The Internet is a great place to be if you are hoping to start a business and get a hold on your savings. It can be a great place to meet friends and even a future lover. But the anonymity of the Internet is also a great drawback when it comes to truly knowing people. Moreover, you can get your identity stolen, and your doings online can be public knowledge. As the adage goes, nothing that you do online goes unnoticed.

With the privacy of the Internet truly a pipe dream, what other ways can privacy truly be a thing of the past? Biometrics technologies, which can implant microchips in order to track people, are currently engineered to track by location, but might be engineered one day to track people in terms of what they do, what their health is like, and what their secret lives are like. The merest video surveillance of our shopping malls, doctors’ offices, and entertainment venues is a sign that all eyes are on you and your safety.

As you can tell, although privacy is a thing of the past, it can be used for good. For instance, wireless communication can allow you to be tracked anywhere on the planet, which can be advantageous if you use a GPS device and get lost in the middle of nowhere on your way to a major city. Background checks on people might seem invasive, but you will thank private investigators one day when they turn up background checks on people that you want to hire, work with, or even marry!

The implications of privacy invasion, however, extend far beyond our own need to keep ourselves anonymous for the short term. Genetic privacy is becoming an issue especially for insurance companies, which might be given genetic data that could keep people from being insured for certain diseases to which they may be predisposed. Genetic privacy may also be an issue for certain employers who would want a clean bill of health on all their employees.

There are many other privacy issues that are impacting the way we look at the world today. For instance, social networking has become a way to expand a person’s network in order to get employed in the future, find friends, and expand one’s social circle in general. It has also become a haven for stalkers and identity theft. No one is exempt from the pitfalls of a lack of privacy: celebrities have their own paparazzi stalkers, and the time-tested method of secretive photography can make or break a career as much as a connection to the Internet can.

image credits to bejealousofme

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It’s probably the ultimate Catch-22 for private investigators – by investigating someone without their knowledge, you might actually be invading their privacy. But without invading their privacy, you might not be able to perform your job effectively and later find yourself out of business. So how and where do you draw the line?

Privacy, anyone?
The problem with the concept of privacy is that it’s very dynamic – it changes, depending on where you are, who you’re talking to, who’s doing the violation and why. In the past when analog reigned supreme, protecting your privacy as a civilian was much simpler.

With the more invasive technology available today, it has become quite challenging to do so. Information on virtually anybody can be obtained with just a few clicks on the mouse and a few characters typed on a keyboard. For a few dollars, certain private information such as a phone number or an address can be obtained, particularly if it’s in the public records.

Running your PI service
Probably one of the very first lessons in law you will need to acquaint yourself with as a working private investigator is the law regarding a person’s right to privacy. Under this law, individuals have the freedom to do, say and act as they please, knowing that whatever information is exchanged during that period cannot and should not be breached.

This explains why even PIs cannot obtain information from subjects using deceitful or unscrupulous means. You cannot, for example, steal information and use it against the subject. Even software being used to monitor and record calls and other sensitive information is being questioned.

Learning to draw the line
First off, you should, as a private investigator, understand the limits within which the law demands that you work. Remember that you may be working for your client’s interests but you are also on the side of the law. You can’t and shouldn’t break any legal provisions just for the sake of keeping your client. In the end, either you get charges filed against you or the evidence you broke the law to gather may be considered inadmissible.

If your client requests for a specific information about a subject that you know to be private, you should inquire why they need the information. Their answer should give you a clue on how this information will be used. In some cases, you’ll see that the reason why they want the information may not really be of the utmost importance and that you can help them in some other way to reach the results they want.

It’s important for you as a private investigator to understand that to be able to do your job well, you need to work with certain laws, particularly those that protect people’s rights to privacy. Learn to understand permissible purpose. By doing so, you will be able to do your job and protect your business at the same time.

image credits to mark wales

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