Do you use any media monitoring or alerting tools to track activity involving the subjects of an investigation?
When conducting an investigation, do you use any tools or services to monitor news reports, social media updates, blogs, or other open source outlets for information pertaining to your investigation? Do you use press clipping services, Google Alerts, or any other such tools for this purpose? How effective are they and what would you like to see improved?
Good Answers (2)
Tamara T
San Francisco Bay Area Private Investigator, Internet/Genealogy Research; tamara@tamarathompsoninvestigations.com
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (2), Criminal Law (1)
Funny you should ask this now because this week I wrote, "7 News Trackers - Search Companies and Topics By Keyword". http://pibuzz.com/2009/10/11/newstrackers/
Another approach is to construct queries in the different search engines (each of Google's, and the others) and turn those into RSS feeds. Do this for Twitter, too, at the major search engines, and keep a steady stream flowing to your reader of your keywords.
Also monitor web pages through watchthatpage.com and turning the web page into an RSS feed.
Thanks for another great question.
Check out Trackle.com. I cannot take credit for this site though. Cynthia (The guru) Hetherington passed it along at HTCIA. Almost overwhelming if you don't set up the filters correctly. Probably the best I have seen recently.
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Dean C also suggests this expert on this topic:
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Al M
Computer Professional in IBM Midrange
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If you are with the cops & have a good case to take to a judge, I am sure you can get a warrant to have a person's ISP record all their traffic, like a phone tap and have the post office record all addresses that send them snail mail.
PIPL can identify where their name is mentioned, which includes a lot of other people with similar names.
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Yes, to all the above. Without getting into detail though and I hope you could understand why. The methods are very effective. As far as improvement, as technology grows we grow with it. Most of the major improvements that need to be made are within the Criminal Justice System,, and within training Investigators to use the open source information more effectively.
Ed W
Computer Expert in Forensics and problem solving
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Social media has started to elliminate the need for private investigation. Transaction, blogs, twiter, facebook alike allow any person or law enforcement official to gather a significant amount of information of a person persons or events simply with a few key strokes on the internet. Then anyone can establish good ole fashion police work for themselves. They can establish profiles, connections and in some cases even timelines without so much as involving a court order or violating a legal rule or statute. How effective is this? This is dependent on what you are seeking. What would I like see changed? I think I will wait on that as technology of communications changes quickly new information becomes readily available to anyone willing to take the time to do the search. This now becomes upto the individual performing the search and or survailance. Perserverance is a big motivator here. Tools are required for more specific requirements, such as decoding packets and specific protocol transmissions. Use of such tools may require additional legal proceeding to utilize them with any positive results and some expertise in the operation of such tools. If you are seeking the culmination of information freely transmitted then a simple internet search is typically require. Specific details of a particular transmission may require specific hardware, expertise and legal order to utilize them.
