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posted by takyon on Saturday January 14 2017, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the photo-lab-informant-2.0 dept.

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:

Related: How Best Buy's Computer-Wiping Error Turned Me into an Amateur Blackhat


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:45PM (#453826)

    As an owner of a small IT business for more than 12 years I have never been contacted by the government or offered money to keep an eye out for suspicious files. We also don't have time to dig through every hard drive that comes through the door, nor would we care to. I am an advocate of strong privacy rights, a characteristic that has been shared by most of the people who have worked for me. Simply put, we're just not interested in your porn or secret partitions because we're too busy trying to make payroll, pay the taxes, and keep the lights on. Further, I would pit any of my techs against the sharpest Geek Squad tech any day with complete confidence; my team is excellent at what they do because...[payroll/taxes/lights].

    My point is that IT is a tough business these days and the small shops are dying. People need help with their computer issues and the small shops are likely to have good techs and no interest in ruining their reputation by helping the FBI conduct witch hunts. The government finds large companies desirable because they can cover many employees with a single NSL or other mutual arrangement whereas the same with a tiny company would only add a few sets of eyes for the same amount of effort.

    Support local small businesses in general.

    (Posting anon because this is intended to be advice related to the story, not a sales pitch.)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @11:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @11:20PM (#453950)

    So, anticipating the day when you will be out of business, you have instructed[1] your customers how to:

    1) run something other than Windoze.

    2) run Windoze in a (gratis and libre) virtual machine--if Windoze is absolutely necessary.
    2a) take a snapshot of the virtual Windoze install as soon as that is up and running.
    2aa) restore the virtual Windoze install from that backup.

    3) keep all data on an easily-detachable drive.
    Put the swap partition for Windoze on that drive as well.

    ...or is Windoze on bare metal simply too profitable for you?

    [1] This seems like an ideal seminar to have at the local community college|community center|whatever.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]