The Death of Call Records

The once mighty call records report that many private investigators, law enforcement officers and, as we found out last year, even our own President George Bush used to thwart criminal activities has officially ended in Texas.

The Texas law that prohibits the unauthorized distribution of call records was activated on September 1, 2007, approximately 8 months after the federal law that President Bush signed in January, 2007. This law, or a close variation, has passed in a number of states this year and I expect many of the remaining states to follow.

I personally posted the following on one of the PI Groups in 2006;

Anyone who is reading this knows that phone records are a vital part of our business. These records have NEVER been found to harm anyone or offend anyone who did not have something to hide? In fact we have helped law enforcement & government agencies (at no cost), insurance agencies, bail enforcement agents, financial institutions, collection agencies, other PI's, and many families;

• Find Missing Children
• Locate Run-a-ways
• Bail Jumpers
• Locate Murderers
• Find Rapists
• Locate People & Collateral
• Detect Insurance Fraud

I have been a proponent of this socially unpopular tool, and I have taken my share of criticism, however, I know this tool helped many and hurt few. The ones that were damaged apparently had something to hide.

I believe and respect the law. It is just sad that as a law abiding citizen and private investigator I am seeing the government crush many valuable tools we have to help stave off fraud (call records, pre-texting, social security number access, etc) while they unknowingly aid the criminals and the deadbeats by "protecting" our rights.

In closing; While we watch criminals get away, missing children stay missing, interest rates sky rocket because deadbeat accounts go unpaid and secured collateral go un-found, we can all thank our government officials for protecting us from ourselves.

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator