Compliance officers are often caught on the hop when they need information in extraneous meetings. Is Google Glass the answer?

When I served as a compliance officer, conducting enhanced due diligence on high-risk clients, I found that two hands were not enough for the tasks that I wanted to perform. Searching commercial off-the-shelf high risk databases, Google, public records, and other resources, all demand your strict attention, lest you miss something. I know that some compliance officers use two monitors, and two computers, simultaneously; other use their IPhone on one hand, while typing on their PC or Mac, with the other.

Hands-free would be the ideal way to conduct inquiries, but voice-activated software is not always appropriate, or useful, when the information you are seeking, or your target, was originally in another language, or still is. What to do ?

This week's news included a small article on the subject of the New York Police Department testing the usefulness of Google Glass, which is not only hands-free and activated by your voice, but goes with you everywhere. The police want to see whether their officers could benefit from real-time information-retrieval on subjects they encounter on the street. If you remember the original film, Robocop, or have seen the remake, you will know that law enforcers' use of instantly-available information on the beat would be a vast improvement over presently-available technology.

Therefore, one wonders which bank's compliance department will now decide to road-test Google Glass. I, for one, think that it will speed up 'customer due diligence' enquiries and permit a compliance officer to escape his tether to the PC desktop. It might even allow compliance officer to use his commuting and travel time, (if they use public transport) to work on their files.

* Ken Rijock is a former compliance officer who has trained the US Central Intelligence Agency and MI5 in how to spot money-laundering techniques. He can be reached on miamicompliance@gmail.com