The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary is scheduled to hear and possibly revise a bill to add criminal penalties to releases of personal identifying information. Senate Bill 1789, Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2005 requires notification to...
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Your car may be spying on you, recording evidence that could be used to prosecute a criminal charge. That’s the “black box” data recorder, installed in newer vehicles. Apparently some criminal convictions are founded on the contents captured here. Auto...
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A journalist’s chatty speed review of the largest private investigator conference is available at the blog of Emmanuelle Richards. The World Investigators Conference entertained 1500 investigators in the bowels of a smoke-free Las Vegas conference center. If you were there,...
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Could the California law just signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger which aims to provide civil relief to celebrities injured by paparazzi negatively impact surveillance investigators? The California Newspaper Publishers Association describes and quotes the bill: The bill would create a new...
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Connecticut legislators and the Governor have recently approved a change to the public records law that will ban release of police reports involving juveniles. The new law is codified as Public Act 05-232. Read the article (free reg., go to...
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Increasingly cities are providing free wireless internet connections, and now San Francisco is reviewing bids from companies to install free wifi throughout the City. Philadelphia has just announced that a major ISP is building a citywide wifi network for free....
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TRACNotes, a publication of the consumer watchdog Telecommunications Research and Action Center, gives a favorable review to a new company that provides free directory assistance and long distance calling when connecting through their directory assistance. Businesses can also pay a...
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The Hayward Police Department (California) is establishing a website for residents to file and obtain low priority reports in which a suspect is not known. The site is run by a private company which must first match its software program...
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Criminal records in state repositories are collated based on reports from the individual counties within that state. Many counties do not collect or report complete records, as I previously noted here and here. The BRB Public Record Update, a free...
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The Santa Barbara County Civil index is searchable by case names or number and can be limited by date range. Dockets are not available. The government operated site describes the index characteristics: The Online Public Index includes cases from 1975...
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