Differences between Private Investigation and CI

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Permalink Reply by Pavol Kopec on December 2, 2009 at 9:07am

Now, it seems that as if all CI practitioners were the "good ones", and PI practitioners "the evil ones". Then, (if we suppose that people in general have mostly good intentions and moral) why would "the World" (i.e. businesses or citizens) still use PIs / detectives? The answer must be that they are both justfied, real-world-tested, stand-alone professions, with slightly different focus, and largely different methods and scope of work. Simply, there are sometimes information needed that cannot be obtained through conventional OSINT, and that is the moment when people or businesses hire PIs/detectives (hopefully, with good intentions).

And, I would like to say/mention something totally different. I really do like CI as a discipline, I find it so exciting. But, what I actually do not like that much is the name of it alone, namely the first part - competitive. I think many today's management theories are shifting the imperative from competing to cooperating. As it was mentioned in various articles, books, and even in some of the forums herein. And, as we all also know, world is now flooded with information (e.g. working with Google can reveal so much information, thus often drastically reducing the time needed for field work). In today's markets, when you cannot gain competitive advantage through information gap, it often pays off to do the contrary - to be open, honest, transparent, share information, and focus more on collaboration than solely on competition.

And, in such environment, in such era of information abundance, the need of information outsourcing will likely diminish (why would one need it when most of it will come in free). And, out of the four "boyfrends", as mentioned by Vivek, PIs will probably be one of the first and most suffering victims of this decreasing demand. What will be still valued though, is the added value: interpretation, analysis and subsequent advise. This is the case of other types of external advisors: CI agencies, RM agencies and management consultancies (and even better collaboration or integration of the three).

So, now - as more and more information are basically public - we do not have to fear to get in touch or get misconfused with any immoral folks doing illegal and unethical things to actually get information. We have to help others to filter the most important infos, verify if they are true, connect the dots, and give recommendations.

Summary: Added value is the most important differentiator between CI and PI, not just the - so discussed - ethical and legal gathering of information.

(So, I reckon, I have basically answered my own question that started this discussion :) )

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Doran on December 2, 2009 at 11:58am

This has been an interesting discussion. I have done some thinking about it and wonder if the differentiation between PI and CI methods is about the end result.

CI methods lead to analysis and deliverables that provide a company with actionable results. To me that means that the company commissioning the work (internal or external) can take a course of action without endangering the company legally through potential lawsuits or criminal action in violation of trademark, patent, or trade secrets laws.

A PI is tasked with obtaining specific information that may or may not provide a company these types of actionable results. A PI is likely needed to investigate potential legal matters such as a violation of trade secrets or patent infringement. It seems unlikely that a PI would be the right person to investigate and report back on competitor A's marketing plan. A PI would be useful to tell you who the individuals are implementing the plan and identifying the sales people but would they have the tools to analyze the plan? Additionally, they are licenced by governments because it is recognized that their profession must be regulated.

A CI company having a PI's license makes sense if you take on work that includes surveillance (i.e. camping out in front of a competitor's manufacturing site to determine volume of incoming and outgoing materials) or investigating legal infringements on trademarks, patents, or trade secrets. Overall it seems that some methods are the same or interchangeable but not all and the results are certainly different.

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