Tag Archive for: investigative techniques
When Investigations are Like Playing Billiards
For anyone who has ever tried to play pool, it quickly becomes obvious that the best way to get the ball in the pocket isn’t always the most direct.
If there’s another ball in the way or the angle doesn’t work, redirecting the ball off…
Taking Investigation Seriously
Most of us in the business can remember clients who call us to say something like, “We’ve done some pretty serious Googling, so you probably won’t find anything.” We had a prospective client some years ago who said exactly those words,…
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…
