Surveillance
Surveillance is the discreet observation and documentation of a subject's activities. Investigators use unobtrusive positioning and specialized photo and video equipment to record what a person actually does — where they go, what they can physically do, and who they associate with. In an insurance or personal-injury context, that footage can confirm or refute a claimed limitation; in a corporate matter it can document the movement of goods or people. The professional standard is patient, factual, and non-confrontational: record reality, do not provoke it.
Lawful surveillance stays in public view and avoids trespass, wiretapping, and other prohibited intrusions. The line between observing a subject in public and invading a reasonable expectation of privacy is exactly where untrained operators get their clients into trouble, which is one reason states run programs such as Florida's private-investigation licensing program.
Background investigation
A background investigation assembles a picture of a person's history from public and lawfully accessible sources: identity verification, address history, criminal-record checks at the local, county, state, and national levels, litigation history, and professional licensing. Unlike an automated database pull, a true background investigation includes human verification — confirming that a record actually belongs to the subject and reading it in context. When a background inquiry is used to make an employment or credit decision, it becomes a regulated activity; see our page on background checks for the compliance rules.
Asset searches
Asset research identifies what a person or company owns: real property, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, business interests, and other holdings discoverable through public records. Attorneys use it to decide whether litigation is worth pursuing and whether a judgment could actually be collected; creditors use it to evaluate recovery. Ethical asset work relies on public filings and permissible sources — it does not involve pretexting for financial account information, a practice restricted by federal law.
Undercover and intellectual-property work
Some investigations require an operative to document a transaction firsthand — for example, purchasing a suspected counterfeit product to establish that a trademark or patent is being infringed. This work is frequently coordinated with law enforcement and with brand-protection counsel, and the evidence must be gathered and preserved so it can support a takedown, a seizure, or a civil action. Chain of custody is everything.
Corporate countermeasures
Businesses face internal risks: the sudden departure of key personnel, the leak of sensitive information, or the theft of trade secrets. Investigators support corporate clients by documenting suspected misconduct, mapping how information may be moving, and coordinating with counsel and information-security teams. This overlaps with the broader field of corporate security, and reputable practitioners hold themselves to recognized professional security standards.
Documentation and reporting
Evidence is only as good as its record. Professional investigators log dates, times, locations, and methods; preserve originals of photos and video; and write reports that distinguish direct observation from inference. That discipline is what lets a finding survive a deposition or a claims audit months later, when memories have faded and only the file remains. A tidy, timestamped, source-referenced report is the real deliverable — the surveillance or the search is just how it gets built. Weak documentation, by contrast, can render even accurate findings unusable.
What good investigative work looks like
Across all of these techniques, the markers of quality are the same: methods that are lawful and documented, findings that are verified rather than assumed, and reporting that is clear enough to hand to a claims examiner or a court. If a provider promises results that could only come from unlawful access — private financial records without permissible purpose, or the contents of communications — treat that as a warning sign. When you are ready to engage someone, our guide to hiring a licensed investigator lists the questions that separate professionals from pretenders.