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 of banking records. You are not allowed to pretend to be someone
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 gain as artificial intelligence gets smarter.
Computers may be able to do a lot
Another EB-5 visa fraud, more burned investors. For people outside the United States trying to pick a reputable investment that will get them permanent residency in the U.S., sorting through hundreds of projects is often the hardest part of the job.
There is plenty written about what you should do before you invest, one of
Lawyers need to find witnesses. They look for assets to see if it’s worth suing or if they can collect after they win. They want to profile opponents for weaknesses based on past litigation or business dealings.
Every legal matter turns on facts. Most cases don’t go to trial, fewer still go to appeal, but
We don’t usually think of the law as the place our most creative people go. Lawyers with a creative bent often drift into business, where a higher risk tolerance is often required to make a success of yourself. Some of our greatest writers and artists have legal training, but most seem to drop out when
What lesson does the Brexit vote hold for anyone conducting or contemplating fact investigation?
Don’t let confirmation bias muddy your thinking.
One of the key “Investigator’s Enemies” identified in my book, The Art of Fact Investigation, confirmation bias is what many of us tend to do when looking into an issue: we find what
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal about “Why the Virtual Reality Hype is About to Come Crashing Down” makes the simple point that computers haven’t caught up to all the permutations of real life to make a “virtual reality” headset experience resemble a genuine experience.
A short demo is one thing, but life goes
The current fight between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice, which is trying to execute a search warrant in a criminal matter, has been framed by Apple and its defenders as a battle over privacy.
Apple is not arguing that the information sought should never be seen by the government. The company handed over
There is a sad piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the demise of librarians and university programs in library science, In the Age of Google, Librarians Get Shelved. 
People trained to run computers do not have the training to gather facts the way librarians do. I count as a loss the presence of
Due diligence is all about following up on red flags, but if you don’t find them, there’s nothing on which to follow up.
Thus, our tireless refrain: turn over every piece of public record information you can about a person, and don’t leave it to others.
We were reminded of this by the story this