I’ve always loved problem solving, especially puzzles that have to do with figuring out human behavior. Crime stories fascinate me for that reason and when I met a real-life private detective at a dinner party one spring evening in 2006, I couldn’t help myself: “If you can use an assistant,” I said, “I would love to do some work for you.” As a freelance consultant at the United Nations, I worked from home and on my own schedule. I could easily fit some extra hours into my week. And, you never know, maybe I could make a career out of it. How cool would it be to be a private eye?
But I was utterly unprepared when a few days later the private investigator called me and said, “I have a job for you.” That evening, I was to stake out a television executive whose wife suspected him of cheating. He’d called her last minute to say he was going to be late. Supposedly, he was going to have dinner with clients at a midtown steakhouse. “Bring a friend if you can,” the private detective told me “and park yourselves at the bar.” I had expected to start in the office, familiarizing myself with cases before, eventually, I joined him on an assignment. I hadn’t expected to plunge right into staking out people on my own.
Before I put the phone down, he’d emailed me the details of the restaurant and two photos of the guy. I enlisted a girlfriend who also worked at the UN to join me. I was excited and nervous. What if we didn’t recognize him? I kept sneaking looks at the photo printouts in my purse. This was 2006, before smart phones and selfies. But we were prepared to act like tourists, taking photos of each other with our small digital cameras. To our great disappointment, the guy walked in with three other men. I called the private detective to tell him, then called him again when the guy left and jumped into a limo.
A couple of days later, my friend and I took a bus to Philadelphia, where the same guy was going on an overnight business trip. We were all pumped up that we were being paid to follow and catch a cheating husband.
It was intoxicating—observing another person without his knowledge, putting the pieces of the puzzle together—but it was also shocking to learn how easy it was. We raced behind him in high heels, keeping up with his fast pace as we followed him down the busy sidewalks from one hotel to another. He never once turned back. He didn’t spot us in the lobby, watching him as he mingled at a party in the gallery upstairs. He didn’t see us follow him back to the hotel at the end of the evening when the streets were deserted.
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Years later, I used this experience in my debut novel where one of my characters stalks another, digging for information about her online, following her repeatedly on the street. But it wasn’t until my fictional stalker defended herself, claiming that what she was doing was no different from the work of private investigators, that I considered the parallel between surveillance and stalking. When you’re paid to follow someone on behalf of someone else in the capacity of a private eye, you’re staking out that person, but if you follow someone for your own reasons, it is stalking.
But is that right? On the surface, the stalker in my novel and I engaged in the same sleuthing behavior; and yet, there were major differences. Like the reasons why we were doing it.
When you’re paid to follow someone on behalf of someone else in the capacity of a private eye, you’re staking out that person, but if you follow someone for your own reasons, it is stalking.Private detectives are usually hired to uncover evidence in corporate and family law cases—exposing cheating spouses and employees, helping determine child-custody cases, background checks for employers.
There are other innocuous reasons why someone might follow another person. For example, some travel experts recommend following locals when in a new city as a way to find off-the-beaten-path attractions or the best places to eat.
Stalkers on the other hand, do it with the intention of harassing and alarming their victims. A scorned lover, for example, who follows his ex-partner does so with the goal to control and intimidate.
Stalking is a crime in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories. Legal definitions vary from one jurisdiction to another, but it is generally described as intentionally and repeatedly following or harassing another person in circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. Therefore, even if you don’t mean harm (as some stalkers claim), as long as your actions engender fear, it is considered stalking.
On the other hand, your intentions might be quite impure but if the person doesn’t know you’re following him, legally it’s not stalking. Because for there to be stalking, the victim needs to feel fear.
Private eyes take special care not to be seen because they cannot risk frightening the person. “If we figure out that the subject might have spotted us, we’re going to pull off,” says Rob Kimmons, president of Kimmons Investigative Services in Houston, TX. “You may scare him or there may be a confrontation you don’t want.” But there are some clients who want exactly that. On a few occasions, Kimmons has been told by the wife who hired him to follow her husband, “I want him to know that you’re out there.” That wouldn’t be surveillance but plain old harassment, and private detectives don’t take such cases.
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Advancements in technology have made keeping track of people much easier than it was back in 2006, and both private eyes and stalkers take advantage of it.
“Our work has changed dramatically on several fronts,” says Kimmons. One of the big changes is the use of GPS trackers. “You can buy a good tracker for less than $300 and install it on the bumper very easily with a magnet or Velcro.” Vehicle trackers are particularly useful, he explains, when the client’s budget does not allow for two cars/two investigators surveillance. Because even if you lose the subject in traffic, you still have him on the GPS and know in which direction to head. There are legal restrictions however. “The only time we can use trackers,” Kimmons says, “is if our client has ownership of the vehicle and gives us written permission to use the tracker.”
The work of private detectives is regulated. Except for five states—Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, South Dakota and Wyoming—private investigators need a license to set up shop. Also, only legally obtained evidence is admissible in court. Stalkers of course have no regards for the law and can avail themselves freely of any technology out there that can serve their needs, including using bionic ears (originally made for birdwatchers) for eavesdropping. Scanners that some people use to listen to police radio can also be used to tune in on someone’s cellphone conversation in the apartment next door.
Popular and easy to use technologies like GPS trackers have taken some business away from private investigators. “People now try to do it themselves,” says Jerry Palace, a retired New York City Police Detective, who has been operating his own detective company, Check-A-Mate, for years. Spouses suspecting infidelity can easily install a tracking device on the car or phone of their partners. They don’t worry about the legal restrictions the way private investigators have to and use all means available to hack into their significant others’ emails and social media accounts. There are programs that record each key stroke on the keyboard and I personally know someone who caught his wife cheating this way. But amateur sleuthing has also led to countermeasures work for detective agencies, who often get hired to find tracking devices and software on clients’ cars, phones and computers.
Using your phone to take photos and videos is often the most inconspicuous option.Ironically, improvements in technology have for the most part wiped out the use of sophisticated devices like the ones you can find in spy shops. “Ten years ago, we had daily planners with cameras and all kinds of gadgets,” says Kimmons, “but now, with smart phones, you really don’t need any of that.” Using your phone to take photos and videos is often the most inconspicuous option. In addition to phones, most of Kimmons’s detectives use drive cams hooked to the rear-view mirror which are very helpful especially to document that someone is driving drunk, as is often needed in child custody cases.
Another change in the work of private detectives brought on by technological advances is computer forensics. “We use forensics on probably a third of our cases,” says Kimmons. It is helpful for recovering deleted emails or other information that can be used as evidence in court in both corporate and family cases. But that work is very different from the investigative side of the business and some detectives and agencies, like Kimmons’, have chosen to outsource the work to labs specializing in it.
Facial-recognition services, like Amazon’s Rekognition, are advertised as helpful to finding lost and missing children but can also be used to spy on people, whether by governments or stalkers. Amazon insists that it requires customers to comply with the law and to respect the rights of others. The question is, how can they enforce it? To demonstrate how easy it is to track people without their knowledge, a New York Times team recently used it with footage from three cameras in Bryant Park whose feeds are streamed online. You can learn people’s daily habits—when they arrive at work, when they break for coffee, who they go to lunch with and so on, all of it collected legally. The use of facial recognition is almost entirely unregulated in the United States. Interestingly enough, the same technology can be used against stalkers as Taylor Swift has reportedly done at one of her shows, using facial recognition to help identify her stalkers in the crowd.
Back when I worked for the private eye, social media was just beginning to gain momentum. Today it has made it much easier to spy on people, and both private investigators and stalkers take advantage of the wealth of information we voluntarily provide.
“It’s been part of our investigation for quite a while now,” says Kimmons. “I’d say 80% of the cases, especially due diligence and family law cases, we’re always going to check social media—Facebook, Linked in. It’s standard.”
It’s easy to find people’s addresses, previous names and marriages on the Internet. However, just like with following someone on the street, the victim needs to know about your behavior for it to be legally considered cyberstalking. According to an attorney specializing in sexual misconduct investigations, who asked to remain anonymous, “I can Google you 100 times a day but if you are unaware of it, legally I’m not doing any damage.”
There is a reason why we’ve coined terms like ‘Google stalking,’ defined by techopedia as “looking up in-depth information on someone using the Google search engine on the Internet.” It might not be illegal but it’s definitely creepy.
