You can see and listen to the entire SSN Workshop discussions via webcast FTC Webcast here.
I was not able to attend today’s session, but it was reported to me that some speakers were very outspoken against the private investigation industry. Perhaps, these people never needed the assistance of an attorney or private investigator, but they may change their outlook when and if a situation arises and they need help. For example, if a person is indicted or charged with a crime, they need an attorney to help them defend themselves, unless, of course, they are in their own right a super lawyer. Facts are needed in defending a criminal case. The prosecutor has the facts and has a legion of FBI or IRS agents, along with a grand jury, to gather more facts. What does the defense attorney have to assist the client? Sometimes it is a hired “private investigator.” I have worked on criminal defense cases, and the gathering of facts is the primary objective of many cases. Sometimes, as a private investigator, you find the one witness who will testify for the defendant and, possibly, contribute to a “not guilty” verdict. To deny private investigators and/or attorneys access to information to prepare a criminal defense case is certainly open to an immediate constitutional challenge. I believe it has somehthing to do with “due process” and “right to fair trials” etc. Of course, these mere constitutional values may be overlooked in denying defense investigators and defense attorneys the right to access needed identifying information to find witnesses or challenge prosecution witnesses.
But, I digress. I did not intend to write a summary of today’s FTC workshop. I will do that tomorrow after watching the webcast.
Philadelphia college students, Jocelyn Kirsch and Edward Anderton, steal ID of neighbors. State prosecuting for ID theft, burglary etc. Ummmm, all this ID theft done without one pretext call by a Pretexting PI.
I heard the federal government is thinking about investigation.
The Center For Democracy & Technology (CDT), CDT, posted an interesting article about U.S. Government’s lack of security and privacy standards for protection of sensitive, personal information being gathered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), pursuit to the REAL ID Act passed in 2005—you know the “national” driver’s license. CDT says that the Act paves the way for “centrally accessible highly sensitive personal information on virtually every American, including copies of birth certificates, Social Security Cards, passports and other personal documents.” This has potential to create “an extremely valuable central source of identification data” that could be stolen by any ID thief or terrorists and any unscrpulous state or federal employee.
DHS issue proposed regulations regarding privacy and security of the collected information, DHS, but CDT says that the standards set by DHS are minimumly adequeate and do not provide security necssasary for preventing theft of the data.
This is troublesom considering the public “outing” of sensitive, private, personal information given to the alleged “indicted pretexters” by the federal and state agencies. See prior post on pretext indictments.
Yeah, I trust DHS to protect our personal and sensitive information, don’t you?
Jimmie Meesis, PI Magazine, PI Mag, at FTC Workshop.
For those interested, here is the detailed FTC Workshop Agenda with panel members listed. FTC Agenda To view the agenda, click on the highlighted link and click second time on the “FTC Agenda” link on next page.
