Yes. It’s true that workings of how we receive them are closely-guarded by their makers. However, the practices required to analyze and pattern-match them in an ongoing investigation are not.
Writing an effective research query is not a trade secret. Interpreting their output doesn’t require membership fees or hacking into some black box. Interrogating a database is not some covert operation, shrouded in mystery. These practices are certainly not beyond the electronic access, mental grasp, or imaginative capacity of most investigators.
They do require that we wander outside the search box and bring into the open the frameworks we can begin to:
⦁ evidence-gather,
⦁ fact-confirm,
⦁ pattern-match,
⦁ background-check, and
⦁ ultimately build and strengthen our cases from the many shades-of-gray that comprise the findings of an investigation.
I ask the questions no one is asking about search. Why do we assume the search engine knows our motives for searching? Why are source-based investigations so hard to count on? Why are these findings made known to us? Especially the ones we’re not asking for? Why does it fit or reject our theories of the case? Our clients’ motives for hiring us?
Indeed, Searching Out Loud supports the elevated perspective of the detached investigator whose travels run through the technology of the web, the discipline of case management, and the passion for chasing the evidence trail with a distraction-free curiosity that’s off limits to our pursuants — regardless of who determines where that trail may lead.
