Investigations and research methodologies

Courts and the Investigation Process

There are many aspects to investigations as they pertain to courts and upholding the law. An investigation is systematic inquiry to determine the facts surrounding an event or situation to determine who, what, where, when, how, and why an event or incident occurred that might be of particular interest to the courts. In the modern age, mainly due to anti-terrorism enforcement, US lawmakers and courts have changed the scope of police surveillance authority. As a result, a new privacy paradigm has emerged where police power to gather information in criminal investigations has expanded (Bloss, 2009).

Since the world has become more globalized in regards to crime and terrorism, this has transformed how public safety threats are perceived. Furthermore, the advancement of digital communication technology has provided a medium in which electronic records of communications are kept and can be accessed by law enforcement officials. This changes the dynamic in which investigations can occur in a digital age as well as opens many privacy concerns. Through constitutional doctrine and statute, Americans have been given an 'expectation of privacy' that limits government surveillance and search authority and the Fourth Amendment is considered one of the primary legal gatekeepers of these liberties; to control police violation of the Amendment's provisions, U.S. courts created a unique sanction for dealing with improper searches (Bloss, 2009).

Courts have devised a specific test to measure the legality of police surveillance and search in relation to personal privacy; known as the 'balancing of competing interests' test, it allows the courts to interpret the constitutionality of police surveillance and search methods and the test can be applied in a variety of cases and has become the preferred court standard in surveillance and privacy cases (Bloss, 2009). It has been argued that these tests have been steadily giving law enforcement the preference in the balance since the terrorist incidents in the previous generation have expanded the court's power.

The latest smartphones even offer police greater capabilities for surveillance. Police use GPS technology to track property other than vehicles, more specifically, police may track an individual's location through their personal cell phone with GPS technologies. Law enforcement officers are also capable of passively pinging an individual's smartphone. Dialing the phone number assigned to that particular phone and quickly hanging up will passively ping the phone; the phone will not ring, but it will transmit its location to a nearby cell tower which allows officers can create a digital trail of "bread crumbs" that will reveal both historic and real-time location data for smartphones (McNichol, 2013).