

Government secrecy concerns many in poll

Arkansas: Some State Records Not Given Time In The Sun

Colorado: Freedom of Information Superhighway

Connecticut: List of documents available online in Conn.

Illinois: New Ill. governor promises government openness

Kentucky: Survey shows some Ky. records available online

Massachusetts: Sunshine Week: Massachusetts lags behind on records

Mississippi: Mississippi last in survey of Internet records

North Carolina: NC gets high marks for posting public info online

Oklahoma: Across nation, public agencies in a time warp

Wisconsin: Survey: Growing number of Wis. records online

Fewer agencies have data at CrimeMapping. Some of these agencies also display crime incidents on a map at their law enforcement site, which may be in a different format. An older program called CrimeViewCommunity has a site with a URL that points to CrimeMapping.com. But you may find a few additional law enforcement agencies using CrimeViewCommunity at their site whose crime incidents aren’t included in other crime mapping programs. For example, the Detroit Police Department uses CrimeViewCommunity but the map is hosted only at their site. Use the inurl modifier to find agencies with crime maps. You’ll notice that there is only a 30-90 day retention of incidents.

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.