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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: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:00PM
of course... but why in the fuck are you going through customer files in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @06:19PM
^ Professionals shouldn't go through private files and shouldn't be encouraged to do so, but if I found evidence of illegal activity I would report it as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @08:21PM
While removing the various malware and viruses that the poor slob got while downloading illicit crap, it sometimes requires you go in and manually remove a file or directory. In the process of doing that, you may find something illicit.
Other times, the perverts are just stupid and set that shit as their screensaver or desktop background.
Other times you are recovering files that were deleted and when checking to see if it all came back, find something that probably should have stayed deleted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @11:28PM
How do you know it's illicit, especially in the case of photos or videos, without looking at it? File names aren't enough. Well, if it's a screensaver or something, then it's understandable.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday January 15 2017, @06:12AM
thumbnails in the file manager, for one.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti