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The Ethical Investigator

President’s Day Thoughts on Interviewing

By Philip Segal

February 14, 2020

In honor of President’s Day (still officially known as Washington’s Birthday) a few thoughts about interviewing. There are so many more facts about ourselves that are in our heads (or the heads of people we know) than there are in databases and court cases. Many times, to get as much as the truth as we need, we are forced to do interviews. To see this for yourself, Google yourself. How much of what you know…

The Ethical Investigator

When Databases Fail Us

By Philip Segal

November 29, 2019

There is a widespread belief among lawyers and other professionals that investigators, armed only with special proprietary databases, can solve all kinds of problems other professionals cannot. While certain databases are a help, we often tell our clients that even if we gave them the output of all the databases our firm uses, they would probably still not be able to come to most of the conclusions we do. That is because databases have incomplete,…

The Ethical Investigator

How to Improve Your On Line Security (Even if People Know Your Phone Number)

By Philip Segal

August 16, 2019

The New York Times published in interesting piece this week that was among its most popular: I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have. In it, the paper’s personal tech columnist Brian X. Chen explained how much information people can get about you with just your phone number. This includes “my current home address, its square footage, the cost of the property and the taxes I pay on it,” as well as…

The Ethical Investigator

Tracking Kim’s Mercedes: It’s All About What’s Not There

By Philip Segal

July 18, 2019

Not for the first time, the most compelling piece of information in an investigation is what isn’t there. We’ve written often before about the failure of databases and artificial intelligence to knit together output from various databases and I discussed the idea of what isn’t there in my book, The Art of Fact Investigation. Remember, two of the biggest red flags for those suspicious of Bernard Madoff were the absence of a Big Four…

The Ethical Investigator

The Bumbling Spies of Black Cube: Lawyers Beware

By Philip Segal

June 20, 2019

If you haven’t seen the amusing and disturbing piece in the Wall Street Journal this week about Black Cube, the band of former Mossad (Israeli secret service) agents, it’s worth a look. The article explains that Black Cube’s people run around the world pretending to be people they are not, in order to investigate private, commercial or legal matters for high-paying clients. It recounts a series of foul-ups, blown cover identities, arrests and other problems…

The Ethical Investigator

College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?

By Philip Segal

March 24, 2019

Get ready for college admissions scandals phase II, and maybe III, IV and V. The reason I think so? Because of the way it was discovered. Prosecutors didn’t break up the ring of bribing college coaches and exam proctors by using vast computing power, databases and algorithms, but by interviewing somebody. According to multiple reports, a suspect in a securities fraud case had heard about the admissions scamming going on and used it to bargain…

The Ethical Investigator

College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?

By Philip Segal

March 24, 2019

The Ethical Investigator

Artificial Intelligence: Good and Evil All at Once, Just Like its Creators

By Philip Segal

March 16, 2019

Have you ever noticed that artificial intelligence always seems much more frightening when people write about what it will become, but then how it can seem like imperfect, bumbling software when writing about AI in the present tense? You get one of each in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. The paper paints a horrific picture of what the ruthless secret police of the world’s dictatorships will be able to do with AI in The Autocrat’s …

The Ethical Investigator

Atlanta Paper Exposes Widespread Violation of Federal Law by Private Investigators and the Lawyers That Enable Them

By Philip Segal

October 12, 2018

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 else in order to trick the bank into handing over account information, and with a few narrow exceptions, you need…

The Ethical Investigator

Attorney Ethics 101: Fraud is Not Allowed

By Philip Segal

October 3, 2018

The non-legal press doesn’t usually get very deep into questions of legal ethics, but New York Magazine did a reasonable job of it in its hard-hitting piece this week on “The Bad, Good Lawyer” David Boies. The article asks whether Boies has crossed an ethical line, principally in his work on behalf of Harvey Weinstein (This blog argued before that he did, in The Weinstein Saga: Now Featuring Lying Investigators, Duplicitous Journalists, Sloppy Lawyers.)…

The Ethical Investigator

Blog Authors

President’s Day Thoughts on Interviewing

When Databases Fail Us

How to Improve Your On Line Security (Even if People Know Your Phone Number)

Tracking Kim’s Mercedes: It’s All About What’s Not There

The Bumbling Spies of Black Cube: Lawyers Beware

College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?

College Admissions Scandal: More Indictments Coming?

Artificial Intelligence: Good and Evil All at Once, Just Like its Creators

Atlanta Paper Exposes Widespread Violation of Federal Law by Private Investigators and the Lawyers That Enable Them

Attorney Ethics 101: Fraud is Not Allowed

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