“I think they’re following me.”

What is allowed

Investigators may film you in public — a street, a parking lot, a store, a front yard visible from the road. They may record what is visible from a public vantage point, follow you in a vehicle, and review your public social media.

What they may not do: enter your home, record inside private areas where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, record confidential conversations without consent, misrepresent themselves to get inside, or trespass.

What it is actually for

Almost never to prove you are not injured. Surveillance is used to produce a contradiction — a gap between what you told the doctor and what the video shows.

And the contradiction is usually manufactured out of a normal day. Three hours of footage becomes ninety seconds. You carry one bag of groceries. You bend once. You have one good hour on a good day and it is filmed. Then the clip is shown to the evaluator with the question: “Is this consistent with the restrictions you assigned?”

The vulnerability is not the video. It is the difference between the video and what you said. A worker who told the doctor “I can’t lift anything” and is filmed lifting a grocery bag has a credibility problem. A worker who said “I can lift a light bag but I pay for it afterward” has nothing to explain.

Which is the whole answer

Describe your limits accurately, including the good days. Most injuries fluctuate. Say so. “On a good day I can do X, and then I’m down for the rest of the day” is truthful, it is what your doctor needs, and it is surveillance-proof.

Never overstate. It is the only thing that turns ordinary footage into a problem.

Never do more than your restrictions allow — including at home. It is bad for your recovery and it is what gets filmed.

Lock down social media, and post nothing about your activities, your case, or your condition. Photos get taken out of context and old photos get presented as new.

Be careful at the evaluation itself. Investigators film arrivals and departures. Behave the same way in the parking lot as in the exam room — because that is genuinely all that is being asked of you if you have been accurate.

If you find out about it

You may generally obtain the surveillance material in discovery, and it is subject to the same disclosure rule as everything else: under § 5502(d)(3), evidence not disclosed by the mandatory settlement conferenceMSC Mandatory Settlement Conference. Where most cases end — and where discovery closes. is generally inadmissible. Undisclosed surveillance produced for the first time at trial is usually too late.

And a video is not a diagnosis. A physician can review the footage and explain why what it shows is entirely consistent with the impairment — which is frequently the correct answer and rarely the one the defense expects.