this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024

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139

Would it be legal to crowdfund a licensed private detective to investigate a public figure and publish their results publicly? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This started in my head as a plot device in a story, but I was wondering if it'd actually fly in the real world.

There are many public figures who almost certainly have closets which are positively creaking to bursting point with skeletons. Politicians, especially. Can you hire a private detective to investigate someone without having a clear goal in mind? Like, just "investigate until the money runs out" kinda thing, in the hopes that eventually something incriminating or reputationally hazardous is found?

Is this legal? If so, who should we send the P.I.s after first? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

It would be interesting to see how certain people would behave if they simply heard we were planning this. Like, would JD Vance suddenly start burning shit in a barrel in his backyard if he heard about the army of P.I.s we've paid to look into him? We could make that the scheme: go through the motions of crowdfunding an investigation, but the real P.I. will be watching the named individuals and seeing what they do in response to the threat 👀

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Is this legal?

Yes, it's called "opposition research" (frequently abbreviated "oppo") and the political parties do it constantly to one another. Because they're doing it this much, and because they have a LOT less scruples than you do, they've probably already uncovered everything you would. But maybe not all.

In addition, doing this publicly would put the target on alert, so they'd specifically run interference against whoever you hired. This wouldn't make their job impossible, but definitely harder.

And, finally, whatever new dirt you do manage to gather might not matter. The things Trump has done that the public already knows about should be enough to put him in prison for life, and yet he's still in the current US presidential election instead of incarceration.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At this point, I'm not sure if he'd lose even 1% in the polls if a recording came out showing him with Epstein, explicitly stating he'll take the 12 year old girl, then dropping his pants. Most of his supporters would claim it was fake, some would claim it was out of context because they didn't release any footage of actual sex, and at least a few would argue that there's nothing wrong with sex with 12 year olds.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Well yeah, because he would "marry" the girl, then rape her, then divorce her. Perfectly legal and therefore moral. /s

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You publicly announce that you raised enough for the second best private eye in the area, and also secretly hire the number one. Tapping head gif

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Did you just invent donating to ProPublica?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I was thinking the same thing. This seems like investigative journalism that's more public and without the ethics and rigor part.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

When asking yourself such questions, ask what law(s) might be broken. There are plenty I'm sure, but your PI should know exactly how to stay out of trouble. Unless when, maybe later, it comes out that he was up to shenanigans...

And no, I'm certain no justification is required to contract a PI. Imagine if there was, no one would do the job.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Obviously, it would depend on which country you're asking.

No idea about the US, but what you're describing has kinda been done. The PIs were hired for a set amount of time to track some politicians during the day, and were supplemented by freedom of information requests and data from public sources.

Most of the findings were what you would expect (Some parliament members barely came to the parliament, some had days with mostly political activists/lobbing/business magnate). There were a few "out there" examples, as one parliament member was doing grocery shopping etc. Thing is, this method is pretty good to figure out what politicians work for the public and who works for private interests, but it's nearly impossible to actually uncover anything that's even skirting on the illegal. A PI can't wiretap or search private property.

A tangent, but In the same spirit, there's a crowdfunded lobbying agency called Lobby 99.

[+] [email protected] -27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Google says stalking is a crime in 50 US states.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Private investigations are not considered stalking.

[+] [email protected] -22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I seriously doubt that. I didn't read the law but I'd be surprised if it contains an exception for PIs. And I think I read about some private investigators and paparazzi getting into trouble with the law. I mean downvote me all you want, but I'm pretty sure it's a delicate matter not to cross any lines in such a job. And probably more so if you lack a legitimate reason and do surveillance on some person's private life.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

I seriously doubt that. I didn't read the law but

Mmhmmm

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The down votes are about not having done due diligence.

Private investigators don't break stalking laws because they don't need to. They can do their jobs comfortably, from a distance, without any illegal acts at all.

For the question in the post itself, they don't even need to have anything to do with the subject of their job. They'll be looking into backgrounds, digging through records as their main method. Most of what any PI does is digging through records.

Even when they observe and record current activity of a person, there's no need to violate stalking laws the get the job done, because those laws are written with pretty specific language. With the caveat that the exact wording is going to vary by jurisdiction, there's no sustained harassment, or any direct contact at all during a normal PI job. Even photography or other records are made from a distance, and in places where the expectation of privacy doesn't apply. More important, they don't sustain that level of surveillance past the point where the case ends.

Now, that's not saying that individual PIs don't cross the line, they probably do, the same as paparazzi do, though probably far less often since their entire job is expensive to pay for, and they won't be paid if they end up in trouble for breaking laws while doing something unnecessary.

In other words, movies and TV vastly misconstrue what the job is actually like.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Then I misunderstood what the question is about. With your definition and the original question in mind, it'd boil down to doing journalism. Of course that isn't illegal. But it also has some severe restrictions when it comes to individual people and their private life. You can't just doxx someone and publish everything invading their privacy. And here also different rules apply to the person investigating and the person publishing the information. But the rules for private investigators still apply.

And I still think a good part of what a private investigator does is things like finding out if someone cheated on their spouse. And that includes following people. And they better not tell how much they exactly followed someone, but instead only take a picture when they actually caught their suspect doing something wrong. Which they can't do with the premise of this story... Without a clear goal, they'd have to become more like a paparazzi. Which might be closer to illegal and the movie PI than their usual job.

And sure, other parts of their job is probably digging through social media, paper trails when it comes to money, investigating if someone embezzles money or is in breach of a contract. But I don't think it applies fully in this situation.

However, if you find a politician embezzles money, or poses for the working class and secretly owns 5 mansions in Miami, and you call them out... That's regular journalism. You just need to make sure to obtain that information legally. Or claim you got that from a mysterious source. And adhere to the standards of journalism. You can't publish when they fetch their kids from school and then someone goes ahead and uses that information to harass their 12yo daughter.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So do you know what a PI is generally hired for?

There's a narrow swatch of misbehavior that the "skeletons" would need to be, for a PI to take the case and get involved. The client would have to have some vested interest or harm done to them, or some idea that the target is doing some harm to somebody before taking the case.

If the idea was get dirt to be vindictive, the PI would not take the case.

If they did take the case and there was evidence that things were clearly criminal, (quid pro quo, malfeasance, etc) they would refer the case to actual police. They would only continue investigating if the police declined to investigate, and their purpose would be privately prosecuting the person. ( Basically filing a suit to whatever court, like you were suing the person but you prove the criminal acts and they get sentenced potentially)

If the skeleton was more of a civil harm like a breach of duty or breach of contract, the PI would gather evidence relevant to the harm, and not provide their client with irrelevant information like who their favorite callgirl is or whatever bathhouse they frequent. They would also not share info about infidelity unless their client was the spouse that was being cheated on.

Still, what you think a legitimate reason could or couldn't be probably doesn't match up with what actually would be the basis of some surveillance.

This comment is super cliff notes, and based on some PI training in Ontario Canada that I couldn't make myself complete after I realised that it would be more of the same bullshit shiftwork that I was trying to get away from 10 years ago.

OP might have a good time calling some PI firms local to them and asking to pay for a consult and fact check his narrative.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think that's why I wrote about stalking, doxing and and the job of journalists. I think it's generally not well aligned to the job of a private investigator. I think you could do it as a journalist. Have some idea that someone feels fishy and see if you can dig something up and write an article about it. There might be some overlap with the two jobs in the methods. And OP's question came from a story idea. Maybe there are unprofessional investigators without morale? I think some professional with an interest to keep their job will certainly not cross the lines, do illegal methods and then also document it... They'll probably just refuse to do that job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Legitimate reasons could be contrived. The question isn't what it takes to get a PI to investigate, the question should be what it would take for them to spill unrelated tea.

The first step in opening an investigation is investigate your client. Their relationship to the subject and the validity of the harms that they might have suffered or the validity of whatever narrative of criminality.

If you manage to pass that smell test, the information you get from the investigation would be severely limited to the scope of validating and proving that the harms occurred.

Again, you could get them to do stuff for you. You might not be able to get any useful information past that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

And if my grandma had wheels she'd be a bus