NYC P.I. dispenses investigative advice, information, legal marketing tips, opinions, interesting stuff... Look for the Bulletin each Monday.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Diabetic Reaction or Drunk Driving?
We found the original Star Wars drunk driving PSA. But no joke:
Good company: great product. TruTouchTechnologies, immediate dermal alcohol testing results.
In a previous Bulletin, we brought your attention to a great company with an important, life-saving message and product:
TruTouch Technologies has developed a device that measures blood chemistry in a driver by shining a light through skin on the forearm, then analyzes what bounces back... Previously used for diabetes testing, this type of technology is now advanced to measure alcohol through the skin's layers.
How Not To Commit A Misdemeanor While Process Serving
Subsequent to conducting a locate (and they can be as easy as the one in the above vid!) and confirming the subject's address: the service of process begins.
Service of process is the procedure employed to give legal notice to a person (defendant etc.) of a court or administrative body's exercise of its jurisdiction over that person so as to enable that person to respond to the proceeding before the court, body or other tribunal. Usually, notice is furnished by delivering a set of court documents to the person to be served.
History: In past times in many countries, people didn't have the right to know that there were legal proceedings against them, and in some cases would only find out when magistrates showed up with the sheriff and seized their property, sometimes throwing them into debtor's prisons until their debts were paid. When the United States was founded, the Constitution said that everyone is entitled to due process of law, therefore the process server is "serving" the servee with their constitutional right to due process of the law.
In ancient times the service of a summons was considered a royal act that had serious consequences. It was a summons to come to the King's Court and to respond to the demand of a loyal subject. In ancient Persia, failure to respond to the King's summons meant a sentence of death. (There are many Judges in the USDC, Souythern District, NY, who believe that edict to still be in existence.) Realistically, today, the penalty for ignoring a summons is usually a default money judgment that must be subsequently enforced.
Service of Process: NY Facts: Who can serve? Any legal U.S. resident at least 18 years of age at the time of service, who is not a party to the action requiring the service.
Is a license to process serve required? Generally, yes.
Can a private citizen, not licensed to serve process, do so? Any private citizen can serve process up to 4 times in one calendar year without requiring a specific license to do so (and who is, obviously, not a party to the action necessitating the service.)
Can one process serve on the weekend?
Sunday: Service of process, on Sunday, in NY (and several other states), is prohibited, except in criminal proceedings or where service is specially authorized by statute. Outside of those exceptions, service of process executed on a Sunday in NY is rendered absolutely void.
Saturday: Malicious service of process, on Saturday, in NY, upon any person who keeps this day as a holy day, and does not labor on that day, is prohibited. In fact, anyone maliciously serving process to a person who maintains Saturday as a holy time and does not labor on that day, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
So our general rules for process serving are: Serve from 8x8 M-F, be sure on Sat., and forget Sunday.
Our IT department was recently asked to recommend a password management program best suited for the legal office; a security-conscious environment with multiple users accessing dozens of internal and external password-protected sites on a daily basis.
Sure, an admin manager can assign one strong word per site, but that's not very secure. We've also heard of firms maintaining their passwords in employee-access-only Excel files. Timewise, that's not a good solution as one would have to refer to the Excel file for the password upon each site visit. Conceivably, the admin manager can set up a hash system, but as more and more site log-ins require boutique passwords (e.g., a password containing 6 - 14 characters, one of which must be a digit and one each upper and lower cases digit), this system quickly becomes unmanageable.
Roboform. It really works and works great. It is a program that remembers all of your passwords for each Web site. For instance, for Lexis, when you site-in, it asks for your ID and password, if you enter your information, RoboForm will pop up asking if you want to save this information. You click yes. The next time you go to Lexis, RoboForm automatically pops up asking if you want to fill in the information and it submits it for you. There is a free trial which allows you to keep up to 10 passwords. The program itself is $29.99/tracking an unlimited number of passwords. It will even generate a random password for you if you want.
RoboForm also keeps track of your personal information and credit card numbers, if you want it to. So should you decide to buy something on the Web, it will fill in all those forms for you.
You can secure RoboForm from anyone else using your computer as you can require a password for it to open and operate. This way, all you have to remember is that one RoboForm password and RF does the rest.
Stay safe,
Jonathan Caspian Writer, Beacon Bulletin CIO, Beacon Network Investigations, Inc.
Employee SSN Verifications and a Live Job Interview
We hope you enjoy the above job interview vid. BNI investigators have conducted numerous pre-employment screenings, and although we've had our share of interesting interviews, we take our responsibilities seriously, knowing our findings will have a direct impact on a company's operations and finances. Our first responsibility is to ensure the identity of the prospective employee. We've observed a discernable pattern among the majority of non-verifiable candidates in these situations. Those applicants requested to provide additional identification information or that were eventually disqualified for employment were initially flagged due to an incompatibility between their stated and verified Social Security Number issuance dates (e.g. a candidate declared U.S. residency as of 1997; the SSN provided had been issued in 1985).
Background checks are generally conducted utilizing progressively aggressive (and costly) methods/sources as necessary; our usual first stop is a very simple and free SSN verification site:
What Happens In Your Office, Stays In Your Office: Wi-Fi Security
Recently, BNI operatives met with a longstanding Midtown Manhattan client to discuss the firm's expansion to a wireless office. We've observed this trend among many law firms and have, and continue, to monitor our clients' Wi-Fi security needs.
Below are several quick tips that will hopefully address some of the initial concerns of going wireless:
1. Encrypt. If you are a small firm and doing this yourself, we suggest any of the CNET 3 stars+ rated programs at http://www.download.com/. If you are having someone else doing it: confirm that they have the ability to fully encrypt and that the management aspect is easily and quickly converted to your staff.
2. Select your IP address. Default IP address ranges are typically 192.168.x.x. Make sure your unique address is in the 10. or 172. ranges.
3. Add more firewall cover. Tie your wireless into something harder to punch a hole through like a domain controller with hardware firewall. That will be in front of your public facing IP address.
4. Restrict connections. Easily written but as you would not give just anyone your office keys; install a gatekeeper and keep tabs.
The above tips are probably overkill for a home connection, but a lawyer's office can be a goldmine for those seeking early retirement through others' efforts.
