Is our industry really out of control or are we suffering from the effects of media hype? I lament the article in today’s Daily Telegraph entitled ‘Private detectives are out of control in Britain’. Although the article, written by Jake Wallis Simons, a well-respected journalist and author, is an effective piece of persuasive writing; for me, [...]
Figures released today by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show the devastating impact of online crime to UK businesses. As the cost of online crime rises year on year confidence in the police’s ability to tackle e-crime is decreasing. The BRC’s Counting the Cost of E-Crime report estimates that e-crime cost retailers £205.4 million in [...]
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee today released its long awaited findings on private investigators. It will come as no surprise to many in the industry that the committee recommends full licensing and regulation of the industry by 2015, but whether the political will exists to do so remains to be seen. The report [...]
Information brokers are all criminals and have nothing to do with the private investigation industry – according to a statement released by the Association of British Investigators (ABI). A rather surprising and sweeping over-simplistic and incorrect statement made by the UK’s longest running PI association – a statement that is bound to ruffle the feathers [...]
The ABI, the longest established organisation representing professional Private Investigators in the UK, has proposed that in order to practice as a professional investigator candidates must adhere to certain strict and far-reaching conditions. A statement published on the Association of British Investigator’s (ABI) website details proposals for the industry to move towards Chartered Institute status by [...]
Channel Four’s Watching the Detectives documentary last week stirred up the age-old debate on industry regulation. Or at least, it did in our office. The Home Affairs Committee Seminar on Private Investigators (HACSPI) met days after the documentary was aired to discuss some of the issues raised by the programme and, in particular, whether strict [...]
An undercover investigation into the illicit trade in personal information in Britain has revealed how easy it is for private investigators to obtain personal data illegally. A Channel 4 documentary to be aired tomorrow reveals that employees from two of Britain’s biggest companies unknowingly supplied confidential information to a private investigations firm. It is estimated [...]
For many years technical surveillance devices such as covert cameras, microphones and tracking devices have been used by law enforcement and security services within the United Kingdom to lawfully gather evidence and intelligence on individuals and organisations – intelligence that could not be obtained by any other means. There is no more damning evidence than [...]
If the circumstances weren’t so utterly chilling, private investigators might look on the recent case of Gravesend man Bhupinder Desi with a sigh of tired recognition. Desi was recently handed a five year prison sentence for plotting to have his mother-in-law killed. His undoing proved to be the private detective Tony Gaskin who Desi bizarrely [...]
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