Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn

mekane8 writes "Consumer-advocate blog Consumerist ran a sting operation to catch a Best Buy Geek Squad member searching for and stealing media files from a customer's computer. The article includes the story with screen captures and a video of the technician's actions. From that piece: 'Reached for comment, Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens expressed desire to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved." This is not just an isolated incident, according to reports from Geek Squad insiders alleging that Geek Squad techs are stealing porn, images, and music from customer's computers in California, Texas, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. Our sources say that some Geek Squad locations have a common computer set up where everyone dumps their plunder to share with the other technicians.' A related story from a former Geek Squad employee details the decline of the Geek Squad and Best Buy ethics in general."

Comments

Re:The decline of ethics?????

[1729]

They aren't prying into documents, they are copying media files.

Yeah, but they aren't necessarily stealing publicly available media files. Now that digital cameras and video recorders are so common, I suspect that a lot of people have homemade media files on their computers. Going through those is absolutely an invasion of privacy.

What the ... ?

[khasim]

Entrapment would be forcing them or coercing them to commit the crime, often with another illegal act. Prostitution sting operations, for example, are often very close to (or over the line of) entrapment, as the police plant streetwalkers (an illegal act) in order to catch another illegal act.

What are you talking about?

The cops have women dress up like prostitutes dress and hang out in areas where prostitutes hang out.

What's "illegal" about that?

It's entrapment when the fake prostitute offers sex for money BEFORE the guy does. Because the guy MAY NOT have offered money for sex on his own.

Re:The decline of ethics?????

[mustafap]

>by saying I'm looking for kiddie-porn?

Please don't call it kiddie-porn. It's child abuse.

It is not stealing...

[gweihir]

Why do people not undertand the distinction? It is really easy: If you steal, then the stolen object is not with the original owner anymore! Too hard to understand? I think not.

So, with that said, this is invasion of privacy, espionage, copytight infringement and unauthorized use of data processing equipment. Might even get a higher sentence than ordinary theft.

I might add that anyone concerned about his/her privacy shoould use drive encryption anyways, or remove the drive before giving the computer in foreign hands.