Custom Search Engines for Journalists, Private Investigators and Attorneys

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator 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. Read more

Confronting the Fact of Juror Research Trial attorneys should assume that, despite judges' instructions, jurors will engage in illicit 'e-discovery'

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

"A jury," Mark Twain observed, "is comprised of twelve persons of average ignorance chosen to decide who hired the better lawyer." Yes. True. We want our juries to start out ignorant of the facts, so that they will decide the case on the facts actually in evidence, not on facts that they learn from independent research, because "extra-record influences pose a substantial threat to the fairness of the ... proceeding because the extraneous information completely evades the safeguards of the judicial process." U.S. v. Resko, 3 F.3d 684, 690 (3d Cir. 1993). But how do we ensure that? Our columns on this page during the past 10-plus years have focused on discovery -- the discovery we take as lawyers. But at a recent continuing legal education program created by our friend Phil Kessler for the American College of Trial Lawyers, we were hit smack up the side of our face with a troubling thought that had not occurred to us: The lawyers aren't the only ones doing discovery. Jurors have the tools -- and they are using them -- to discover all sorts of things about us, about our cases, about our witnesses. The information age makes finding those 12 ignorant persons and keeping them ignorant -- a daunting and maybe impossible task.

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Plaxo People Finder

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Social networking sites continue to refine their people finder tools — and some unintended ones are being exploited by savvy investigators. Linkedin, MySpace, Facebook all have internal search engines to find their member webpages. Linkedin and MySpace have multiple search engines, returning different results. (I demonstrate this in my presentation, Social Networking Sites: Investigating People On the Internet). Conducting the same search from a major search engine will block some sites set by the user to “private” but will return links to private profiles on public sites. The Internet has not been tamed. Read more

2009 Interim Report by Florida Medical Examiners Commission on Drugs Identified in Deceased Persons Report

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Today, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) released the Florida Medical Examiners Commission Report on Drugs Identified in Deceased Persons. The report contains information compiled from autopsies performed by medical examiners across the state from January through June 2009. During that period there were approximately 88,500 deaths in Florida. Of those, 4,199 individuals were found to have died with one or more of the drugs specified in this report in their bodies. The report indicates the four most frequently occurring drugs found in decedents were Ethyl Alcohol (1,963), all Benzodiazepines (1,651), Oxycodone (890) and Cocaine (724). The drugs that caused the most deaths were Oxycodone, all Benzodiazepines (with Alprazolam accounting for the majority of the deaths), Methadone, Ethyl Alcohol, Cocaine, and Morphine.

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7 News Trackers - Search Companies and Topics By Keyword

There are many free news tracking sources that send alerts to your email, RSS reader or are stored at a web-accessible site. Don’t limit yourself to just one aggregator, such as Google News — which is easy to set up and has good coverage. I’ve gathered a list of some other keyword news search and tracking tools to uncover and keep track of the online mentions of your brand, client, opposition or topics of interest. Read more Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Judge Shoots Down Tennessee's Guns-In-Bars Law

Tennessee's new law allowing people with handgun permits to be armed in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol is unconstitutionally vague, a judge ruled last Friday. Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman said the law, enacted earlier this year over the veto of Gov. Phil Bredesen, is "fraught with ambiguity.'' She ruled after an hour of arguments in a lawsuit brought by a group of plaintiffs, many of them restaurant owners. More than 257,000 people have handgun carry permits in Tennessee. Tennessee previously banned handguns in all locations where alcohol was served. The new law made an exception for establishments that serve at least one meal on five days per week and that "the serving of such meals shall be the principal business conducted.'' Tennessee has no legal definition to distinguish bars from restaurants.

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N.J. adoption groups push for Assembly to consider bill unsealing adoptee birth

Adult adoptees and parents who gave children up for adoption today called on lawmakers to pass long-stalled legislation in the lame-duck session to unseal birth records closed under state law. Advocates, who have pushed for the legislation for nearly 30 years, said the measure would give them access to important medical and family information.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court to Decide: Are personal emails on publicly-owned computers private?

In a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the state's open records laws, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is set to potentially decide whether the personal emails of public employees - written on government computers - are exempt from the state's open records' laws. The justices have heard oral arguments in the case, Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids School District, in which five teachers are seeking to block release of their personal emails. In April 2007, a citizen, Don Bubolz, sent the district an open records' request for all emails from the teachers' school computers for the period March 1, 2007, through April 13, 2007. The school district subsequently notified the teachers it would release the emails. The teachers filed suit in circuit court to stop the district from doing so. They lost in that venue but, represented by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, appealed. The union asserts that private emails, which the school district acknowledges these were, cannot be construed as public records under the statutes. On April 30, 2009, the court of appeals certified the case to the Supreme Court "to determine if the employees' personal emails are public records and if they are, whether public policy reasons outweigh the public's interest in disclosure."

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Glendale Unified School District Given Deadline to Produce Names of Employees and Salaries

Brian Ellis, who since August has been asking the Glendale Unified School District for the names and pay of every employee earning more than $100 per year, has given officials a December 1 deadline for release of the information or face a lawsuit under the California Public Records Act, reports Max Zimbert in the Glendale News Press.

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Private Investigator Research Links

Subscribe to these and more
Los Angeles County - Search Unclaimed Persons Page Dapp Factory
RSS Feed Creator Search Engines: Real-time Search
TwitterGadget: Auto-refreshing Twitter client
Email Alerts for Twitter Lists - Listiti.com
Searchtastic.com - search Twitter history and see top Twitter users
DAR Genealogical Research Databases
YouSendIt: Online File Sharing and collaboration with FTP Replacement
California Roster 2009 - California Secretary of State California Government Roster of officials, 2008
The National Information Center(NIC) - Federal Reserve Banks
Online arrest records no longer show violations
Creating navigation or menu tabs in Blogger
Jurors Rebel, Defy Judges, and Google Their Own Truth
Google Doesn't Always Look for All the Words
70 Sizzling Apps | ABA Journal
Post Automatically to blogspot blogs
Maine Decision Involving Juror Use of Facebook to Dig for Dirt on the Plaintiffs
ColorSchemer - Online Color Scheme Generator

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Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Court Kills ‘Round-The-Clock’ Surveillance Case

from Privacy Digest: Privacy News (Civil Rights, Encryption, Free Sp by MacRonin

Welcome to the tinfoil hat club.

That’s what a federal appeals court is telling Scott Tooley of Kentucky in dismissing his civil rights lawsuit. Tooley believes the government put him under blanket surveillance after he said the word “bomb” to an airline agent.

Tooley sued the government on allegations of invasion of privacy and for violation of his First Amendment speech rights, claiming he was subjected to “round-the-clock surveillance” following his 2002 B-word utterance.

The alleged spying targeting Tooley ranged from phone taps to RFID chips on his vehicles. He claimed he was placed on an airline travel watchlist, and, in 2005, spotted an undercover agent in a Ford Crown Victoria parked outside his Louisville house for about six hours a day.

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A Taxing Matter: Fifth Circuit Finds Exception To Confidential Marital Communications Privilege Applied In Tax Fraud Appeal

Federal courts recognize a confidential marital communications privilege, under which (according to most courts) a spouse can prevent a testifying spouse from testifying about confidential marital communications and/or a testifying spouse can refuse to testify about confidential marital communications. Some federal courts, however, have an exception to this privilege for confidential marital communications about crimes in which the spouses are jointly participating. But what happens when a spouse proposes criminal activity that would implicate both spouses and the other spouse advises against that criminal activity, but the proposing spouse nonetheless engages in the criminal activity? Should the exception apply? That was the issue faced by the Fifth Circuit in its recent opinion in United States v. Miller, 2009 WL 3924052 (5th Cir. 2009). I think that the court got it wrong. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Prosecutors Ending Lawsuit Against Lori Drew

While there was some concern that prosecutors would push forward with an appeal of a judge's decision to toss out the ridiculous ruling against Lori Drew, federal prosecutors have now said that they're dropping the case and will not pursue it further. Drew may still face a civil lawsuit, but it's a good thing that the government is out of this. No matter what you think of Drew's behavior in dealing with her daughter's friend, Megan Meier, it was never a good idea to twist computer hacking laws to try to convict her. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Ohio public defender launches new non-DNA innocence initiative

Ohio's top public defender is taking on a rare challenge: accepting cases of convicted criminals who say they're innocent but don't have the DNA to prove it.

The Ohio Public Defender's Wrongful Conviction Project is one of a handful of innocence efforts nationally devoted full-time to non-DNA cases.

Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

New Mexico Law Enforcement Personal Cell Phone Records

 Now, support of the judge’s action recently by the New Mexico Court of Appeals potentially raises a question for every officer in the country: to what extent are records from your personal cell phone subject to public review in a criminal trial if you carry the phone with you on duty?

After weeks of wrangling, Judge Stephen Pfeffer in the end agreed that the defense “had a right to access the requested information even without knowing whether any such information existed.” He did attach limitations. Only Boerth’s cell phone records during the controversial six-minute “missing footage” gap in his dash-cam recording would be subject to review. This apparently was the time the defense considered most likely that the alleged C.I. call occurred. And the State could request that the judge first inspect the records alone in his chambers to determine if they included “personal matters irrelevant to the case.”

With those conditions, he ordered Bevacqua-Young to produce Boerth’s cell phone records. The officer was “an arm of the State,” the court ruled, and therefore his private phone records were “within the possession, custody, or control of the State, making them subject to disclosure.” Still, the prosecutor steadfastly refused to order Boerth to surrender them. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

New Englanders support greater access to public records.

New Englanders value openness in government, yet are skeptical that public officials share that value. They believe that having open access to the workings of government is important to citizenship. Most favor toughening the laws that protect access, and most agree that journalists are on the front lines in that fight.

Moreover, nearly nine out of ten New Englanders believe government agencies that wrongly withhold public records should pay the legal bills necessary to open them.

Those were among the findings of a recent poll of attitudes toward the First Amendment commissioned by The New England First Amendment Coalition and conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Orange County California Civil Case Documents Now Online

The Superior Court of California for the County of Orange is pleased to announce that
most current limited (actions filed for $25,000 or less) and unlimited (actions filed for
more than $25,000) civil case documents may now be downloaded for a fee directly
from the Court’s Web site. Documents filed since January 1, 2008 may be searched
and downloaded at www.occourts.org. From the homepage, select “online case
access” and follow the directions.

The fee for viewing and downloading imaged documents is $7.50 for each case
document that is downloaded (up to 10 pages) and $0.07 for each additional page.
Documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be searched in the Civil
Case Access section by case number or party’s name. Probate, Family Law, Small
Claims, Civil Harassment, Workplace Violence Prevention, and confidential or sealed
documents will not be available.

“Providing online access to court documents is an added convenience for the public,
saving time and the cost of commuting to a courthouse,” said Chief Executive Officer
Alan Carlson.

 Go to the site

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

City Surveillance Cameras and California Public Records Law

Are city-owned and operated surveillance camera recordings of public areas subject to disclosure in accordance with the California Public Records Law?

A: Under the Public Records Act, public records — which include “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics,” Gov’t Code section 6252(e) — are presumed to be open to the public and must be disclosed unless a specific provision of the Act or other law exempts them from disclosure...

If they are not “records of intelligence information or security procedures of” the police department, but rather tapes that are maintained by some other city agency, then it would seem that you should have access to the video recordings regardless of their purpose. If they are maintained by the city police department, you should still have access to any portions of those videotapes that were not specifically created for or used as part of an investigation. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Are jail visitor sign-in logs public documents?

Does the public have the right to inspect jail visitor sign-in logs in California? I've been told no, but seen court rulings in other states that lead me to think this may be inaccurate.

The right to inspect jail visitor sign-in logs would come from California’s Public Records Act, which provides, generally speaking, that writings created or used by government agencies in California are presumptively open to public inspection and copying unless a specific exemption of the PRA applies. If the “no” you refer to was in response to your request under the PRA, then the agency should have given you the basis for the denial, which would be a good place to start in evaluating the denial.

Possibly a jail would claim that disclosing records showing who has visited a particular inmate would constitute an invasion of the constitutional right to privacy sufficient to outweigh the public’s interest in reviewing such records. Although there is considerable judicial debate in California as to the right of privacy that inmates and their visitors have in their conversations, I am not aware of any authority as to whether the fact of the visit itself should be considered confidential. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

State and Federal Case Law Now On Google

Google Scholar is indexing the case law in all 50 states - Court of Appeals and Supreme Court - and the federal courts.

As with the other Google search engines, Google Scholar makes use of its own advanced search operators. Search by keywords, personal names, inclusive dates, and specify one or more states in a single search. Options on a single search are limited to 1) Search all legal opinions and journals; 2) Search only US federal court opinions or, 3) Search only court opinions from self-selected states.

Wondering which courts are included and the inclusive dates? Ask Google Scholar Help:

Which court opinions do you include?

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available. Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

View a list of search results with citations and a 2-line summary of text where some or all of the keywords appear. From here you can select to read an entire case or view case summaries that have cited the selected case.

My search query [(garbage OR trash) (curb OR curbside) +privacy], limited to California courts, 1970-2009 returned 33 cases.

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Google Doesn't Always Look for All the Words

ThompsonPI: Google Doesn't Always Look for All the Words http://bit.ly/27S0cp
Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

U.S. Caselaw in Google Scholar

..More than 80 years of US federal caselaw (including tax and bankruptcy courts) and over 50 years of state caselaw is now fully searchable online, for free at Google Scholar.

 Read more
Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Jurors Rebel, Defy Judges, and Google Their Own Truth

Judge Zloch questioned the juror about his research, and found that it included evidence that the judge had specifically excluded. At this point, the trial might have still been salvageable; the juror could have been removed from the jury and deliberations could continue. However, Judge Zloch stumbled upon further juror misconduct. Eight other jurors had been doing independent research, blatantly disregarding the jury instructions.
These jurors were conducting Google searches on the lawyers, on the defendant, looking up news articles about the case, checking definitions on Wikipedia, and searching for evidence that had been specifically excluded by the judge.
One juror, when asked by Judge Zloch about the research, responded “[w]ell, I was curious.”
The New York Times coined the phrase “Google mistrial[,]” in an article describing this trial, and opined that there will be more and more Google mistrials as more and more incoming jurors are Internet savvy.

Read more
Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator:

New York paper fights website commenter subpoena

"A New York newspaper is engaged in a battle to quash a grand jury subpoena for the identities of some of its website commenters.
Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips last month served The (Chester) Chronicle with a subpoena seeking information about two anonymous posters. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator:

Public access to all Oklahoma police incident reports restored as of Nov. 1

Police incident reports not involving an arrest are once again open to the public under legislation that takes effect today.

House Bill 1049 rectifies a 2005 amendment to the Open Records Act that police departments interpreted as allowing the release of incident reports only pertaining to an arrest.

No arrest. No report.

Complaints about the new statutory language were ignored until an incident in February 2008 involving state Labor Commissioner Lloyd Fields. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator

Finding, Skip Tracing and Locating Women - Tip #2

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator: 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. Read more

7 News Trackers - Search Companies and Topics By Keyword

There are many free news tracking sources that send alerts to your email, RSS reader or are stored at a web-accessible site. Don’t limit yourself to just one aggregator, such as Google News — which is easy to set up and has good coverage. I’ve gathered a list of some other keyword news search and tracking tools to uncover and keep track of the online mentions of your brand, client, opposition or topics of interest. Read more

Social Networking - Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators

Should an investigator or attorney “friend” a prosecution witness in order to find impeachment evidence? Are there legal or ethical bars to surreptitiously gathering data from social network profiles? Read more