Archive for the 'Sources' Category

Page 2 of 7

National Security Silences the News

Published on February 16, 2011 in News, News Media, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the shortwave service, reports that several countries were trying to prevent their people from hearing the news about the protests in Egypt. The service’s Media Network Blog illustrates the heavy-handed actions taken to restrict access to outside news services.

These events reveal how vulnerable news reporting is to government censorship.

We regularly design news monitoring programmes for clients and we have found that monitoring the shortwave services using BBC Monitoring has proved to be a successful strategy. However, cuts at BBC Monitoring may make this strategy less effective.

Most HF broadcasters predicted an end to their services during the next decade. I hope the situation in Egypt, and the response of other dictatorships, will make them reconsider.

Escorts, Incalls, Outcalls, and Massage Parlours

Published on January 17, 2011 in Canada, Methods and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The demise of the “Erotic Services” section of Craigslist in Canada has led to a rush to fill the vacuum. This has made it harder to identify prostitution ads being run by people who are carrying out other scams such as exaggerated or fraudulent insurance claims.

As these ads move to other venues, a predominate source will rise to the top. At this time I predict that it will be Duttslist or the Toronto Backpage site.

The following is a list of 25 sites vying for the position of top prostitution ad site in Canada:

Some of these sites are easy to search by telephone number and some are not.

Censorship: You be the Judge

Google Ad-sense sent an automated notice that their machines were going to stop serving ads because I listed the sites that we often search for telephone numbers as explained above.  Of course machines can’t read, but they can find links. Now Google is censoring content because they don’t like to place ads on anything that has links to sites that they don’t like, in this case so-called ‘adult content’.  I can understand not wanting to be involved in promoting pornography or the sex trade, but this is only a machine telling me what to write and there is nobody to talk to and no living person at Google ever read this article.

Canadian Criminal Record Searches

Published on December 17, 2010 in Canada, Courts, How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Reading the following articles about Canadian criminal record searches should give you an understanding of how Canada’s criminal records are stored and searched.

Choosing Passwords

Published on November 24, 2010 in Odds & Sods, Power User Tips, Security, Sources, The Investigator's Computer and Web Worker. 0 Comments Tags: .

Here are a list of articles about password security that resulted from some recent research I was conducting.

Company Registers

Published on November 22, 2010 in Company Research and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The following articles have links to company registers that I am often asked about.

Offline Wikipedia

Published on November 15, 2010 in Methods and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: .

If you find Wikipedia to be a useful reference source, then get an offline copy of Wikipedia onto your MS Window machine using WikiTaxi or  Linux users can install Wikipedia Dump Reader from KDE.

Facial Recognition for the Masses

Published on October 25, 2010 in Privacy, Private Investigator, Search Strategies, Sources and Surveillance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Facial recognition software

Enter a photo at  http://developers.face.com/tools/#faces/detect and locate all photos of the same individual on Facebook.  This is limited to your friends at this point, but some developers are putting this on iphone apps. You can snap a photo on the street and get all their info through Facebook and other services this way.  In May 2010 they state that their Facebook apps have scanned over 7 billion photos in total and identified no less than 52 million faces.

This is something to watch as it has some interesting applications for the Investigator.  Of course some people will think the sky is falling due to the  mere existence of this app, but the technological genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago.

Division of Powers – Vital Statistics

Published on October 15, 2010 in Canada, Courts, Private Investigator and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Vital Statistics – Birth, Death, and Marriage certificates

These bits of paper define our identity in today’s society.

The Solemnization of Marriage is a provincial matter according to S 92(12) of The Constitution Act of 1867. Birth and Death records are generally held to be a provincial matter under S.92(16) which reads, “Generally all Matters of a merely local or private Nature in the Province.” For the purposes of proper administration, the territories have been granted the power to record vital statistics.

One must be an authorised person to request these records, and most provinces, in most cases, are very careful to ensure that a person requesting such documentation is entitled to receive the document.  The Investigator will require a letter authorising such a search for these records from the person or estate involved.

Division of Powers — Divorce Actions

Published on October 11, 2010 in Canada, Courts, Private Investigator and Sources. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Divorce Registry

The Divorce Registry maintained by the Federal government was designed to prevent both spouses from proceeding with separate divorce actions in separate jurisdictions.

The divorce actions recorded in the Registry cover all of  Canada and go back to 1978.

Division of Powers – Criminal Law

Published on October 6, 2010 in Canada, Courts, How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Legislation, Private Investigator and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Under the division of powers, the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over criminal law and procedure (section 91(27) of the Constition Act of 1867) the provinces have jurisdiction over the administration of justice, including criminal matters (section 92(14)) and penal matters (section 92(15)) regarding any laws made within provincial jurisdiction. Thus Canada has a single Criminal Code but many provincial laws that can result in incarceration or penalty.

Criminal and Civil Courts

This means that the Administration of Justice in the Province, including the Constitution, Maintenance, and Organization of Provincial Courts, both of Civil and of Criminal Jurisdiction, and including Procedure in Civil Matters in those Courts are matters handled by the Province. It also means that the Province handles the Imposition of Punishment by Fine, Penalty, or Imprisonment for enforcing any Law of the Province made in relation to any Matter coming within any of the Classes of Subjects enumerated in  Section 92 of the Constitution Act of 1867.

For the Investigator, this means that the majority of the criminal prosecutions occur in courts administered by the provinces and that most civil actions are issued in provincial courts.

Belize Corporate Filings

Published on July 19, 2010 in Company Research and Sources. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Here is my advice on researching Belize corporations.

International Business Company (IBC)

First, check the IBC struck-off list at:

http://www.ibcbelize.com/

The International Business Companies Registry is located in the Marina Towers building in Belize City. A competent  & experienced staff is available to help you.

Marina Towers, Suite 201
Newtown Barracks
Belize City, Belize
Central America

Telephone numbers: 501-223-5108 / 223-5120 / 224-4701
Fax number: 501-223-5124
E-mail address: ibc@btl.net
Contact Person: Ms. Katherine Haylock, Deputy Registrar

Other Company Types

Normally you must travel to Belmopan, the capital, to visit the Companies’ Registry and request a computerized name search of all existing Belizean company names, which takes a few minutes to complete. however, a request can also be done by telephone or fax at a fee of BZE 50

The contact information is as follows:

Belize Companies and Corporate Affairs Registry
Ground Floor Garden City Hotel
Mountain View Boulevard
Belmopan City, Cayo District
Belize Central America

TEL: 822- 0421/ 822-0531
FAX: 822- 0422
http://www.belizecompaniesregistry.gov.bz/

Belizean laws allow for the following categories of business ownership:

* Private Companies
* Limited Liability Partnership
* Limited Life Companies
* Joint Ventures and Cooperatives
* Partnership
* Sole Proprietor
* Public Investment Companies
* International Business Companies
* Trust Funds

The Most Common Off-Shore Business Structure in Belize

Almost all offshore or foreign businesses use the International Business Company or Trust forms, sometimes in combination.

Google-Free Wednesday

Published on January 27, 2010 in Google-Free Wednesday, Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

FindThatFile

Previously, I wrote about file searches using OSUN.ORG.

findthatfile.com provides a file search  encompassing Web, FTP, Usenet, Metalink and P2P resources (ed2k/emule) including 47 file types and 554+ file extensions including over 167 file upload services. It also offers an alert service sent to your email.

However, not all information in the search database has every property you might be searching for, therefore, you have to explore the different ways to search for the file in the advanced search screen.

In my experience, this is not a good search engine to use to search by a person’s name or a company name. The files are not well indexed in this fashion.  One must also be careful to select the “All Files” button in the “Adult Filter” to be sure all the files found appear in the search results.

I usually search by a file name for other versions of a file that I already know about. In some cases, findthatfile.com will give me an understanding of how widely circulated a file may be, or turn-up different versions of the same file.

FaceBook and Investigations

Published on December 22, 2009 in Methods, Private Investigator, Social Sites and Sources. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook: The truth is out there

… Facebook is a good source for data mining.

But one problem is that information gathered is not verified independently.

“These are not facts, just hearsay,” the former Criminal Investigation Department trainer said. “For digital photos, you can’t prove they are original as photos can be manipulated and put on the Web. You can’t authenticate them unless you get the original files from the photographer.”

He added: “This way of getting information is more trendy…but the information should be verified by conducting a proper investigation.”

Only when it is backed up will it be admissible as court evidence, he said.

… [it is] not inconceivable for someone to falsify their whereabouts on such sites.

“There really is no way of proving who was at the computer, which is the problem with any Internet-based investigation,” he said. “Today, one can update Facebook status or tweet Twitter from any device at any location.”

This is an excellent article on the value of searching  social sites.

Knowem

Published on November 25, 2009 in Search Engines, Search Strategies, Social Sites and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

James Ruotolo at FraudPro found Knowem to be a good way to find what social sites have a particular user name. I’m going to add this to my list of ways for Finding Usernames.

Internet Detective School 101

Published on November 4, 2009 in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Google Alerts

We all know know and love Google, but how many people use its best investigative features? Investigations aren’t done in one day so why search Google on only one day?

Google Alert service is free and it allows you to create custom RSS feeds using Google search results, or you can receive the alerts by email.  Thus, if you create focused searches using phrases, site qualifiers, etc. in Google, you now can have those results as a RSS Feed.

Login to you Google account, then use the advanced query options to construct your search.  Select the Feed setting in the “Deliver to” column to activate your RSS feed.  It’s that simple; there is no need to program a Google API. Alternatively, select email to have the results sent to you by email.

Your search can be set-up to notify you as the new data appears if you select email notification. You may select as-it-happens, daily, or weekly. Simply make the selection in the “How often” column. Of course the RSS feed option doesn’t need to be told when to send you the results, it captures new data as it appears and publishes it in the feed.

To receive the feed you will have to wait until it is populated with some results. Once there are results in the feed, you may then click on the feed link for the Alert and copy the URL into your newsreader.  This takes about one day to occur in my experience.