PI Industry Blogs Creates Paranoia Rather Than Educate

Why do so many PI Industry blogs seemingly like to create paranoia within the industry rather than educate it's fellow members?

I subscribe to many online groups, blogs and associations. I also subscribe to many PI industry trade magazines. The majority of the articles and blogs written by fellow Private Investigators or self-described "industry experts", tend to document their opinions or interpretations of the law rather than educating the industry of the facts.

Here is one example of such a post from
http://www.informationweek.com/

It's Official: Pretexting Is Illegal - President Bush signed a bill last week making a controversial practice known as "pretexting," a federal offense. The law specifically forbids the act of misrepresentation, impersonation or deception in order to obtain personal telephone information. Just five months ago, pretexting fell into a gray area of the law. The complete post can be found by clicking here.

This and other uneducated posts only allow one to speculate what the law is and only offers an uneducated interpretations of the law, rather than disclose the factual nature of the law itself.

I have personally tried to post factual information regarding pretext laws and each time the moderator of some PI groups have exercised their right to sensor my opinion by not posting my message.

I have have specialized in telephone investigations since 1997, in the last year the FTC, FCC, Congress and even several State's Attorney Generals offices have focused on how information brokers and private investigators have accessed telephone / cellular call records from the various Telco carriers.

In their investigation into this issue these government agencies have found that the primary way information brokers and private investigators have gained access to these records have been by "pretexting" the carrier in a variety of creative ways.

Their investigation prompted President Bush to sign into law H.R. 4709 - The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006.

The term Pretext can be defined as: Obtaining secret or private information by pretending to be someone eligible to see that information; in other words, giving a fictitious identity (pretext) to obtain restrictive information.

While this sounds illegal, it is not.

In fact the ONLY laws I have found that prohibit pretexting are limited to pretext for financial information (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999),
and now for call records (H.R. 4709 - The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006).

While I certainly obey the current laws and must agree with them, I disagree with the opinion when the term "pretext" as a whole is used or interpreted as illegal. And, in fact is an essential tool for many industries including the Private Investigative Industry, police officers, collection agencies and even our government.