Tag Archive for: investigative techniques
Why Your Investigator Should Have a Sense of Humor (Seriously)
In a partially hilarious, partially disturbing article this week in The Wall Street Journal, “Facebook Has No Sense of Humor,” the Editor in Chief of the satirical website The Babylon Bee related that two patently ridiculous “news” stories…
The Changing Face of Privacy for Investigations
We always like to say that when we find out about a person, we do so without invading their privacy. That can still mean we find out a lot of things about them that they would rather keep secret, but those facts are derived from what we can…
President’s Day Thoughts on Interviewing
In honor of President's Day (still officially known as Washington's Birthday) a few thoughts about interviewing.
There are so many more facts about ourselves that are in our heads (or the heads of people we know) than there are in databases…
When Databases Fail Us
There is a widespread belief among lawyers and other professionals that investigators, armed only with special proprietary databases, can solve all kinds of problems other professionals cannot.
While certain databases are a help, we often…
How to Improve Your On Line Security (Even if People Know Your Phone Number)
The New York Times published in interesting piece this week that was among its most popular: I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have.
In it, the paper’s personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen explained how much information people…
Tracking Kim’s Mercedes: It’s All About What’s Not There
Not for the first time, the most compelling piece of information in an investigation is what isn’t there.
We’ve written often before about the failure of databases and artificial intelligence to knit together output from various databases…
College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?
Get ready for college admissions scandals phase II, and maybe III, IV and V.
The reason I think so? Because of the way it was discovered.
Prosecutors didn’t break up the ring of bribing college coaches and exam proctors by using vast computing…
Artificial Intelligence: Good and Evil All at Once, Just Like its Creators
Have you ever noticed that artificial intelligence always seems much more frightening when people write about what it will become, but then how it can seem like imperfect, bumbling software when writing about AI in the present tense?
You get…
Atlanta Paper Exposes Widespread Violation of Federal Law by Private Investigators and the Lawyers That Enable Them
Great work by the Atlanta Journal Constitution on an issue that’s bugged me for years: the brazen violation of federal law by investigators and the lawyers who hire them.
At issue is the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, meant to protect the confidentiality…
AI and Legal Investigation: Seek the Good, Avoid the “Perfect”
Artificial intelligence doesn’t equal artificial perfection. I have argued for a while now both on this blog and in a forthcoming law review article here that lawyers (and the investigators who work for them) have little to fear and much to…
