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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
(Score: 2) by gidds on Friday June 02 2017, @03:08PM
Yes, it's a dumb thing to do — but it may not seem so at the time.
For one thing, people may not realise they have anything illegal. Different jurisdictions have different ideas at different times about what counts as illegal images, text, or whatever — for example, I believe that even obvious hand-drawn cartoons can infringe some laws if one of the characters looks under-age. Similarly, it's not always clear what would count as a copyright violation — for example, a private rip from a legally-owned DVD. (Many things are technically illegal but wouldn't be considered immoral by many of us here, so this isn't necessarily about making moral judgements against people.)
And for another, people may not see much choice. If a machine stops working, they may have no means of finding what's on it or deleting files themselves. The only way of recovering all their stuff would be with some sort of repair service — and any such service could potentially have this risk.
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