How can skills at software development be used as a Private Investigator?

Question

I am a senior level .NET software developer in my mid 20s.

However before I got into software development, I had always been interested in military or law enforcement.

I could not join the military because of asthma.

I could not join the police because of color blindness.

However after an idea from a friend and looking it up, I could quite easily take the training classes and get certified to be a private investigator.

The only concern I have, is I want to do something with a specialty in my current skill set (software development).

Does anyone know what things a private investigator does, that they would excel at with a background in software development?

Is there any need for some type of "source code" forensics where I try and determine if source code is copyrighted or malicious?

Is there any use of employers hiring a legitimate software developer with another purpose of their job?

I am not willing to give up my current passion and talent at software development to go to another career in something completely unrelated, but if I can merge the two I would love it!

Just don't know how I can and hopefully someone here has known someone who did this, or has done it themselves to have an idea!

Answer 1

Just a thought, but I wonder if you could start some sort of profiling/identifying art for source code.

Just like they currently do for handwriting.

I guess it would be more research than applied though, since you would be creating the field...

Answer 2

There is one application I know of, called 'BackTrack' which is used in computer forensics and investigation. Might be worth your while to get familiar with this Linux based distribution which is a live cd for forensics and recovery of data...

Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.

Answer 3

Not that I know anything about the topic beyond reading lots of mystery novels, but actually from what I gather, PIs these days spend more time on Google and searching databases than doing any Philip Marlowe sleuthing stuff. The recent Wired article "Vanished" gives a cool example of how computer skills can be useful in looking for a missing person. The other area where I am sure computer skills must be useful is in financial investigations.

Answer 4

• You could use your computer skills to break into a husband's computer to find those pics of him and his mistress.

• You could use your analytical mind to solve difficult case

• You could use your internet skillz to find clues on the net (e.g. stolen goods at ebay)

Answer 5

I saw on TV once that private eyes were given lessons in using computer spying software(trojans, RATs and stuff) at private eye school. Maby you could code those.

Answer 6

ITToolbox's Chief Monkey may be able to add some suggestions to this as his job title is "Information Security Investigator / CISO" that may be close to what you want in a sense.

Answer 7

In the big venn diagram of software development and private investigation, there's just not much grey area. Private investigators generally investigate people; you'd learn to search databases and the web for information on someone. That's a different skillset than building software, in my book.

That said, getting a PI's license and doing computer security could probably count for what you want, although you wouldn't need the license at all to do the security work, and vice versa.