Google Lens for the Private Investigator, QOTD, Real Life Repossessions, Can you spot a Liar?

In this episode we cover topics such as:-

1- The development and use of Google Lens;

2- Question Of The Day;

3- A Real Life Repossession;

4- Lie Detection 101;

Got a question for our podcast or do you need to contact Simon and the Down Under Investigations team? Simply email info@downunderinvestigations.com or call 1300849007 or check out www.downunderinvestigations.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to season three and another episode of Down Under Investigations - the Truth. You Are About To Hear From Simon, our host, who has well over 20 years experience in the private investigation industry. Simon leads the team at Down Under Investigations who are committed to professionalism, integrity, and their ability to get results for their clients. Our podcast will open up the truth about the world of private investigation, discussing real life case studies, the latest news, cutting edge surveillance, and skip tracing techniques, plus legal issues and support. So stay with us as we join Simon now.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Greetings and thanks for joining us. Great to have you with us today. Hope you hang around and enjoy this episode of Down Under Investigations - The Truth.

: 0:45

One of the coolest little detection tools we've used in recent years, and I think most private investigators will be aware of, but you may not know of as a listener, is called Google Lens. L E N S. If you look at a Google search bar up high to the right, just next to the search bar, you'll see a microphone and then you'll see this little icon, which is like a colorful camera that's called the Google Lens. If you click on that, Google will allow you to search images on the internet, not an image search, but if you click on that, it'll ask you to upload a photo and then Google will search the web, search the internet, search all pages for a similar if not identical photo, or even just portions of that photo.

Speaker 2: 1:42

So if you're on a pc, the way to use this is you simply save the image that you want to use on Google Lens. So whether that's a Google search or whether that's a photo you grab from somewhere else, save it to your desktop or anywhere else, open up Google, click on the little camera icon. When you do that, it'll say that it wants to upload the photo. You need to upload the photo and it'll give you the option to search your desktop or your computer, your PC for that photograph. If you're on your smartphone, simply click the icon as well and it'll go to your photo library and you'll be able to upload the photo to Google Lens that you want to search the internet for. Do you know the amazing thing? It's actually quite shocking. It'll scour the web, it'll find extremely similar portions or entire pictures of the one that you choose to search for. So whether that's clothing that you're looking for, you might find a jacket that you really like. You know what the easiest thing to do is upload the photo to Google Lens and Google Lens will show you everywhere that that photograph of that jacket is displayed, whether that's a shop or whether that's an online store, or whether that's a celebrity or someone else just wearing the jacket in a photo. It'll also find buildings, landscapes, locations from photos. We had a brilliant locate recently where we had a very evasive defendant without going into the specifics of the case, he didn't want to be found. He had told our client, you'll never find me go away. And we did some searching. We found who his partner was. We found a bit of information about her, found a rough area where she was located, where she was sort of associating, and found some social media things with some areas that she frequented and that sort of thing. So we knew the suburb that she was delving into or the suburbs, the area of the city. Then we found a photo and the photo was of him and she had a comment there where I think one of his family members had identified, that, you know, looks like such and such is having so much fun. Cool, it's identified who he is. That's what he looks like. But then we grabbed that photo and we put it through Google Lens and we found that Google Lens pulled up everywhere that the background of that photo was found on the internet. And that was quite a unique style of background because it was actually these weather boards that were a distinct weather board on a house and that was their own house that he was standing in front of. And just simply through using Google Lens, all Google Lens had was a photo of him with the weather boards in the background, zoomed in on these weather boards, found an identical l ooking house in the same suburb of the city that we were looking for them in. So what did we do? We attended, sighted him, served him with these papers that our client had, and that was the end of it. Simply a Google Lens search. It's quite a powerful tool. If you wanna know more, get in touch with us.

: 5:05

It's time for our question of the day. Today's question comes from Millie , who's in Perth, and she wants to know, "I heard you repos vehicles. How do you do that?" Good question, Millie . Thank you very much. It's very different to those TV shows that you may have seen. Operation Repo is one of them. Ugh , they're all paid actors those guys. Don't worry, that's not how extreme it gets. You don't have people running around with water pistols or foam bats trying to whack you while you're repossessing a vehicle. A lot of it comes down to communication. It comes down to being smarter and it comes down to procedure. I've got a live recording here that I'm gonna play for you now of one of our recent repossessions. Here we go. Well , we're on the scene of a repossession this afternoon. Um, we've

Speaker 3: 5:56

Been looking for this vehicle for a couple of hours now. Um , we've had seven different addresses. There's three of us on the job, however, we've only got one key , um, to the vehicle. I've actually been the one to spot the vehicle and now I'm sitting here being , conducting surveillance. Um, we're actually driving all over the city at the moment trying to find it. We've been driving all over the city, I should say, trying to find this vehicle. Found it. I've been , uh, yeah, sitting here for about 45 minutes just conducting surveillance cuz I'm not the one with the key. Um, however, I thought, well, if I keep an eye on it , um, until the team member turns up with the key and then we'll commence the repossession. And in the meantime, if the vehicle does move , uh, I can either do one or two things. I can either confront the driver , um, and take possession or I can , uh, follow it to another location until I have the backup and the key. So just , uh, yeah, I'm sitting here waiting , um, team members not too far away. So in these situations you never know how someone's gonna respond when you go to collect the vehicle. Um, we always try to take a very calm approach and not aggravate and upset the individual. There's no point making it like that operation repo show, which , uh, I reckon is actually a whole lot of actors <laugh> anyway. But , um, yeah, so just sitting here waiting and um, it's amazing that we found the vehicle to be honest. Uh , middle of the day, well, middle of the afternoon , um, went to two different potential work addresses. Couldn't sight it. Went to yeah , a handful of home and family addresses. Couldn't sight it. Uh, we didn't wanna knock on doors simply because we didn't want to , um, alert the driver that we're on our way, so we just sit back and wait after finding the vehicle, which we've done. So yeah, repossession should take place very shortly, just waiting on the team member, as I said. So good result. Client will no doubt be absolutely stoked that A we've located the vehicle, which they had no idea where it was, and B, that we're about to get our hands on that vehicle and , um, yeah, take it back to them. So just , uh, just waiting, playing the surveillance game at the moment. So we've made the decision with this one. We're actually gonna take possession of the vehicle first and then contact the driver over the phone and knock on the door and try and get their attention to try and retrieve their key to the vehicle , um, and offer them opportunity to easily and quickly take their personal belongings out of the vehicle. So yeah, that'll , uh, that'll be great. So our team members just arrived and we're about to , uh, commence the recovery process. So yeah, at the moment you got the key. Yeah , all good. Alright , well see the vehicle. Let's go. Are we gonna get it ? Yep . And he's driving off or , uh, well, yeah, after we contact the, the driver and , um, make contact, so, okay. All good. All right , well you go, I'll , I'll follow. So team members just entered the vehicle and there we go. We have possession and we're off. The vehicle was actually parked in a back laneway near the property, so we're actually gonna go around, we know where she's living and we're gonna go around to the front of the property and speak to her. Um, I'm not gonna record or broadcast that , um, we will record because , uh, just for our own evidence, but yeah, it won't be broadcasting it simply for her privacy and uh , for, yeah, and we , uh, off with the vehicle ended up , uh, trying to call her. She didn't answer the phone, knocked on the door, spoke to her son first and he got, had to come to the door. She was somewhat cooperative , um, didn't really have an option. We , uh, politely let her take her personal items outta the vehicle and hand over the key and , um, she did so , um, and said God bless at the end. So another , uh, great result now , um, get this vehicle back to the client and we call it a day . It's , uh, a really, really good result.

Speaker 2: 11:19

So as you can see, Millie , the uh, repossession side of things can be exciting, can also be very simple and basic and straightforward as that one was. Um, most of 'em are like that. It's all about communication and uh , we only repossess vehicles when instructed by a client generally because the person has got a lease or a contract where they owe thousand thousand dollars. So , um, unfortunately you get behind and you've got a contract where repossession is a possibility. You might want to fix that contract up as quick as possible and get back in front. So Millie , thanks for your question. That's our question of the day. Uh, the prize is coming out to you and if you've got a question for us, make sure you send it through.

: 12:04

Do you have a question For Simon and the team at Down Under Investigations? We are running a questions of the day competition. If your question gets answered by Simon on the podcast, we will send you a prize value at a hundred dollars. To send in your question, simply use the contact page on our website at www.downunderinvestigations.com or email info@downunderinvestigations.com

Speaker 2: 12:31

I dunno if you caught any of the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard court case that was on in the last 12 months or so, but there was some obvious things that went on in that case when people were giving evidence, and I'm not gonna name names, but you'll notice that the jury ruled one way and not the other very strongly. They believed certain witnesses and not others. So I thought I'd take a look at why people lie and how to spot a lie , how you can become a great lie detector because if you look at that case again, if you look at some of the evidence as it was given, you'll see certain things, certain mannerisms, certain ways people were speaking, different individuals that really did not look believable. So how do you spot a lie when someone's lying? They're generally being extremely vague. They don't like offering very many details. They like to keep certain facts to themselves. Another thing a liar will do is they'll repeat questions out loud before answering them slowly out loud, giving themself time to think, time to formulate their answer . They speak in sentence fragments. They won't put full sentences together. They'll also refuse to provide specific details when a story is questioned, they'll keep certain details out of that certain obvious details, certain details that if you're anyone that wasn't telling a lie was telling the story wouldn't leave out. But these liars leave those things out. There's also certain physical things like playing with hair, touching lips, nervous hand gestures. See, what you wanna do when you are trying to detect a lie is you want to find out how that person behaves and speaks when they're telling the truth. An easy truth you'll find when , uh, say for example, police are interrogating a suspect or when someone's getting up in the box in court to give evidence, the first few questions asked are generally quite easy questions, quite basic questions, questions to get them to relax and speak at their normal pace and give proper answers where there's no controversy, there's no need to lie, there's no need to mislead or be dishonest because the best way to be able to identify a lie is to first know when someone's telling the truth. And then use that as a barometer. Because different people speak at different paces with different mannerisms. Each individual is different. So one of the first things you wanna look at is the body language. You can detect a lie through certain physical behaviors. That could be indicators of deception, for example, or awkward posture where someone sits like they're in a bit of pain, maybe in their back or in in a their neck or something like that. They're twisting and they're turning, or they're not showing any signs of emotion. That's another sign that a person might be lying, where they've just got a straight face, not giving anything away. And while body language can sometimes help identify people who are lying, studies has also found that other common clues are not always indicative of lying. For example, shifting eyes and not necessarily a sign of a liar. Eye movements can simply be a sign that a person is thinking about their long-term memory, they're trying to recall. So they're looking up, they're looking down, they're looking around, not necessarily in a shifty way, but in a way where they're actually trying to recall what happened at the time. Although body language may help identify individuals who are lying, it's still important to pay close attention to other possible signs. For example, there's verbal signs. You can tell the presence of doubt in a person's speech. There may be a sign of guilt or discomfort in the way they're speaking. If the person is insecure or unsure, they're more likely to tell a lie. There's also language clues, like a person who is lying will likely leave out the important details in their story so they can avoid being called out for it. Researchers have found that to identify lies, they use what's called cognitive a load . So basically in a test, they ask participants to tell a story, tell the story whether it's the truth or a lie , tell this story. And then what they do is they make the person reverse. Tell the story. Tell the story backwards, not backwards with word for word , but backwards in sequence of events and things that happen and things that stood out. So compared to truth telling , lying is more draining physically, and it's even harder when you're telling a story backwards after you've told it forwards. Most people will rehearse if they're gonna tell a lie, they're gonna rehearse the story forwards in sequence. But if you ask them to tell it in reverse in a subtle way, most of them will show certain signs that there is lies being told. Many people have a hard time detecting liar because they're so certain that the person's lying without going in with an open mind. You've gotta have an open mind with these things. However, the next point I wanna make is use your instinct. Use the instincts. Use your gut instinct. When you're listening to someone, sometimes your instinct can pick up on things that you are not really hearing, but you are seeing. Sometimes it's in reverse. And once you've got the truth, and once you know how someone tells the truth, using your instinct becomes a lot easier to tell when they're not telling the truth. There was an experiment where a number of volunteers watched videos of a fake crime being committed by numerous suspects, and only one person out of those numerous suspects stole the bag of money. They didn't show exactly who stole it, but what they did is they got all the suspects then to tell the group, the volunteers, every single one of 'em said, I didn't do it. I never stole the money. And in their own way, they had to convince the volunteers that they didn't take the money. 50 % of the time, these people were able to identify who was telling the truth and the one that was lying. So instinct makes a big part of finding out if someone's lying using that gut instinct. So why is a liar hard to detect? Because our conscious responses might make it hard to detect lies if we rely too much on signals that are not reliable. You can't rely on just one thing. You can't rely on the fact that they look around, but everything else is fine. You need to look at the body of evidence, you need to look at the overall picture. Just because they scratch their eye once or pick at their lip, doesn't mean they're telling a full liar . Doesn't mean that the whole story that they're telling is a lie. They may have problems just telling that part of the story, but you've gotta take a step back and look at the big picture just for a moment. Use your gut instinct. Look at body behavior, look at language, look at the pace that they're talking. Also use cognitive load. Ask questions in reverse to see if the person's telling the truth and if it can be easily remembered. See if they're under strain when they're telling the story or if it comes out easily, you gotta stop focusing on the usual signs and instead identify those subtle clues that could be related to deception. Trust your instincts and use your gut feeling when you're speaking to someone and when you're trying to determine when someone's telling the truth.

Speaker 4: 20:34

You were there when Mr. Jenkins testified, right? Yes, he was wrong. So it's your testimony that Mr. Jenkins lying . He's just wrong. I don't know what his intentions are. He was just wrong about that. We were a big group of us. I wasn't alone with them . Is it possible that you don't remember correctly because you were sick from taking M D M A and mushrooms at the same time? No . Uh , I remember everything about that night.

: 20:57

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