I have always been skeptical of DNA evidence being the holy grail in criminal cases. Now we find that DNA evidence can be faked.
Archive for the 'News' Category
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Process Server Falsifies Affidavits of Service
Angus McEachern, a former process server for Minnesota based Major Legal Professional Process Serving is now facing trial for perjury for creating nearly 200 false affidavits of service.
As a result of this case John Bauer, the owner of Major Legal and a professional process server for almost twenty years, is now dissolving the business due to the complete destruction of his local reputation. “The defendant had been fully trained in process serving, but simply made the decision not to do his job. He was lazy; that’s what it comes down to,” Bauer said.
In my experience, this is not an isolated incident — this is more common than you might think.
In the past US security clearance investigations were falsified. Now we learn that they have too many background checks to do, and not enough time to do them and the solution is to produce factually correct but incomplete reports. We also see that this job is a “shredder, and agents are grist for the mill,”.
“This job is a shredder, and agents are grist for the mill,” said K.C. Smith, an OPM investigator in Austin, Texas, with 23 years of experience. “There are people who are getting sick, under a lot of stress, their family life is suffering. They are just beat down.”
Investigators say it is common practice to spend nights, weekends and holidays writing up reports, and some don’t report the overtime they work for fear it will be held against them in their performance evaluations.
Investigators say it is common practice to spend nights, weekends and holidays writing up reports, and some don’t report the overtime they work for fear it will be held against them in their performance evaluations.
Some say their superiors have made it clear that the priority is to close cases, and they say they have felt pressure to turn in even incomplete cases that lack crucial interviews or records if it will help them keep their numbers up. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that the Defense Department’s security clearance process is plagued by such incomplete cases: 87 percent of the 3,500 initial top-secret security clearance cases Defense approved last year were missing at least one interview or important record.
Investigators are rewarded for investigation reports, not for doing proper investigations.
The recent controversy surrounding the improper investigation of potential jurors in Ontario has exposed some of the information the government has on Canadians and their contact with the police. One such database is known as Versadex.
National Post editorial board: Ontario stonewalls justice, one mistrial at a time
The Versadex database administered by the Canadian Police Information Centre contains information obtained by police on any call to a private address, even if that call did not lead to an arrest, and appears to contain other informal police annotations concerning individuals. Notes on mental health status are included.
The term Versadex, refers to a family of products from Ottawa-based Versaterm which produces public safety software. Versaterm produces Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software with integrated E911 emergency response, (along with advanced mobile workstations in the patrol vehicles, this puts vital information at police officers’ fingertips) and the Police Records Management System (RMS) for gathering intelligence and disseminating information on involved individuals, businesses, vehicles and locations. The Records Management System (RMS) is the core of the Versadex software suite. When RMS is fully integrated with both PoliceCAD and the Mobile Workstation they ensure a seamless information flow.
Mistaken for turkey, private investigator shot
By ROCCO LaDUCA, Observer-Dispatch, Posted May 29, 2009 @ 04:29 PM, Last update May 29, 2009 @ 07:27 PM, ANNSVILLE —
Unfortunately, Wehnke never took the time to confirm that what he was shooting at was in fact a turkey, investigators said. Instead, Wehnke shot a 26-year-old private investigator from New Jersey named Matthew Brady.
But this was no ordinary investigator. Brady had been sent to the Mohawk Valley to investigate Wehnke concerning matters of worker’s compensation, investigators said.
A person falsely accused of a crime in Ontario does not have the right to censor the records lawfully held by the police and by extension, the records held by the courts according to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
This decision is important as it ensures, at least for the time being, that records held by the Ontario criminal courts are available when searching for background information. If this decision went the other way, then many would seek to interpret it as meaning that copies of the Information and related court documents would in some way be subject to censorship.
I started with a very interesting article about what you might find in a college newspaper that would be interesting to an investigator.
One thing leads to another and I also found an article about a study of how quickly social sites remove pictures. Some sites take up to 30 days to really get rid of the offending images. This is an important thing to understand if your are looking for derogatory pictures.
Your (journalistic) past can haunt you online
Once the cat is out of the bag, you probably won’t be able to catch her and stuff her back inside…
That (now) embarrassing article you wrote for your college newspaper three years ago? It’s still online. And when people Google you, they find it…
Apparently a lot of student newspapers are receiving requests from former student writers to remove or “hide” (from Google) articles of which they are now ashamed…
…requests by former students who were featured in articles in the student newspaper. Campus police arrests for drunkenness, that sort of thing. They would like those articles to be removed or “hidden.”…
Here’s a related story about someone trying to get an old newspaper story erased from the search engines. Article published in The Seattle Times on Aug. 15, 2008.
Websites keep deleted photos, study shows
Cambridge researchers have shown that photos aren’t always deleted when users ask, causing a major ‘data remanence’ issue for cloud computing.
According to a study of 16 social networking, blogging and photo sharing sites…most of them failed to remove photos after users deleted them…
A Wisconsin woman has been convicted of disorderly conduct for posting her ex-boyfriend’s work telephone number and photos under the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist, encouraging men to “talk dirty to me.”
The 20-year-old has been ordered to write an apology and perform community service for the misdemeanor charge, and should consider herself lucky. She was originally charged with identity theft, a felony that would have entailed time in an unflattering orange jumpsuit.
The strange case of the private detective who isn’t
By David Baines, Vancouver Sun columnist
Of all the stories I have written, the story of Brian Van Vlack is the most bizarre.
Van Vlack runs a private investigation firm called Pursuit International Investigations from his home in Surrey. Late last year, he called to advise that a crook named Fred Gilliland had returned to Vancouver.
The story goes on to tell how the PI who helped arrest the crook who had conned him out of $200,000 in 2005, was now working with Gilliland in one of his crooked stock promotions schemes.
Honey Laundering: A sticky trail of intrigue and crime
A far cry from the innocent image of Winnie the Pooh with a paw stuck in the honey pot, the international honey trade has become increasingly rife with crime and intrigue.
2 April, 2009 – The Fisheries Council of Canada (FCC) and U.S.-based Better Seafood Bureau (BSB) are praising the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) letter to seafood importers urging them to comply with the country’s labeling requirements.
I noticed a post on The Daily Caveat about Investigators lying in the reports they submitted to the US Office of Personnel Management, which handles the background inquiries for more than 100 US government agencies. It is alleged that Investigators lied about interviews they didn’t conduct to earn more money. Some of the Investigators were working for contractors U.S. Investigation Services and Kroll.
For more details go to the The Washington Post article.
Bad Times Can Make Firms Vulnerable to Espionage
Corporate espionage is always a threat, but when the economy is sour the temptation is greater and finding broke or disgruntled employees is easier.
Stamping out data leakage & industrial espionage during a recession
How the recession is impacting IT security and top tips to ring fence your data to minimise risk.
British pair charged in ‘industrial espionage’ row
Two Wyko engineers are alleged to have used a mobile telephone to photograph a secret piece of equipment at an American factory
Strive for ’100 steps per minute’
You should be taking 100 steps each minute for half an hour a day if you want to achieve “moderate” exercise by walking, a study shows.
The following article illustrates the dangers of using web-base collaborative applications.
Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission
by Jason Kincaid on March 7, 2009
In a privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.
Associated Press is reporting that Swiss police came across an enormous marijuana crop using Google Earth. What a bummer dude!
That’s a lot more interesting than looking at some competitor’s plant to count the parking spaces and loading docks.