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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
(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.