Maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of what you share with Red Keith is a key part of our business.
Mark Twain once said the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. While we don't think it requires quite that heavy a hand, we do try to restrict details of your investigation to the least amount of people who need to know.
In general your case will be worked by the fewest numbers of investigators needed, unless there is a compelling reason to bring in other experts or specialists. We use non-disclosure agreements with contractors as appropriate. And we don't involve outside parties with your investigation without your explicit consent.
An important part of developing the investigative plan for your case will be an understanding of how secret the investigation needs to be from the target. In some cases (like employment backgrounds) they must have full knowledge of what's going on. In some cases (like stalking investigations) there can be a benefit to the target knowing their activities are being investigated, reducing their incentives to engage in criminal behavior. And sometimes you want to look into something without the target knowing they are being investigated at all. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of various degrees of stealth in our investigative activities with you, and get your agreement, before we begin.
There are a few instances we cannot keep your information private. The most common is in response to a valid court order. If we receive a subpoena requesting your information we are required by law to respond to that subpoena. That said, we will notify any past or current clients of subpoenas that impact their personal information or investigation details, unless prohibited by the court. If you file a complaint about our conduct with the State of Washington we may need to discuss aspects of your investigation with them to justify actions we took, or verify the nature of work that was performed. Even in this instance we will do out best not to share any more of your information with the state regulators than is necessary to justify what we did or did not do.
Our commitment to keeping your secrets isn't worth much if we leave your secrets out for anyone to read. No client documents are left unsecured in our office. Our computers are password-protected and we use a combination of security keys and passcodes to protect access to the cloud software we use. Finally, all the cloud services we do use are hosted in the United States, protecting your personal information from misuse via foreign data privacy laws.
Beyond that, case numbers are assigned to each investigation, and that is the only element common between our cloud-based software apps. Your personal information (like name and contact information) are only stored in our billing and CRM software, a requirement to process payments. The details on your investigation are stored separately, not directly associated with your personal information.
If you have any questions or concerns about how we keep your secrets, please contact us. We really don't talk about your case with anyone, and we want you to feel safe sharing private and personal details with us.
And if you're ready to get started, schedule your free consultation today!