Illinois adoptees will have access to birth parents’ names

"Adoptees born 1946 or after will be able to apply for their original birth certificates, which contain the names of their birth parents, as of Nov. 15. Starting last year, those born prior to 1946 could apply. The law was structured that way because the law sealing the records took effect in 1946. The pre-1946 records were sealed retroactively by a 1986 law."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Monitoring juror social media networking sites; “friending” employees of adverse parties

"You are representing a client in a personal injury matter. During pre trial voir dire proceedings and during the trial itself, can you search for and monitor jurors’ and potential jurors’ Twitter accounts and social network Internet postings? What are your obligations should you uncover evidence of juror misconduct?

You represent a client in a wrongful discharge matter against the client’s former employer. You have reason to believe that certain high-level employees of the employer are dissatisfied and may be likely to post unfavorable comments about the employer on their private social networking pages. Can you send a “friend” request to these employees to gain access to their private social media pages?"
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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

EEOC Advisory Opinion on Employer Use of Arrest & Conviction Records During Hiring Process

"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Office of Legal Counsel released an advisory opinion on employer use of arrest and conviction records during the hiring process."
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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Delaware to reduce cost for public records requests

"Delaware Gov. Jack Markell announced this week that he's making it easier and cheaper for people to obtain public records. The First State's leader signed an executive order Thursday in Wilmington requiring executive-branch agencies to adopt a standard policy for handling Freedom of Information Act requests.

Markell says he's also signing a bill creating a standard request form enabling people to easily submit requests online."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: West Texas utility subject to public records law:

"Win some, then hopefully win some more in the name of government transparency.

That’s the idea, anyway. This week we learned that the state Attorney General agreed with our argument that the Southwest Texas Municipal Gas Corporation is a taxpayer-funded operation fully subject to the laws and dictates of the Texas Public Information Act."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Real theft of ID theft not found in court records

"Experts on identity theft and law enforcement who investigate the problem agree the real threat to your personal information and your bank account doesn't come from publicly available records.


The Oklahoma Supreme Court is considering new rules that would eliminate birth dates and other identifying information from court records statewide as a response to fears of identity theft. The move would make it virtually impossible to check the criminal backgrounds of those you deal with, but experts agree it won't do much to prevent identity theft.

Richard Varn, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access, has worked as chief information officer for the state of Iowa and the city of San Antonio."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Google Removes The Plus Sign Search Command

"Google has quietly removed one of the older search operators, the search operator. Now if you try adding a sign in your query, Google will ignore it.

Why did Google remove the old search operator? Kelly from Google said in a forum thread that you can now use the quotation marks operator instead of the operator. She said:"

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: ND Supreme Court considers records restrictions

"North Dakota's Supreme Court is considering whether to limit Internet access to criminal case records, a move that one opponent says would make an important online information source less reliable.

The court held a public hearing Monday on the proposed judicial rule, which would allow judges to block access to electronic records in criminal cases if a defendant is acquitted, the case is dismissed or the case's paper file is no longer required to be kept."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Illinois doctors database back online

"As part of his ongoing efforts to increase consumer protections and transparency in Illinois, Governor Pat Quinn today launched a website that makes important information regarding Illinois' physicians available to the public. Maintained by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), the site offers consumers the information they need to make good decisions about their families' health care."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Iowa court rules school disciplinary records are not public

"An Iowa school district does not have to release the details of disciplinary action taken against employees responsible for improperly strip-searching several teenage girls, a court ruled Wednesday.

The Iowa Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the details of disciplinary cases against public employees are exempt from the state's public records law except when they lead to firings. The court rejected a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, which was seeking to learn the level of discipline taken against two Atlantic Community School District employees responsible for strip-searching female students during a theft investigation in 2009."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Federal court makes Wash. petition signers' names public

"A federal court in Washington state lifted an order preventing the release of the identities of more than 137,000 people who signed a 2009 petition to challenge a Washington law that would extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: 9th Circuit rules for public access to documents in search warrant applications

"The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in a Montana case that in most instances, materials filed in support of search warrant applications should be available to the public once an investigation is terminated.
The case arose from raids in 2005 and 2008 on the Custer Battlefield Museum near Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office had opposed disclosure of the documents, citing the need to protect secrecy regarding witnesses, informants and grand jury proceedings. Attorneys for Chris Kortlander, director of the museum and owner of several businesses at Garryowen, maintained that he and the public had a right to access what he considered public documents."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Google+ Posts Now Tracked and Searchable on Topsy

"Topsy, the "real-time search for the social web," has launched a Google+ post search. Along with that search, Topsy offers trend data for Plus."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

California Sheriff’s office denies access to 2004 arrest documents saying too much time has elapsed

"I recently requested information pertaining to a 2004 arrest of a man by the Sheriff. I was told by their Discovery Officer that my request would be denied because the records are so old and I’m no longer entitled to the information under the Public Records Act."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: The ‘Mugshot Racket’: Paying to Keep Public Records Less Public

"It used to be that mugshots were kept well out of the view.  Despite being public records in many states, walls of bureaucracy and simple physical inaccessibility (due to the photos being locked in a police station somewhere) kept them largely out of the public eye.

But the Internet has changed that.  Now, those same photos are uploaded to the web on tens, maybe even hundreds, of police and sheriff websites, giving rise to two new online businesses: the mugshot aggregation website and its opposite number, the mugshot removal website. But as David Kravets wrote in Wired, the interaction of these two types of website is more complicated than it seems. And their dealings call into question the reluctancy of states to centralize public records online in the first place."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Personal log-on info often leaks to advertisers, researcher finds

"Information that could identify you often leaks from major websites to online advertisers because of the practice of embedding such data in the Web addresses shared between sites when a user logs on.

Such data leakage may involve a person's name, user name or email address and is pervasive, though not necessarily intentional, among the most popular websites, said Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford graduate student who has studied the phenomenon and released findings Tuesday."
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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Texas criminal records database not reliable

"Criminal background checks used to screen teacher applicants, doctors, nurses and daycare employees may not turn up their arrest records because of critical gaps in the Texas criminal records database, a new state audit shows.

Prosecutors and courts have failed to submit to the state disposition records on about one of every four arrests in 2009, the audit found. While that is a slight improvement from a 2006 audit, it still means that the Department of Public Safety Computerized Criminal History System is not a reliable source for complete information, the audit found."  
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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Pretty Much Everything Related To You And Facebook Is Recorded In Your Facebook Permanent Record

"Thanks to European data privacy rules, some folks have successfully requested and received a detailed list of all the data that Facebook has kept about them. They've released a redacted version of the document for one person, which comes in at a hefty 880 pages. To be honest, nothing in this is all that surprising, but it does highlight just how much data Facebook ends up with and that it appears to not delete very much, if anything, ever."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Couple Can't Sue CBS for Consensual Taping

"CBS did not intrude upon a couple's privacy when it videotaped them swimming in a friend's backyard without their consent, even though it later broadcast the video, a federal judge ruled.

     Robert Webb's sister-in-law Lisa Stebic disappeared from her house in April 2007. Webb's brother, Craig Stebic, who was in the process of divorcing his wife, was named as a person of interest by the local police."
 

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Courthouse News Sues Ventura Court Clerk Over Press Access

"Ventura's court clerk was sued Thursday by Courthouse News Service over delays in press access to newly filed cases, a frequent source of news. The delays in Ventura stand in stark contrast to the same-day access to new lawsuits provided by federal courts and big state courts throughout the nation.

"By denying Courthouse News timely access to newly-filed civil unlimited jurisdiction complaints, these records are as good as sealed for an appreciable time after filing, in violation of the rights secured to Courthouse News by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, federal common law, and the California Rules of Court," said the complaint.

The complaint said the news service has tried to work with the clerk, Michael Planet, to no avail."  
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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator Research Links - Sept 2011

• NewsLibrary.com

• VIN Decoder

• Listen to the outgoing cell phone message

• UK Family history records

• Newspapers, Magazines, Broadcast Media Around the World

• Real-time News from 25,000 sources

• Create Maps with Multiple Locations

• Names of Americans Killed in Acts of Terrorism

• Searching your Irish roots online

• Find federal, state and locate elected officials

• Check Status of Voter Registration by county - California

• Verify Voter Registration Status - 50 State Directory

The rest of my favorite links are here.