SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
Best Buy has issued a statement which says:
"Best Buy and Geek Squad have no relationship with the FBI. From time to time, our repair agents discover material that may be child pornography, and we have a legal and moral obligation to turn that material over to law enforcement. We are proud of our policy and share it with our customers before we begin any repair.
"Any circumstances in which an employee received payment from the FBI is the result of extremely poor individual judgment, is not something we tolerate and is certainly not a part of our normal business behavior.
"To be clear, our agents unintentionally find child pornography as they try to make the repairs the customer is paying for. They are not looking for it. Our policies prohibit agents from doing anything other than what is necessary to solve the customer's problem so that we can maintain their privacy and keep up with the volume of repairs."
Additional coverage:
- later OC Weekly story
- BBC News
- Engadget
- Washington Post
- Washington Post
- ZDnet
- Network World
- RTTNews.com via NASDAQ
- SFgate
Related: How Best Buy's Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 14 2017, @03:44PM
Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't anyone the FBI actively employs as informants under the same Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine as the FBI itself, regardless of how many levels of indirection are in place? Like if the supervisor is actively employed by the FBI to hunt up CP and said supervisor offers a bounty of $500 to employees that never speak to the FBI, evidence thus obtained is nevertheless inadmissible?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:18PM
Unlikely. Isn't that just a "tip", for which the FBI could get a warrant? Worst case they just start watching the person. Well, worst case is that the Best Buy folks start planting photos so they can collect rewards.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday January 14 2017, @05:13PM
I'm wondering if any of these employees have root-kitted computers for the FBI to 'help' them: root-kit it, the FBI gains access to the computer, gathers evidence, stop accessing computer, gathers 'evidence' the regular way, gets a warrant, then 'root-kits' computer, gathers evidence, takes perp to court.
Would ANYONE be surprised if this were the case? I certainly could see it happening.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:21PM
I'd think it boiled down to whether the FBI solicited the information or not.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday January 14 2017, @08:21PM
Perhaps, I'm not a lawyer. Interesting idea though. It would force them to go through that troublesome parallel construction. As if warrants weren't enough of an inconvenience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @09:15PM
The Fourth Amendment applies any time a the Government wants to violate a person's reasonable expectation of privacy. This includes things at the direction of the government (did the private school choose to search the locker or were they asked by the police?) because they are then acting as an arm of the police. That can be heavily dependent on the facts and, in one case I worked on, required the judge to determine whether the school official came up with the idea on their own or at the suggestion of the officer by parsing every little word in an email exchange to get in their heads. So here, I would think that it heavily depends on the specific facts of what was said, what the expectations were, etc.
Once you get past that, the question become whether or not the contraband in question was in "plain view." This is, again, heavily dependent on the facts of the case. It also depends on what exactly the work was as to whether he could have stumble on it on accident and what the guy was thinking while working.