ChangeIP, states that its Private Proxy is an encrypted change IP proxy that not only changes your IP address, but also encrypts your Internet browsing sessions to keep you safe and protected.
Perhaps this is better than Zerobank, but perhaps not, I have not tried it yet. It may offer some utility over TOR in that it may allow viewing YouTube and similar video content, but I doubt it will offer the anonymity of TOR.
Recently, I have been involved in a series of jobs involving Operational Risk.
Operational Risk arises from:
Lawfare is the most interesting aspect of this type of work. Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare that is waged via the courts with the intention of damaging the firm. Special interest groups, radicals, and competitors will use this to create financial damage and create ill will towards the targeted company.
The Investigator’s task is usually to identify the funding sources and relationship of the plaintiff to individuals and groups who would benefit from the use of this tactic.
The provinces have been granted power over “property and civil rights in the province” in Section 92(13) of The Constitution Act, 1867.
This division of power forced the Trudeau government to remove the right to private property from the Charter of Rights when the provinces protested its inclusion. The provinces saw this as limiting their ability to tax, expropriate, and exercise control over property ownership. Neither the federal nor provincial governments are under any constitutional obligation to pay fair (or any) compensation for expropriated property. The Constitution Act 1867 and the Charter of Rights do not address this issue. Legislatures are also free to legislate away your ability to use any property for any purpose. Ontario and Quebec will probably try this route to control firearms ownership once the Long Arm Registry is eliminated by the federal government.
This is starting to backfire. Landowner associations and grass-roots movements are starting to form in Ontario and Alberta. These groups and movements to include property rights into the Charter of Rights will become a prominent feature of the political landscape in years to come.
Blippy allows its users to connect their bank accounts and credit cards to Blippy “to automatically or manually post your purchases so that your followers may view them.” It also syncs existing e-commerce accounts to Blippy such as iTunes, Netflix, Woot, eBay and more. Blippy will then ‘tweet’ each purchase, where it was purchased, and the cost. Many of the pictures have imbedded geolocation metadata.
In the past, most investigations included ‘neighbourhood inquires’ where neighbours were questioned regarding the subject’s activities and lifestyle.
We still do neighbourhood inquiries, but over the last three decades this has produced less and less information of value, to the point that we now consider this an extraordinarily expensive investigative process.
Neighbours rarely share derogatory information or observations about the subject, and fewer still, even know the subject as most urban neighbourhoods are too transient and social contact is minimal.
Today’s neighbourhood isn’t tied to geography, but rather by Internet connectivity. The advent of virtual media has created virtual neighbourhoods that the Investigator must be adept at navigating and interrogating.
This new neighbourhood may reveal inappropriate pictures, drug and alcohol abuse, bad-mouthing of employers, co-workers, clients, and organisations. It may reveal poor communication skills and much worse – much of which is found exclusively online.
Unfortunately, inexpert interrogation and navigation of this neighbourhood has caused issues.
The ubiquity of Internet search engines and a lack of training and guidelines may put the Investigator in contravention of some laws if the resulting information creates a record of personally identifying information that is subsequently mishandled. Possession of Internet search results may impose either declared or implied responsibilities regarding the handling of the data in some jurisdictions.
A casual and undisciplined approach to Internet and social media searching raises questions regarding the competence, handling, fairness, storage, and analysis of the data. The role of the Investigator doing the searching should be clear from the outset. The sources and methods employed should also be clear throughout the search process and its reporting.
The subjects of an investigation do not line-up to tell the Investigator all his or her screen names and their related email addresses.
The Investigator must find the screen names and related email addresses from what he already knows at the beginning of the Investigation to build an online profile of the subject.
The Investigator must also recognise that screen names are often used by more than one person or a screen name may be used maliciously.
As the old New Yorker cartoon said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog”.
The unstructured nature of data available on the Internet, and its density, creates problems for the searcher.
Google may say it found three million hits, but it will only show one thousand. The results will change depending on which version of Google searched and whence it is searched.
When searching for information about a person or company, the Investigator shouldn’t get bogged-down by search engine hits, but rather go straight to databases that have the right category of data for his purposes. This may mean searching sources not indexed by the search engines.
Google isn’t a substitute for knowledge and experience.
Named for Mareva Compania Naviera SA v International Bulkcarriers SA [1975] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 509, a Mareva Injunction is a court order which freezes assets so that a defendant cannot surreptitiously dissipate assets to prevent the enforcement of a judgment.
These injunctions are widely recognised in common law jurisdictions and such orders can have world-wide effect. Similar provisions are now available in the rest of Europe, under Article 9(2) of the European Union Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, which was approved in April 2004.
The injunction is often granted ex parte and pre-trial based on affidavit evidence alone. A Norwich order sometimes precedes the Mareva Injunction. A Mareva Injunction is often combined with an Anton Piller order. The combination of a Mareva Injunction and an Anton Pillar order can be devastating to a business or professional person by freezing assets and revealing proprietary processes and data to competitors. However, this does prevent a foreign company from removing its assets from the country before a trial can take place. Today’s telecommunications makes moving assets almost instantaneous. The Anton Pillar order prevents the destruction of evidence before trial.
A Norwich order is a pre-action discovery mechanism.
In Norwich Pharmacal Co. v Customs and Excise Commissioners [1974] AC 133, the owner of a patent knew that infringing goods were entering the UK, but could not ascertain the identity of the goods. The Commissioners, in the course of performing their duties, had information that would identify the imports. Also, they had unknowingly played a part in facilitating importation of infringing goods. The House of Lords found that where a third party had become involved in unlawful conduct, they were under a duty to assist the person suffering damage by giving them full information and disclosing the identity of wrongdoers. If the third party bears expense in assisting compliance with an order, the person seeking assistance is bound to reimburse those expenses. That expense however would be reflected in an award of damages against the ultimate tort-feasors, and this be recovered after the final hearing.
The Court in Isofoton S.A. v. Toronto Dominion Bank, outlined five elements that a court should consider before granting a Norwich order.
During the course of a surveillance, the vehicle driven by the subject may offer more information than just the registration details.
For example, a quick look inside the vehicle may reveal his occupation, place of employment, or places where he frequently parks his car if you see unpaid parking tickets inside.
If you suspect the subject is involved in criminal activity or insurance fraud, then pay for a report from CARFAX and CarProof and get a history search on the vehicle identification number (VIN). The history for the VIN will reveal any liens and state if the car was involved in past accidents or if it has been marked as a salvage, re-built or non-repairable vehicle. Also run the VIN at the Canadian Police Information Centre website under the stolen vehicle section.
Big String offers self-destructing IMs and emails so that you won’t leave any evidence of their online communications. It works with many popular IM clients.
10 Minute Mail gives you an email address that is good for 10 minutes, then expires. This allows you to register with sites that require an email validation. Using this helps you to cover your tracks when using such sites.
In Omychund v Barker (1745) 1 Atk, 21, 49; 26 ER 15, 33, Lord Harwicke stated that no evidence was admissible unless it was `the best that the nature of the case will allow’. The general rule is that secondary evidence, such as a copy . . . , will be not admissible if an original document exists, and is not unavailable due to destruction or other circumstances indicating unavailability.
The rationale for the . . . rule can be understood from the context in which it arose: in the eighteenth century a copy was usually made by hand by a clerk (or even a litigant). The best evidence rule was predicated on the assumption that, if the original was not produced, there was a significant chance of error or fraud in relying on such a copy.
Today this still applies to a large degree — that is why we normally get certified copies of public records that might be used in the future and notarize copies of documents obtained throughout the course of an investigation.
In a recent article about the DuckDuckGo search engine, I wrote about search leakage. Many programs leak your location. Internet Explorer does not have a geolocation feature yet, but Firefox and its associated email program do. Here is how to disable this annoying feature that may reveal that you are investigating a person or company by your visits to their websites. It doesn’t take a genius to figure-out that if he defrauded somebody in Toronto that web site visits from someone in Toronto might mean he is being investigated.
To test your browser, first go to this site, then make the changes below and revisit it to see the difference.
• Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar without the ‘ ’
• Discard the warning by hitting ‘yes’
•Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.enabled’ or you can simply search for ‘geo.enabled‘
• Doubleclick the item and it will change from its default value ‘True’ to ‘False’
• Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.wifi.uri’or you can simply search for ‘geo.wifi.uri‘
• Rightclick the Value of ‘geo.wifi.uri’ and click ‘Modify’
• Type in ‘localhost’ and hit ‘OK’
• Goto ‘Tools’
• Goto ‘Options’
• Goto ‘Advanced’
• Hit ‘Config Editor’ on the General tab
• Discard the warning by hitting ‘yes’
• Scroll down until you reach ‘geo.enabled’ or you can simply search for ‘geo.enabled‘
• Doubleclick the item and it will change from its default value ‘true’ to ‘false’
Doing a test search in Bing and Google revealed that turning off the geolocation feature changes the results rather dramatically. All the search results in my test search went from Canada-centric before turning off the geolocation to U.S.-centric after it was turned off.
The Ontario Private Investigator Test Preparation Guide is now available on the Ministry site. The Evince Blog has further details.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recently added a new requirement to its policy related to criminal record checks. This requirement applies to all agencies across Canada that access the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) to perform a criminal record check. CPIC is administered by RCMP. All agencies that access CPIC, including the Private Security and Investigative Services Branch (Branch) are required to comply with the RCMP CPIC Policy.
Effective March 21, 2011, all applicants for licences must have a guarantor confirm their identity by verifying the identification documentation (ID) that accompanies their application. Applications cannot be processed without this confirmation by a guarantor. This requirement applies to both individual licensees as well as agency personnel that are named in the application for an agency license. Typically these are officers, directors or partners of the company who, as part of the agency application process, are also required to have a criminal record check.
Anton Piller Orders, named after the famous 1976 English case, Anton Piller KG v. Manufacturing Process Ltd. [1976] Ch 55 1 ALL E.R. 779, which defined the process of civil search and seizure under common law.
An Anton Piller order is obtained ex parte, and allows the moving party to access the premises of the other party to gather evidence that the court fears may be destroyed if the search is not conducted immediately. To many people this resembles a private search warrant but it is not. The contempt power is used to enforce them rather than the normal criminal process where physical force may be used to execute the Order. Nor does the Order authorize entry. Rather, it commands the defendant to permit entry. The defendant may deny entry, and thereafter face contempt proceedings. The plaintiff’s agents may not use force to effect entry in the face of the defendant’s denial of permission. The defendant may move to have the access limited after the search. Therefore, the order doesn’t necessarily give the moving party immediate access to the evidence, rather it preserves it, so that access can be determined at a later time.
With a search warrant, those strangers are police officers, who may use reasonable force to execute their search. With an Anton Piller order, the strangers are not police officers (although they will usually include one peace officer from the Sheriff’s office or a Bailiff in Quebec). They may not use force to gain entry, but rather the threat of jail or other punishment.
The premise of these orders is that (a) the defendant is likely to act to frustrate the order if given notice of it in advance; and (b) there is a strong prima facie case that the defendant has already acted very badly. As Anton Piller orders play an increasingly important role in protecting businesses from disgruntled or departing employees (as in Ridgewood cited below), it is important for Investigators to fully understand their obligation to properly execute these orders.
A number of judgments have condemned the improper execution of these orders. An Ontario case, Ridgewood Electric (1990) v. Robbie, contains an excellent background of the Anton Pillar Order in Para [23] and demonstrates how not to execute the order. In Harris Scientific Products v. Araujo (2005), 54 Alta. L.R. (4th) 195, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordered damages of $35,000 for trespass and punitive damages of $10,000. Furthermore, the Alberta Court of Appeal in Catalyst Partners Inc. v. Meridian Packaging Ltd. established that there had to be strong evidence showing a real possibility that the defendant would destroy documents, not merely an inference or suspicion in order to issue an Anton Pillar Order. In Celanese Canada Inc. v. Murray Demolition Corp., 2006 SCC 36 the SCC ruled that Celanese had the onus of demonstrating that no prejudice would result from their solicitors carrying on in the file. As a result of the execution of an Order, the Celanese solicitors had come into the possession of confidential information attributable to a solicitor-client relationship, and the court said that the solicitors “bear the onus of showing there is no real risk such confidences will be used to the prejudice of the defendant.” This contentious case led the SCC to better define the requirements for successful preparation and execution of an Anton Pillar Order. The following guidance is distilled from Celanese Canada Inc. v. Murray Demolition Corp.