I worked for a private investigations firm in Canada and we worked American files. We had access to this database which small law enforcement agencies use. It's not like a credit bureau where you get just the info on the person you're investigating. It works by association. You can plug in a couple of pieces of info, like any phone number or street address and a name - and you'll get the person you're researching. You click on their social security number and you get any address they've ever lived at (including ones you hadn't thought were reported). You click on any of those addresses and you can see every person who has ever lived at that address - click on their social security and the process repeats. You can run scripts to see patterns of cohabitation, and you can also find out info on everything from cars owned to employment to businesses owned. I get why law enforcement would have access to this. We weren't law enforcement. While the company that developed this database and software was strict with what info was being harvested from the database, with stiff fines for messing around with celebrity data etc (what business would anyone have finding out how much Bill Gates' boat is worth) - it's still freaky that PRIVATE COMPANIES and any yokel working for them - can have access. While military tech trickles down to local loaw enforcements, there's an increasing grey area developing between local law enforcement agencies and private security. Interesting place this world is becoming.
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