We Fight, Because We Believe.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Myspace Investigation News

I found an interesting post on the Facebook page of an old blogger friend, a recent story on the impact of Social Networking websites on defendants in court:
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case...
Yup, Myspace Investigations are not limited to use by us criminal defense specialists.

Be Smart out there people...for gawds sake!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Where There Is Smoke...

....there is really disgusting air quality.

So, I toyed with the idea of disappearing again but I decided against it. There is something about this blawg I just don't want to give up. Maybe its because I've had a few scares in the last year and a half which involved the possibility of being outed as the author of TOAPDI.

I don't really know what the worse thing is that could have happened. I'm not sure if I could be fired for blogging but I'm not an attorney that specializes in employment law and the truth is I've never blogged at work AND I don't blog about specifics on ACTIVE cases. I guess I'm just trying to convince myself that I'm safe.

I'm probably not.

Thankfully, I was left alone (for whatever reason) and I survive to type another entry.

Aside from the oh so slowly improving (but still shitty) air quality here in California (we've still got a few lingering fires), the only other good news is that Myspace fixed their search feature a few weeks ago. It is ONCE AGAIN investigator friendly in searching for elusive witnesses and digging up information on pretty much anyone with a Myspace account.

On the investigations front, I've had a few difficult clients in the last months which almost made me want to turn in my county badge to management and head for the hills. Luckily, after much discussion with some friends and fellow PDI'S...I changed my mind. The reality is I have bills to pay and quitting would just be silly. Silly and impractical...for now.

As far as ACTUAL investigation related posts go, I've got yet another Myspace Investigation related post that I'm trying to decide how to share. It involves some technical but really obvious techniques that will allow you to access photo albums that belong to a select few Myspace users. I'm hesitant to post the directions on my blog because anyone can access it and I don't want to send out a zillion emails to everyone that asks for it. If anyone has any ideas I'd certainly be willing to entertain any simple solutions.

I've set-up a Password Protected Wiki for Defense Investigators and Public Defenders which I haven't released yet...mostly because of time restraints. Its probably the best place to post some of my Myspace Investigation material and I could limit its access to people with government email addresses. I've just been trying to fill it out a bit but its a lot more work (and a bit more complicated) than I expected and I'm not sure how many tech savvy investigators out there would be willing to contribute to something like this.

I just typed a shitload of nothing didn't I? It feels like I've just been rambling but its where my head is at right now. I've got to go sleepy. More later.