If you have an asset worth protecting, it’s absolutely worth protecting the right way. And that usually means finding room in the annual budget for professional surveillance services from time to time.
There are many different types of professional surveillance, but the most popular are physical surveillance, digital surveillance and technical surveillance.
So whether you’re monitoring someone’s online activity, surveilling a person on foot or in a vehicle, or attempting to audio and/or visually record someone and then capturing that information for later use, professional surveillance services can protect you and your business in both the short term and the long term.
How exactly to private investigators effectively conduct these types of surveillance operations? Let’s look at a few of the most effective ways for doing so.
These days, it’s always best to begin with a quick online investigation. Pretty much everyone nowadays has a presence online and you can learn a lot about someone simply by powering up the computer and doing some quick Internet-based searches.
A good investigator can dive into public profiles, scour social media accounts and even check out digital databases, learning a lot about a person or company before ever leaving their desk.
A professional investigator is trained to blend into crowds and conduct surveillance without being noticed. This is what they do and most of them do it very well.
Investigators can identify a subject and tail them both on foot and in the car. This can go on for mere minutes or can drag into weeks and even months, depending on the scope of the investigation.
Investigators do this almost 100 percent on public property, however, as they must abide by the same laws as anyone else. This means steering clear of private property unless invited and never crossing a legal line that could get them in a heap of trouble with the authorities.
Private investigators know the importance of documentation and will go to extremes to ensure that everything they discover is correctly documented both for the client and for any possible legal proceedings.
A good investigator will take note of facts, but also of as many observations as he or she can possibly recall. Observations can either be hugely important items or ones that are small in nature and don’t seem all that important in the moment, but could become so later on.
What color is a person’s car? Are their curtains open or closed? What time did someone knock on their door?
These types of things can often prove to be vitally important to a client’s final resolution.
Professional investigators are trained not to follow too closely to a subject in order to avoid detection. The trick, of course, is to also not follow too far behind and risk losing the subject in heavy foot or vehicular traffic.
Proper surveillance means not being noticed and certainly not drawing attention to yourself. Investigators know how to become just like anyone else in a crowd, both by years of training and by experience on the job.
Every situation varies and good investigators will know how to change on the fly, adapting to their surroundings and to each specific situation as it develops
