I’m not sure that I believe all the stories about unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, but I do know what should stop this from becoming a disaster, and so does Tony Scotti, who has trained security drivers for decades. Please check-out his article on this topic.
Tag Archive for 'Private Investigator'
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A U.S.A online gun retailer, has published an excellent article explaining the differences between each generation of night vision gear.
Here’s your crash course in NVGs. Night vision technology is broken up into different levels. Gen 1 night vision is the gear you buy at Wal-mart for $500. Gen 2 costs a lot more and is widely used in the law enforcement sector. Gen 3 is what our military uses. Gen 4 is scary cool and the price of a Rolex.
While this article is about night vision devices for military use, the description of the characteristics of each generation and their associated costs is good background information for the Investigator contemplating the purchase of a night vision device for surveillance use.
The incinerator and shredder were the crook’s best friend prior to the computer era. Today, software is available for the same purpose. A search for “anti-forensics” turns-up a lot of usable information and guidance for those so-inclined.
Of particular interest should be the Metasploit Anti-Forensics Project. If you are unaware of the tools that come under the term, anti-forensics, then an article from CIO entitled, How Online Criminals Make Themselves Tough to Find, Near Impossible to Nab, should illustrate that Investigators now face anti-forensics as part of everyday life.
According to WowJobs.ca, the average salary of $38,307 for private investigators obtained from job postings nationwide are less than the nationwide average salary by 19%.
This indicates the average salary stated in job postings is $45,500 nationally and that on a national basis, Private Investigators earn about $7200 less than that average.
Sherlock Holmes with his deerstalker hat and magnifying glass is the most familiar image of the Investigator. However, this is a narrow-minded representation of the Investigator.
The investigative process does not belong to the police or private detective. Investigation is at the heart of every human activity. Scholars investigate. Antique dealers and appraisers investigate. Investors investigate. Medical Doctors investigate. In one way or another, we all investigate something or other. To investigate is to seek a solution. It is the application of information collection skills, logic, and analytical skills.
This is the last article of 2009. The next article will appear on Google-Free Wednesday, 6 January 2010.
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.
I have written previously on taking notes using audio, images, and handwritten notes. Quite a while back I wrote about video notes using a simple camcorder called the FlipUltra.
Kodak Zi8
Now the Kodak Zi8 seems like a better pocket-sized point-and-shoot video camera. The digital image stabilization provides better video than the Flip. It has some hardware and software advantages over the Flip. It needs SD or SDHC memory cards which I see as an advantage even if it makes the Zi8 cost more.
I’m naturally skeptical, especially of what is reported in the news. The Toronto Star keeps putting a bodiless hand in a picture of the Mississauga Mayor, Hazel McCallion, and her son.
Photoshop
This Photoshop disaster hasn’t gone unnoticed, but it highlights the issue of how Investigators and Researchers use such pictures and how they cite collected images.
I don’t have the technical skills to verify the authenticity of every image I collect and use in reports, but I can, and do, report the source of the image and the date it was collected. For example, in this case, several versions of this image are in the public domain. If I use the image in a report, I must state its source and the date collected, as it may later be revealed as a fake or altered image.
TinEye
I also use TinEye on such an image to see if an alternative version exists and to see where else the image might have appeared. For example, using TinEye on the cropped Toronto Star image I get a reference to the obviously Photoshopped image with the bodiless hand.
Social Media Monitoring
As an Investigator, you must realise that even the Vatican uses social media. Some forms of social media are taking on some of the characteristics of email. This information rich environment is something that Investigators and Researchers must understand. To be effective, one must also understand the tools available to conduct thorough research of the social media content.
One must also be able to create accurate budgets for this type of research. To set-up, optimise, and monitor research feeds that cover multiple social media and news sites can take many hours. These services allow one to monitor the social media space for new data or derogatory content. One particular strength of these services is that they search Blog comments, and can track comments and posts of individual contributors. While these services are aimed at PR agencies, they also offer significant utility for the Investigator, but they can be very expensive tools to use.
Techrigy
Techrigy (pronounced tek-err-jee) offers a free account that gets you up to 5 Search Words/Phrases, and store up to 1000 results. This is a great way to learn how to use the system.
Radian6
Unfortunately Radian6 is expensive — you pay just to have it in your toolbox, and then pay more for each social media research project you undertake. These costs must be understood at the outset and budgeted into the costs of the Investigation.
Filtrbox
Unfortunately, at Filtrbox their annual fee for individuals appears to be $1,000USD.
Backtype
Backtype lets you search comments that mention a brand, company, or topic, but it also lets you search comments left by a particular person.
Attaain
AttaainCI costs $150 per month for unlimited searching and monitoring. It’s less sophisticated than Radian 6 and Filtrbox which rate Blog comments from positive to negative. This is aimed at the Competitive Intelligence professional rather than the PR agency.
Searching Boards, Forums, and Social Media sites can be a hit and miss affair using the large search engines. Google does an excellent job, but it is not the only game in town.
BoardTracker
BoardTracker – searches across 37,000 forums representing more than 63 million threads. Set up your own custom alerts using RSS or use the site’s search function.
SocialMention
SocialMention – this will find your search term in many different blogs and social outlets. It will tell you how many times a keyword was used, the time frame, and let you subscribe to an RSS feed for that term or export the information as a CSV file.
In Real-time Search Engine, I looked at a Meta search engine called Colecta that is useful for real-time monitoring certain types of sites. Now I will look at monitoring changes in sites that interest you.
Copernic Tracker
Copernic Tracker – automatically looks for new content on Web pages, forums, and Social sites. When a change is detected, our Web site tracking software can notify you by sending an email, including a copy of the Web page with the changes highlighted, or by displaying a desktop alert.
WatchThatPage
WatchThatPage is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page. You can specify when the changes will be collected, so they are fresh when you want to read them. The service is free!
Yahoo Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.
Yahoo Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. A Web mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one Web data source into a single integrated Web application. Yahoo Pipes combines several different data sources but is generally not sufficient to create a useful application, it is a data mashup tool rather than a complete mashup editor.
How-to videos abound to act as tutorials on using Pipes. The best I found was here. You might also read Working with Yahoo! Pipes, No Programming Required.
Investigators observe to gather intelligence.
Yelling a child’s name in public when trying to get them off the playground, out of the store, or into the car will identify a family member by name. The same is true for anybody else hailed in this way by the subject. Knowing the person’s name makes it easy to strike-up a conversation about the subject to gather further information.
Parking permits, school stickers, and vacation magnets on the subject’s car, team shirts and other personalized items are a wealth of information to any Investigator who cares to notice. In minutes an Investigator could know the the names of the subject’s kid and school, along with the subject’s favorite beach and what sport he likes. This is excellent life-style data.
Ex-cop, wife accused of faking bank records
Police say duo reeled in clients by claiming ex-spouses, relatives stashed money offshore
Cullen Johnson was a top Toronto cop.
Elaine White was a dogged investigator at a downtown accounting firm.
Now the husband and wife team of private detectives are accused of forging and selling bank records that make clients believe an ex-spouse, friend or employee has millions of dollars stashed offshore…
This is a case where the victims should have known what was on offer was too good to be true.
Secret sources always introduce reliability problems into an investigation or research project.
For example, is the source lying; does the source even know what he’s talking about; is the information old; and is this a trick of some kind? Is the secret source doing something illegal to obtain the information? Is the data fabricated?
Open sources, on the other hand, can be fact-checked in real-time through multiple sources. Open sources can be properly identified and the collection method can be explained fully.
Twyman’s Law
Remember, Twyman’s Law states:
Any piece of data or evidence that looks interesting or unusual is probably wrong!