Page 31 - NCISS Your Advocate April 2021

Restricting Professional Investigator Access to Public Records

Growing nationally state by state is the drive of misinformed privacy advocates, legislators, regulators, and even
governors to introduce restrictive - or outright bans - specific to Professional Investigators in various records important
to the work Professional Investigators do for our clients.

One such issue are driving records. Driven (no pun intended) by misinformation - and worse, assumption - several online
media sources have published misleading stories of states making millions from the selling of personal data. Professional
Investigators have expanded on this in this commentary. This is a rapidly growing trend - and it started with
irresponsible and unprofessional behavior on social media platforms.

There are several online privacy and technology magazines which have been focusing on privacy, records, and
Professional Investigators. These concepts have somewhat merged to present a false alarm of the technology of records
being easily obtained by Professional Investigators and generating millions in revenue for states. This is not true.

What started this misinformation?
In this case, and not solely - but from one of the articles - specifically stating they joined a closed Professional
Investigator group on social media. There they saw posts from Professional Investigators asking how to obtain specific
types of motor vehicle related records.

"Over 1,000 accounts have access to the [record provider] system, the contract adds. These accounts can be shared
among multiple people at an organization, though. In a closed Facebook group for Professional Investigators that
[writer] gained access to, multiple posts include people asking for others to [obtain certain records] for them through
their own access to [the record provider]."

What was described - asking another Professional Investigator to get information for them - is a violation of the record
provider's Terms of Service. This activity of careless Professional Investigators is not the underlying problem - and is
addressed by veteran Professional Investigators as soon as it is seen. The problem created was by the writer researching
further, and assuming the information from the record provider came from a state department of motor vehicles. It
does not - it comes from proprietary information used by law enforcement, repossession agents, and other legitimate
uses for potential and current litigation. From this assumption, the writer made open records requests of over a dozen
known states (from additional articles across various online publications). From these open records they found
Professional Investigators access these, and pay a fee. They then determined these state agencies make millions
annually from these records fees.

What is wrong with these assumptions and misinformation?
As Professional Investigators pointed out - none of the information the articles posted about actually came from any
state department of motor vehicles. However, Professional Investigators do legally make requests to these agencies for
permissible purposes - which the articles do not point out to the readers (who are legislators and their constituents). Do
these state agencies make millions of dollars? Certainly - and not from Professional Investigators or related (which is a
very small percentage). The bigger customers are insurance companies, banks, collection agencies, and so on -
Professional Investigator 's are way down the list.

These factors founded in other statutes and regulations Professional Investigators are bound to - such as the Fair Credit
Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Consumer Privacy Act (CPA), Graham-Leach-Bliley Act
(GLBA), and a host of others - each having a state equivalent. What is released depends on the requestor (licensed
Professional Investigator) and their purpose (litigation) - and differs depending on each factor. Each state may be more
restrictive than the federal legislation. For example, California does not provide address information (FYI - California was
the first to pass a DPPA law, followed by Congress, and each state*). As little as 25 years ago it was as simple as making a
request - any person and with no reason needed. A Professional Investigator in California did so for a client, who
unknown to him stalked a celebrity and killed her at home. The California Association of Licensed Investigators (CALI),
and the National Council of Investigation & Security Services (NCISS) had members (some the same for both

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