Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy's Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer's request for repairs.
To sidestep the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against warrantless invasions of private property, federal prosecutors and FBI officials have argued that Geek Squad employees accidentally find and report, for example, potential child pornography on customers' computers without any prodding by the government. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as "wild speculation." But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line.
One agency communication about Geek Squad supervisor Justin Meade noted, "Agent assignments have been reviewed and are appropriate for operation of this source," that the paid informant "continues to provide valuable information on [child pornography] matters" and has "value due to his unique or potential access to FBI priority targets or intelligence responsive to FBI national and/or local collection."
Other records show how Meade's job gave him "excellent and frequent" access for "several years" to computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered him "underutilized" and wanted him "tasked" to search devices "on a more consistent basis."
Step 1: Put child porn on target's computer
Step 2: Report target to FBI
Step 3: Collect $500 bounty
Profit!!!
Previously on SoylentNews: Cooperation Alleged Between Best Buy and the FBI
Related Stories
The OC Weekly reports on the case United States of America v. Mark A. Rettenmaier in which a California doctor is charged with knowingly possessing child pornography. The defendant came under investigation after he brought his computer to Best Buy's Geek Squad for service. A technician there discovered an image of an unclothed girl (which the defence asserts is not child pornography) in unallocated space of the computer's hard drive.
According to the defence attorney,
[...] records show "FBI and Best Buy made sure that during the period from 2007 to the present, there was always at least one supervisor who was an active informant."
The OC Weekly story says that:
[...] the company's repair technicians routinely searched customers' devices for files that could earn them $500 windfalls as FBI informants.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain records related to the FBI's secret relationship with Best Buy's Geek Squad:
Sending your computer to Best Buy for repairs shouldn't require you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights. But that's apparently what's been happening when customers send their computers to a Geek Squad repair facility in Kentucky.
We think the FBI's use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to search people's computers without a warrant threatens to circumvent people's constitutional rights. That's why we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today against the FBI seeking records about the extent to which it directs and trains Best Buy employees to conduct warrantless searches of people's devices. Read our complaint here [PDF].
EFF has long been concerned about law enforcement using private actors, such as Best Buy employees, to conduct warrantless searches that the Fourth Amendment plainly bars police from doing themselves. The key question is at what point does a private person's search turn into a government search that implicates the Fourth Amendment.
Previously: Cooperation Alleged Between Best Buy and the FBI
FBI agents paid employees in Best Buy's Geek Squad unit to act as informants, documents published Tuesday reveal.
Agents paid managers in the retailer's device repair unit to pass along information about illegal content discovered on customers' devices, according to documents posted online by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital rights group sued the FBI for the documents last year after the bureau denied a Freedom of Information Act request.
The EFF filed the lawsuit to learn the extent to which the agency trains and directs Best Buy Geek Squad employees to conduct warrantless searches of customers' devices during maintenance. The EFF said it was concerned that use of repair technicians to root out evidence of criminal behavior circumvents people's constitutional rights.
[...] Another document shows the FBI approved a $500 payment to a "confidential human source" whose name was redacted. The EFF said the payment appears to be one of many connected to the prosecution of Mark Rettenmaier, a Southern California doctor accused of possessing child pornography after he sent in his computer to Best Buy for repairs.
The EFF said the documents detail investigation procedures in which Geek Squad employees would contact the FBI after finding what they believed to be child pornography on a customer's device.
The EFF said an FBI agent would examine the device to determine whether there was illegal content present, and if so, seize the device and send it to the FBI field office closest to where the customer lived. Agents would then investigate further, and in some cases try to obtain a warrant to search the device.
Best Buy said last year that three of the four employees who may have received payment from the FBI are no longer employed by the company. The fourth was reprimanded and reassigned.
Previously: Cooperation Alleged Between Best Buy and the FBI
FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance
EFF Sues FBI to Obtain Records About Geek Squad/Best Buy Surveillance
Related: How Best Buy's Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday March 12 2017, @02:31AM (5 children)
Will any FBI agents or managers suffer any consequences for their actions? Probably not.
Why is it that the very people tasked with upholding the law don't think that the law applies to them?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @02:40AM (1 child)
By donning a shield they seem to believe that they become the embodiment of Judge Dredd: "I am the law". It becomes self-reinforcing when those who claim to not be bad don't rein in the ones who obviously are.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:34PM
OR, maybe we should consider a nation that spends over half its discretionary spending (NOT taking into account the black budget) on the military to be -duh- a Militaristic Nation by just about any metric...
maybe we should consider a nation which has militarized police who ONLY need steeenking badges and a gun, and NO use for pesky 'laws', and 'rights', and stupid, wussy shit like that which gets in the way of nailing The Bad Guys (amirite, or what ? ? ?), as a police state...
maybe we should consider that a nation constantly spying upon, monitoring, and -yes- terrorizing its populace is a paranoid, psychopathic nation...
we have gone too long accepting that we live for the state, when it is the opposite: the state lives ONLY for us and to SERVE us, not to imprison us...
because -make no mistake- we are all prisoners here in fortress amerika...
but, oh, the bread and circuses...
the bread, so sugary and GMO'ed; the circuses, so shiny and vapid ! ! !
oh, the places we will go ! ! !
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @03:51AM (2 children)
Why is it that the very people tasked with upholding the law don't think that the law applies to them?
Its because they don't think their job is to uphold the law.
They think their job to catch bad guys.
So, when they think the law is preventing them from catching a bad guy, that just means the law is an obstacle to be overcome.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:44AM (1 child)
I hate to say it, but I believe you are right, AC. And, Hollyweird helps to reinforce that perception. People, both inside and outside of law enforcement, see television and movie cops doing crazy crap, and they just accept that real cops should be doing similar stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:54AM
Ha!! Yeah no kidding, but it is way beyond just cops. Medical doctors break into patients homes to for potential diagnosis, and well just about any "investigative" show now features home invasion as a casual necessity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @02:37AM
If Geek Squad drones are the benchmark for FBI "cyber sleuths", that goes a long way toward explaining the fumbling and bumbling that has led to the recent spate of actual leaks, fake news, and half-arsed investigations. Comey's standards are pretty weak.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @03:19AM (7 children)
I never liked shopping at Best Buy anyway. Won't be going there anymore after this. Maybe a public apology would be enough to get me back in the local store, not sure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday March 12 2017, @04:49AM (6 children)
It was a long time ago, but I brought a computer in for them to fix. All they could do is tell me I needed another machine.
I ended up "fixing" it myself, but losing all my programs and data. You all know what I did... the standard master reset procedure which starts off by fdisk'ing your hard drive and deleting every partition on it. This is old-school. Talking DOS 3.30 here, fellas.
Well, this was so long ago I had not yet collected spare parts, disk drives were very expensive, and I was quite ignorant. Today, I would do things a lot different and would have saved myself from all the frustration.
It was then I became convinced that the Geek Squad was just another term for salesman... car analogy - you bring a car to them with a blown water pump - they tell you you need a new car. You KNOW at that point they are not mechanics.... they act just like tie-guys!
Convinced that Best-Buy was not capable of delivering anything more than Executive-Level services ( basically hand-shakes with men wearing business suits ), I knew I was on my own when it came to computer stuff. You do not bring a car with a blown water pump to a suit-guy. How does one get the services of a computer mechanic without having to deal with the suit people? You may have to do it yourself if you want it done right, or pay through the nose for the services of someone else who tells yet someone else to do it - then expects me to sign a bunch of businesstalk which boils down to "we may or may not fix your problem, we may destroy your machine, but you will pay us anyway".
I was hoping they had more advanced restoration technologies, as at the time I had several licensed and registered softwares running in my machine, and I did not want to go through all the hassles of re-installation of software which thought it was already installed and now being pirated. That whole mess taught me a huge lesson on building robust system architectures, and what will happen if I depend on someone else's permission to run. When I now design for an industrial application, I avoid like the plague the fancy eye-candy programs laced with DRM. Lately, I have been using Arduinos ( often more than one ) to do the critical stuff, which will continue to run standalone if necessary, and only use stuff like Windows for making the executive eye-candy reports they love so much. I know Windows can and will fail in the blink of an eye during some surprise update, or the executive opens up the wrong email attachment. I have met few people who have both the executive training to run an organization, and also have the computational training to know just how vulnerable computers are when running poorly understood code.
I am talking about the executive skill to know how critical the wording is on a contract, and wants to know the purpose and legal meaning of every word on the contract, yet will accept willy-nilly whatever script some arbitrary web-author cares to ram into his machine.
I know a lot of you IT guys have seen this... the money-men have no problem paying $600/hour for legal help, but balk at $60/hour for their computers. No wonder we live in a world where we can't as much as open up a document without risk of infecting our machines with malware. Now we end up outsourcing IT skills... great... now we are hiring the fox to guard the henhouse. Hard as hell to hold accountable someone working for someone else in another country that does not even speak your language! Especially with all this law in place to enforce ignorance of what's in the code.
I do not know why we are taking this sitting down.... Is it ignorance? Apathy?
I get laughed at a lot when even I go on my rants of where I think this is headed.... because I flat do not want to leave anyone in the kind of mess I see we are making with today's law and legal frameworks now being lobbied into place.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:35AM (3 children)
I know a lot of you IT guys have seen this... the money-men have no problem paying $600/hour for legal help, but balk at $60/hour for their computers.
IMHO, it's two reasons. First, you can be burned by bad legal protection in a way that bad IT protection can't match with jail sentences and enormous fines. There's no news stories about someone spending a few decades in jail just because they had an easy to guess password. But we do hear routinely hear of innocent people spending decades in jail because they had bad lawyers. Frequently, you can move on or sell out after making bad IT decisions so the trouble doesn't stick to you. Legal trouble isn't so easy to escape.
Second, they probably understand the legal world (or at least the rules for keeping themselves out of trouble) much better than they understand the strange boxes on their desk.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:51AM
You're right - but!
If you're somewhat trusted IT guy is putting child porn on your computer so that he can collect a bounty when he calls the FBI, you're pretty forked. LMAO, it's really funny, if you think about it. Again, you're right, but IT can burn every one of those executives, but the executives are too dumb to realize that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:59AM (1 child)
someone spending a few decades in jail just because they had an easy to guess password
Maybe this should happen. Not over just any easy to guess password. These hacks in the news all the time should result in criminal negligence charges. Of course, there'd need to be a way to pierce the corporate veil as well.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:07AM
Of course, there'd need to be a way to pierce the corporate veil as well.
The corporate veil is not a magic get-out-of-jail-free card and it applies to shareholders, not corporate officers actually responsible for the actions of the corporation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:10AM (1 child)
Best Buys did not have technicians or the Geek Squad in the DOS era.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday March 12 2017, @08:22AM
Windows was already out... I had brought them an older machine.
I hang onto older tech when I have yet to trust the newer tech.
I was afraid of Windows stuff too, as I could not reverse it - the old DOS stuff was usually a few hundred KB of code at the most. With a listing of decompiled output maybe the size of a book. I felt comfortable decompiling a DOS EXE to see what it did. Some of it was very time consuming to reverse, but if I had years of my work invested in drawings, I'd be damned to have the software holding my work hostage to compel me to comply with something. Especially stuff that enforces something years later, after I have substantial time invested in it.
Trying to find a bug in a Windows executable was beyond my capability. I was losing it on Protected-Mode 286 stuff. You know, the Phar-Lap and similar stuff.
Even today, I fail to embrace the new stuff in cars. When I read of all the "customer lock-in" crap with cars, I got queasy and really felt stupid putting down good money for one - so I ended up with an older Ford Diesel van. I was able to get ALL of the electrical documentation on it, and feel comfortable with it. I fully expect this van to outlive me.
My bringing in that computer to BestBuy is like my now bringing my van in for service.
If a mechanic looks at it, and tells me he can't replace the water pump cause "he can't read the codes", I do not think that guy should be trusted with a wrench.
I have to consider that one a "business-class mechanic", as he's good at looking good, shaking hands, and presenting paperwork full of "we may or may not fix your thing, but you understand you pay us anyway" and have the presentation skills to get the customer to sign it. His technical skill may be limited to filling the tank, checking the oil, and cleaning the windshield. I have already had my neighbors tell me tales of woe over car repair, as well as a lot of my relatives are pissed off farmers reeking over what John Deere and other manufactures are throwing their way simply because Congress has given them the copyright/patent tools for enforcing monopolistic behaviour. I see the throwaway game they are playing to force me to constantly buy this years new shiny, and I am resisting any which a way I can.
New Car! New House! What did you do? coos one TV ad making its rounds.... answer? DEBT! I do not want to go there.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @03:29AM (3 children)
The former communist regimes in East Europe used to receive these kind of services for free; that and the fact that not only "the geek squad" was involved are the only differences.
Maybe the orange one should issue a decr... sorry, "executive order" is what they are called... to make framing and snitching on "the enemies of state" a "patriotic duty"? The saving on the budget can be used to "make America great again"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @03:58AM (1 child)
Flamebait, eh? You think it won't happen? Wanna bet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:59AM
No, you were spot on till you made it partisan. Every administration since Truman has used the intelligence apparatus nefariously. They learned a lot from Stalin and Hitler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @04:53AM
I am of the opinion that our biggest enemy of state is.... our own government!
I am also of the opinion that the sole reason Trump was elected is that a helluva lotta other people feel the same way.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:26AM (7 children)
for anybody that brings a PC to Worst Buy. I used to work at a shop down the street from a Worst buy and a good 85% of our business was fixing what they fucked up and often having to tell the customer they were robbed by Best Buy employees because apparently that was SOP with their Geek Squad. We'd open a box to find RAM sticks missing, sometimes literally ripping them out of the socket and breaking the fasteners in the process, 2TB HDDs suddenly becoming 250Gb HDDs, $500 GPUs go in and $40 GPUs come out, the whole place was nothing but a den of thieves.
So yeah I really have a hard time feeling sorry for anybody who brings hardware in for those scumbags to "fix". Nearly every town has a local mom&pop shop and those guys will have forgotten more than the entire GS staff know and unlike Worst Buy the odds are a lot better than your data and hardware won't end up stolen. I've known plenty of guys that have worked pt at a Worst Buy to earn a little extra cash and its always the same horror stories, guys stealing hardware, guys running batch files looking for porn, music, and financial records they can copy, honestly I've known crackheads I'd trust more than your average Worst Buy Geek Squad.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:41AM (3 children)
I dealt with a number of the mom and pop places in my town, and every one of them was just as big a bunch of shysters as BB, Fry's, CompUSA, ComputerCity, or MicroCenter. The only difference being that some of the corporate places didn't tend to fuck you around about returns, whereas the smaller places almost always did. The worst of the bunch however were the 'city-wide' businesses. Not as big as the 'corporate' shops, but far bigger than the true mom and pops stores. They have the sleazy management of the big stores, with the shysty return policies of the small stores.
There is a reason corps encroached so far into American life. Part of it was being able to undercut the competition, but the other part was offering less shitty customer service than their competitors, many of which did not live up to the 'boutique' pricing or service quality they should have. I know not *ALL* of them were like that, but enough were that they won out over their competitors thanks to a 'known quantity of mediocre' without waiting until a return to find out what a bunch of assholes they were.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:43AM (2 children)
That was my take on it as well. No trust there. That's when I knew I had to get into my own machine and learn how to fix it - hardware as well as recalcitrant software.
I did have a break, as I already knew C++ reasonably well, as well as having a lot of experience coding assembler for the 6800, 65C02 and 8085 microprocessors - so tracing through assembly code was kinda old hat for me.
I was lucky as this was just the same time frame that +Fravia and +HCU were around - and they became like Gods to me. I knew I had to learn assembler for the Intel, how to use WDASM, SoftIce, Sourcer, IDA, and a few more tools in order to resolve problems with software that would not migrate properly. Once I began seeing how stuff was done on the machine code level, and seeing lots of ways machines were hijacked to do "side jobs" while running, I then knew how much one needed to know *exactly* what was in the code if it was to be trusted. I had just seen the tip of the iceberg as to what *could* be done as far as running background crap and it was a real eye-opener.
Some of +Fravia's stuff is still on the web, but a lot of the juicy stuff is now gone. Having seen what I saw, as well as what other +HCU members reported on, I was now extremely concerned with mixing code with data. Unfortunately, I do not have the "people skills" necessary to properly present my concerns to management, who apparently viewed themselves so high up that no hacker would dare disappoint them. While I saw them as so high up someone would topple them just to watch them fall.
I ended up losing my job as I could no longer sign on that line underwritten with the words "responsible engineer" and do things the way I was told to do them with a straight face. I knew how we were leaving ourselves wide open to anyone who cared to ram us. I did not want to take the hit for it when I knew all along that doing it certain ways was rife for disaster.
After the Executive Signature, I never worked Corporate again the rest of my life. I am now retired and continue to do this kind of stuff for fun.
For me, its just too stressful to be submissive to some guy who hasn't the foggiest idea of where I am coming from.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
"I ended up losing my job as I could no longer sign on that line underwritten with the words "responsible engineer" and do things the way I was told to do them with a straight face. I knew how we were leaving ourselves wide open to anyone who cared to ram us. I did not want to take the hit for it when I knew all along that doing it certain ways was rife for disaster."
except it didn't matter, you (or some other cohort of minions) would have been blamed or found 'guilty' of whatever sins resulted... the psychopathic managers would bail out to arrange another golden parachuted position, and the minions would be left holding the bag... it is ever thus under the institutionalized group psychopathy known as unrestrained kapitalism... the powerless are blamed and shit on, the powerful are blameless and reap the rewards...
expecting any other outcome under the present system is a fool's errand...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday March 13 2017, @04:28AM
That was my take too...
They weren't looking for people who got into the kinda stuff +Fravia was talking about.
The managers were looking for cheap scapegoats. Executive toilet paper to keep their own ass clean.
We had long past the stage where we were advancing due to our productivity and innovation. We now had a name. And we fell to those who saw immediate profit in monetizing our past reputation.
For juicy Government contracts, high-ups got nice fancy meetings, paid for by the taxpayer, and lots of handshakes with fellow suit-guys. Not much else.
We had really fancy presentation areas, however there were few left in the production area. The whole meme seemed to center on that we would find someone else to do it and we would slap our name on it for a substantial markup.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:00AM (2 children)
I've never lived close enough to a Best Buy to use their "services". But, I'll speak up for Anubi here. Way back in the day of DOS, the whole world of computers was new. Even a little later, with Win9x, and NT4 and 5, there were many of us who didn't understand much about computers. I heard about Geek Squad back in those days, and I thought it would be great to have a well-trained IT department available nearby.
The world has changed a hell of a lot since then. Anubi got educated, the hard way, and I got educated through hearsay. As I understand it, Geek Squad was actually pretty good in it's earliest days, then slowly deteriorated, then rapidly deteriorated.
This story helps to understand that rapid deterioration. The FBI was actively undermining the Geek Squad's mission, and refocusing them on the task of snitching to government.
But, I'll agree with you in part. In today's world, anyone who cannot and will not do the minimal research necessary to find a reputable computer repair shop pretty much deserves whatever happens to them.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:16AM
My sister uses the geek squad because of the stupid extended warranty.
I can do a better job, but my turn-around time tends to be months.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Tuesday March 14 2017, @12:38AM
Geek Squad used to be an independent local business in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota back in the mid to late 90's, and back then the Geek Squad generally knew their stuff and were pretty good. They were still a bit on the expensive side, but at least locally they had a pretty good reputation. It was in the very early 2000's that Best Buy bought them out and quickly turned them into another way of milking their customers for even more money. That's when they rapidly deteriorated into what they are today.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @07:22AM (1 child)
In the past if anybody as much as suggested anything like this was going on there would instantly be people suggesting they should don a tinfoil hat.
But now we know that if anything even the "conspiracy theorists" were not "paranoid" enough!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday March 13 2017, @04:42AM
+Fravia inaugurated me into the tinfoil hat club.
He had way too much *proof*, which I could download from the very manufacturer's site and see for myself.
Assembler is certainly a sharp sword.... you can do damn near anything without asking permission - and nobody even knows what you did!
While some lock manufacturer may be wooing customers with statistics concerning how many combinations exist concerning a mechanical key... people like +Fravia would be discussing how to use a "bump key".
The ones listening to the marketeer sure have a lot they weren't told.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]