Three GPS Tracking Lessons (or Maybe Big Brother Really Is Watching You)
A recent news article caught my attention as it highlights a few important lessons for private investigators. Apparently, a young Arab American student named Yasir Afifi learned that the FBI had placed a GPS tracking device on his car after he took his car in for an oil change. When the oil change tech raised the car on the hydraulic lift, he spotted an unusual wire sticking out somewhere near the rear wheel and exhaust system. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the wire connected to a battery pack and transmitter, which were both secured to the car magnetically. The tech then alerted Afifi to his finding.
While companies tightening the belts on travel and expense budgets may have put a hamper on infidelity in the corporate workplace, cheating in the rental housing market is going strong. For those not familiar with the world of rent control, or its kissing cousin rent stabilization, they are in essence control limits on how much landlords in big cities like New York can charge rental apartment tenants. As you can imagine, rent control has long been the bane of landlords’ existence, as those programs can result in a NYC tenant paying $400 for a rent-controlled apartment which might otherwise fetch landlords two, three, or sometimes more than four times as much in rental income. 
Unless you’ve been living in a cave or stuck in solitary confinement, the dangers the internet poses to children won’t come as a surprise. Statistics have demonstrated that at any given time, there are upwards of 50,000 sexual predators online, and parents don’t need to have seen NBC’s TV show “To Catch a Predator” to figure out why these predators are trolling the internet. 
I was recently chatting with a close friend, a mother of three children, of which the oldest is a teenage girl rapidly approaching her dreaded “sweet sixteen”. I say “dreaded” because as we all know, upon turning 16, this young lady will have the right (assuming she keeps her grades up!) to go down to the DMV and get herself a small plastic card that is amongst a parent’s worst nightmares: a driver’s license. My friend joked with me about how my private investigation skills would be helpful in the parenting arena. I told her there are a number of tools available to parents which are very similar to those used by private investigators.