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No Right to Privacy When Your Computer Is Repaired
Billosaur writes "ZDNet's Police Blotter bring us the interesting story of a Pennsylvania man who brought his computer into Circuit City to have a DVD burner installed on his computer and wound up being arrested for having child pornography on his hard drive. Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for files to test the burner, then proceeded to call the police, who arrested Sodomsky and confiscated the computer. Sodomsky's lawyer argued in court that the Circuit City techs had no right to go rifling through the hard drive, and the trial court agreed, but prosecutors appealed and the appeals court overturned the lower court's decision, based on the fact that Sodomsky had consented to the installation of the DVD drive."
I just brought my machine to an Apple store for repair and they wanted my password.
When the perp has a name like "Sodomsky", I really gotta wonder if this is for real...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you have a right to privacy or not. It's not a right you can rely on. Expect the monkeys to paw through your private photos & videos regardless of where you get your PC repaired.
The answer is routine encryption, but let's face it - if you need help installing a DVD drive, you're unlikely to have any idea what encryption even is....
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive
And they were TIPPED OFF BY HIS NAME
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I find it hard to believe that anyone today would not know that the guy fixing your computer at bigbox_is_us is going to go through your drive.
That's like taking your car to get it repaired and being pissed off when you get arrested because the mechanic notices the 5 kilos of coke in your back seat. I mean, come on. The guy is an idiot and a criminal and he should go to prison.
You wanna break the law and not get caught? Use some brain cells. Sorry, if I take my computer to get it repaired (and I have), I yank the hard drives. ALWAYS. I have no expectation of privacy when I drop my computer off with a tech. I do it largely because I have client data on my computer and I would be liable if I took it in for repairs and someone stole the data. It's just common sense, and if a criminal can't amass enough common sense to do the same, well, they deserve to be arrested, tried, and convicted.
This is like bringing your car in for repair with a body in the trunk. Part of a repair person's job is to look things over, if they stumble on something blatantly illegal while doing so, well, don't be so stupid.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I was running a consulting company in Halifax just under a year ago, and a soldider from the armed forces had contacted me to fix his hard drive. While my tech was working on it, he discovered hundreds of gigabytes of porn, including many shots of young (pre-puberty) girls. The police had to get a search warrant for my office in order to legally seize the computer. The police did ask how we came across the images, because that was the most obvious way the case might have been thrown out. I never heard anything about the case again.
The story quotes from the opinion this little gem:
So I guess this means that you have an expectation of privacy when you effectively negate the need for such an expectation and show that you do not in fact have such an expectation.
Truth in advertising? How is it that people busted for sex crimes manage to have names like [Sodom]sk[y]?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
He should be convicted simply for being stupid enough to leave child porn on his computer while its in the possesion of anyone else, especially geeksquad types. What a moron.
this century has really started off great for USA. We have been attacked, and that has been used as a premise for all sorts of loss of rights. I wonder how much longer we citizens and patriots will put up with this. Sadly, about 2/3 argue for saving personal liberty, but are will to sacrifice others right to arm, while about 1/3 want the rights to arm, but are willing to give up the personal liberties for other Americans. How soon before ppl realize that a lose of 1 right leads to a lose of other rights. Sadly, many of the folks from WWII learned that, and use to fight this, but nearly all are gone. And those that remain do not care to keep fighting these battles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It not like the employees installed a keylogger or monitoring software and discovered it, it was on his machine when they were asked to do work on it.
Its like crying privacy rights if I ask a plumber to come fix my kitchen sink, I take off to run errands, and when I get back I am arrested for having murdered victims in my bedroom. Did the plumber violate my privacy and thus charges be thrown out?
Someone with legal knowledge please clear this up.
Well, aside from the fact that he should be prosecuted no matter how they found it, it's his own fault for keeping any kind of files on there after the big stories about bestbuy geeksquad techs copying files from machines getting repaired.
Now if the files were something personal like tax documents, or his credit card numbers, he might have a case I could sympathize with. But for something illegal like that, isn't it illegal to not report it?
circuit city aren't law enforcement and as such they don't need a warrant to snoop about... or look for files to test the work you requested for that matter... I'm pretty sure in most states much like photo developers if they see something illegal involving minors they are required to report it.
child pr0n viewers / child molesters are the lowest scum ever imagined... I hope the piece of shite rots in jail
attention perverts perhpas you should kill yourselves or stop looking at this sorta disgusting crap.. cause your going to wind up in jail..and you know what happens to scum like y'all in jail... oh and if you survive jail you will be shunned and worse the rest of your miserable life by outraged neighbors.
DIE MUTHERFUCKING CHILD MOLESTING SCUM DIE!!!!!
A car analogy is automatically redundant nowadays? You know you are going to get your mod privileges revoked in meta mod with petty moderations like that, and you can't touch my karma; I was here before the cap.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Don't you always lose your right to privacy when you give up any reasonable expectation of privacy? When you hand information over to strangers, you're effectively declaring it to not be private. This wouldn't even be notable if the guy sent a filing cabinet full of kiddie porn in for repairs.
If this is true (what are this guy's first and middle names? Paedo Fill?) Then this guy is a moron. Giving a computer with stuff like that to whoever? His other charge should be 'being a moron'.
You can't handle the truth.
I wonder what consequences this has in regard to any snooping being done in the name of national security. A new "legal" way for the feds to take a look at what you've been up to that doesn't require any warrents/no-knock raids/phone taps etc...?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
AFAIK, when you turn information into your lawyer, it's protected by "client-attorney priviledge". Your attorney can know that you murdered somebody, and is under no obligation to tell anybody. (In fact, he/she could be sanctioned or disbarred if they DID tell anybody)
So, could you offer a bonded "secure" computer repair service through attorneys?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Unless you sign something that says they can paw through your computer files at will, then no they don't have a right to go looking through your computer.
This needs to be appealed to a higher court because it sets a dangerous precedent. People who are well informed (Expert testimony) need to explain to the court how wide the implications are for decision such as this.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
This is like trespassing onto someones property by mistake and finding a dead body.
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0470121025.html On the one side - do it yourself next time moron.... On the other side - he should rot in prison and let the folks there show him how they feel.
Because isn't concealing or helping to conceal a crime against the law in itself?
Without reading the article, what I'm guessing they're saying is that the evidence is not inadmissible in criminal court, because the person installing the hardware (and software, i.e. drivers) had blanket permission to boot up the computer and use it for the purpose of doing the installation. If, in the course of performing the installs, the person stumbles upon evidence that a crime has been committed, you can't retroactively claim that they didn't have permission to use the computer.
What they're probably not saying is that you have no recourse if that person posts the embarassing (but legal) video you made for your spouse folder to YouTube, or even gossips about it.
Just from reading the summary, I have no reason to believe that there's been anything new happening here. The police are held to the same standard all the time.
http://outcampaign.org/
How does this kind of thing work when computers aren't part of the equation? Suppose you take your car in to the shop or have a plumber come to your house or whatever and the repairman finds your drug stash / illegal weapon / plot to overthrow the government / whatever it is you are hiding. Do you have some right to privacy? Are they obligated to report you?
I would have installed some key logger software to monitor him and find his sources.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...Peter Phil
Where do I find child pornography?
Ok, I'm guessing that the staff at the store were not police officers, so I find it hard to see how them doing something wrong would invalidate evidence gathered by the police, provided that the police did everything right. Now IANAL but it would appear to me that it basically boils down to what the police did after receiving the tip, or does US law actually say the police can't act on tips from the public if the public only knows what they know because of illegal actions? I.e, if I a crook breaks in to somebody's home to steal something, then finds a large quantity of drugs, I'd expect that the police would need a warrant to search the house, but surely the mere fact that the crook tipped them of doesn't mean they can't investigate? Thus I'm guessing that the real issue here is weather the police would have needed a warrant to have a look at the computer while it was in repair. What is precedence on that? Does the police need a warrant to search your car while it is being repaired, or can the mechanic just let them have a look around if they want to ?
He might actually have a right to privacy, however he would have to sue circuit city to get restitution for it being infringed. IANAL but I am a human being, and if someone who is not working at the behest of the police infringes on someone's rights but also discovers evidence and turns it over to the police, that evidence should be admissible. For example if a thief breaks into someone's home and discovers child porn and hands it over to the police, the prosecutor should be allowed to use that evidence. Now if there was evidence that the thief was working for the police (for example they routinely handed over evidence to the police) that would be a different story.
I talked to a guy called Sgt. Foo King Liarski.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for files to test the burner"
That's right your Honor, we were just looking for some jpegs and avis to test the burner with.
The ones that have flesh-colored icons work are best for testing burners.
Take out all the HDDs before you send it in to be repaired. This is prudent even if you're not concerned with privacy (but you should be) to protect your data from the idiots at the repair center that might finish off their work with a complimentary format and reinstall. I've seen that happen before. I don't have much sympathy for people who tried and failed to hide their child porn, but as with most losses of privacy it has a small impact on guilty people (who will just find a way around it) and a huge impact on the rest of us.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Is any person who gives their computer to a technicians also "making available" songs?
When I was in college a customer brought in their computer because some software was having problems. Specifically his scanning software. Our technicians took a look at it and in the preview pane of his scanning software there was child porn! The decision was made to call the FBI and they came in and took the original hard drive and we replaced it with an exact copy. When the customer came by to pick up his computer I sold him a TON of other crap all knowing that the following day he was going to be arrested. I have no idea whatever happened to the customer but he never came back! haha ;)
Ten minutes to fix the DVD. Five days to go through your media looking for bank info, pictures of the missus to post on www.lonelyhearts.com etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I agree, the geek squad guys are not agents of the State, so anything they find should be fair game. But at the same time, there is likely some language in the contract for the work that determines what the geek will and wont do. And if that contract forbids the geeks from surfing peoples' hard drives, then he should be able to sue them for breach of contract... from prison.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It's a DVD-BURNER!!!! I used to work in a Retail Tech shop where this EXACT thing happened. A few years ago of course in a different big box store. This was NOT uncommon. You open nero, throw in a blank dvd, find some files, and burn them to the DVD to TEST the BURNING. If it WASN"T a dvd burner, then yeah, something would be weird. But with all the news about Best buy employees scowering your hard drive for pr0n, WTF do you expect!? Let him burn I say.
My first question, is why were the techs looking around for files to copy? They should be providing their own files via a USB drive.
Second question, when police search your house with a warrant, they can find and collect items that are not covered by the warrant 'if they were in plain sight' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#Exceptions/. Does having a file located in C:\a\b\c\c\a\a\e\f\g\h\pr0n.jpg constitute 'being in plain sight'? Or does the fact that the tech can use the search/find feature of my OS to locate all mp3s/.avis/.jpgs etc contitute 'in plain sight'. Note that a search warrant applies to officers of the law, not to Geeks on Patrol, Dorks at your Door, or Need a Nerd, Inc.
If his desktop image contained child pr0n, then I could understand even 'in plain sight' but digging through your files is no different than a cop digging through your closet and finding something in a shoebox.
Where do you draw the line between a computer tech snooping a hard drive and an ISP tech monitoring your email/downloads?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Whatever the merits of Sodomsky's tastes, what got me was this portion of the court's opinion: "[T]he playing of videos already in the computer was a manner of ensuring that the burner was functioning properly." It's hard to tell who's the bigger idiot here, the CC employee for thinking that playing files off the hard drive would verify the operation of a DVD drive, or the court for accepting that kind of crap!
-The Car Analogy (obligatory): take to mechanic for repair, leave illegal material in an unlocked glovebox. Fuses are in the glovebox, mechanic finds illegal material. Arrested, trail court dismisses on evidentiary grounds, prosecution appeal currently pending. Al Sharpton somehow becomes involved in media coverage.
-The Kitchen Appliance Analogy: take mini fridge in for repair. Leave severed hand of (former) roommate in freezer. Hand is found when test of ice cube tray attempted. Convicted to 30 year sentence, paroled in 9 years. Begin anew with career as tech security consultant.
-The Post Office Analogy: Take large, heavy package to post office. Deliver using media mail rate, the cheapest shipping option. Miss sign claiming that any media mail package is subject to inspection by any PO employee. Box is lined with child pornography. Arrested, sentenced in federal court, killed in prison after 2 years.
-The 19th Century Tech Analogy: take daguerreotype plates in for annual silver halide tune up and focus lens coal-cloth polishing. Leave illegal woodcuts of "ladies of the night" wearing bloomers and baring arms and shoulders(!) underneath stack of plates. Illegal woodcuts & etchings located when technician reaches bottom of stack. Immediately jailed, lynched by angry torch-bearing mob by evening. Grave marker doubles consonants and adds "e"s to the ends of first and last names.
No matter how it was found out the proof shouldn't be invalidated. Sure, go ahead and start a second case about invasion of privacy by Best Buy but don't mix it up with the dude who had child pornography.
And I thought Uncle Gomorrah had it tough.
Ed
"Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for files to test the burner"
Sure they did !
I'm willing to bet that the first "diagnostic" these guys do when a PC comes in is search all drives for image files. They must have quite the collection by now.
This raises the question: what was to stop them from copying the incriminating files, and then "discovering" them on the hard drive of the next customer who dicks them around ? Could that have even been what happened in this case ?
His case will be thrown out of court. His lawyer will argue that any illegal files may have been placed on his computer by the employees.
Think about it, if you took your computer to the shop, and the next thing you know, you're being arrested for having child pornography (assuming you didn't intentionally download it), how [c|w]ould you prove that you didn't put the files there? "Well, it's on his computer! Throw the book at him!"
OTOH, The recent Linux Journal has a very interesting article on computer forensics; matching file create/access/modify times against ISP download logs could put some lethal holes in this kind of defense, so I may be wrong.
Also, it should be considered if these pictures were in My Pictures\Jerkoff\Kids\ or in (and only in) a browser cache folder. Following the wrong link posted by a troll on Slashdot could get you an illegal file in your cache. Putting them in a named directory yourself, well, that's a different story.
.. is: What if the info was personal, such as medical-related pictures of himself or bank records and such? Then what? On the other hand, he could rott in jail.
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I don't know about anyone else, but 'poking around for files' is pretty damn intrusive. Just burn a couple of files on the desktop to the CD rom.
I hate child porn as much as anyone else, but this stinks of people looking for personal details on their clients that are none of their business. This shady shit has to stop.
The constitutional Right To Privacy, to the extent that it exists at all, applies only to govenment agencies.
The defendant might try bringing a civil action.
But no matter hiw you frame the issues, there is only a snowball's chance in hell that a jury will punish Circuit City for reporting a crime it discovered in the ordinary course of business.
If the tech committed a crime snooping his hard drive (I don't think they did, but play along anyway) could they be charged with a crime while the brain damaged low-life is also charged?
I'm surprised that you're surprised. The reason is because, surprisingly, somebody -- wait, three people -- have mentioned his name.
It's just you.
Wish I had my modpoints left from this afternoon...
This guy has no right to privacy. He specifically consented to Circuit City fixing his PC. It's not as though they invaded his home and took the PC away. It also sounds as though he took very little if any action to conceal the files, so they were right out there in the open. If his neighbor had been fixing his PC at his home and found these files, he'd still have no right to privacy.
This is a Darwin Award nominee in my mind.
If I had been the guy's lawyer, the first thing I would have argued is that since the evidence was not uncovered by a sworn police officer, it could have been planted. What if this guy was a rude on the clerk, who was a vindictive bastard and decided to frame him? Or maybe a jolly clerk may have decided to pull a prank that went out of control when someone in the shop contacted the police ("hey Jimbo! this guy's name is Sodomsky, guess what I found on his drive!").
Yes, the courts could have checked the last-modified filestat, but that can be tampered too.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Think this through...
1. You're a cop and you have this guy's computer full of nasty pictures
2. You can tell when each one was copied/received onto the hard drive
3. You know who his ISP is
4. You know which Internet resources he has been visiting
His lawyer will not attempt to argue that the files were place on the computer by the techs...
1. No motive
2. Shitload of other corroborating evidence
I hope those service tech were wearing rubber gloves, though. Ech.
I'm also surprised that he thinks his sig will catch.
Anyone stupid enough to drop a computer harboring child porn into the hands of any 3rd party should get everything coming to him. Why not copy the illegal shit to a portable hard drive, securely wipe the original files on the PC, and THEN drop it off? Answer: because, fortunately for all of us, a lot of criminals aren't really very bright.
I don't know about the mega-chains (I wouldn't take anything there to be messed with anyway), but the small local chain where I have my stuff serviced has a written, specific clause about this in the repair agreement that you have to sign. Basically, it advises that in the course of servicing, files or folders on the computer may be accessed for diagnostic or testing purposes, and that if kiddie porn or the like happens to be found, they will notify the authorities. I would think Circuit City would (or should) have a similar disclaimer -- if they do, then the guy is screwed because he signed the thing (probably without reading it, as 98% of people do).
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
18 USC 2252A(d)(2)(B) and 18 USC 2258. People really ought to educate themselves about the law before handing their computer over to someone else.
Liberty in your lifetime
I'm don't think this has anything to do with privacy. If I take my car to the garage, I take all the valuables out first, and if there was a list of members of my local overthrow-the-government club in there I'd remove that first too. I do assume that my vehicle is going to be seen inside and out at the garage. I assume that a contractor I hire is going to see the inside of my house, so I'd better hire someone I trust or lock up / securely hide what I don't want them to see. By inviting them in, I have to assume that they will look around (as long as they don't take or break anything).
Likewise, someone locks me in the trunk of a car, and I'm banging on the inside of the trunk and some passer-by hears me and they DON'T call the police, I'd be pretty pissed off at them. Likewise if some idiot was sexually abusing kids at his house and I happen to overhear, you can be damn sure I'll call the police, and if I was absolutely sure of what was going on (recognized the kid, etc.), and thought I could take him, I'd go knock down his door and rescue the kid. You have the option to turn your head and walk away, but you are morally justified to intervene if someone is being hurt/abused, etc.
Now, the REAL issue isn't privacy, it's whether or not they should be taking the word of the guys at the computer repair shop at face value. It's too easy in my mind for someone to plant evidence like that on a client's computer just because they wanted to pull a nasty prank or didn't like the guy. I think the cops should have been called, but I would challenge the evidence to make sure the guy wasn't being convicted ONLY on that evidence alone. I'd want to see the cops get a warrant and pull the IP logs from the ISP to see if he'd visited sites that offer or cater to that kind of material. I think the pictures on his computer is enough to get a warrant to look further into it, but I don't think it's enough to convict him completely. THAT's what the issue should be here.
Absolutely this guy is entitled to privacy, and freedom, and a fair trial, but that has to be weighed against the rights of the abused. If this guy had pictures of his pot plants or some pirated movies or evidence of some other *victimless* crime, then I'd buy the privacy argument, but not in this case.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
C:\Nothing to see here. Move along.\
a legal folder name?
Have gnu, will travel.
The Geek Squad fucks babies, balls deep just how the pope likes it.
Hush Hush...
Crinkle Crinkle...
No-one is arguing that child porn should be protected (although elsewhere some *would* argue, that only producing it should be an offense).
What's at issue is that next time a repair guy goes through your files and sees "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..." and is going to report *that* too.
Next thing you know, you'll have your ass hauled from workplace to the county jail. Apologies will be slow in coming, and your work buddies may not be joining you at lunch for a while.
WHat's also at issue is that submitting a computer for repairs does not give the service people a blank check to read my email or browse through my vacation pictures. I fix my own machine, but I don't fix my car myself, and I expect the technician not to rummage through stuff I may have left in the boot, looking for thrills.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Looks like the technician didn't just click it by chance, he sort of actively chose to search, open and view the kiddie porn.
If I spotted files on the internet that appeared to be porn, and I clicked on ones that I believe to be kiddie porns, I'd be arrested if I call the police and confess that.
Being a technician doesn't make any difference; he is not a cop, and he does not have the right to do it in the name of investigation.
Quite directly and sensibly. As the head of the department, I'd have the guy who reported it fired. No, not because I want to protect a pedophile. But he simply has no business in a customer's personal files. Yes, in this case breaking into the privacy of the person helped discovering another crime. Yes, that's "another". Not "a", not even "a more serious".
I happen to get a lot of client PCs on my desk, for similar matters. We do forensics for various high profile customers who want to follow the trail when a trojan hijacks their machine and they want to have proof how it happened. Which also means we got quite a few certs from various places, private and governmental, that allow our findings to be used as evidence in a trial. Looking through a customer's personal files (or any files not related to the problem outlined in very fine detail) is simply a no-go. No matter what.
Yes, that means that I would have to let a pedophile get off the hook. By the contract between my company and the customer, and (as odd as this may sound), even by law. I must not look at those files. Having certain customers from certain companies that deal with certain topics plays a role here, but that's not the point.
Should I accidently look at a file that does not belong to the case at hand (for example, when looking for trojan screenshots and I happen to run across a porn pic that happens to be in the same location a certain trojan would put its pics, or when undeleting files and perusing the findings), I have to ignore it. I never saw it. For all I know, it does not exist.
Now, the kid who discovered that pedophile pics might consider himself being in the right. IMO, he's not. He broke the primary law of business: Don't break your contract with your customer. Don't invade your customer's (or anyone's) privacy.
Yes, I consider an invasion into privacy a bigger crime than collecting kiddy porn. In other words, our politicians are lower than pedos in my books.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Personally, I like it."~"
The right of privacy, legally speaking, applies to government searches. This wasn't a government search. This was a computer tech working on a computer he was hired to work on. This is no different than the furnace guy coming out to your house to change a filter, and finding your paper child porn collection stuffed in to a vent. But, I suppose, there are people who would whine about that, too.
I knew you could.
People should know that computer techs frequently do "rifle" through your hard drive - and sometimes even copy your stuff onto their systems - and not as authorized backups, either.
I saw one of these TV news consumer expose type pieces on computer repair services when a tech was filmed secretly doing exactly that. After being exposed, he was allegedly fired by the company providing the services, but then was allegedly hired back.
Bringing a computer into a shop with criminal activity on it is just plain moronic.
That said, I wonder if it was really "child porn." You can go to some porn sites and download pics of girls that LOOK underage, but are actually 18 or older - in fact, many times, WELL over 18 (like 30!) if you look closer. Wearing pigtails doesn't tell a person's age (actually I can't stand pigtails as a hair style, anyway!.) Most sites have to comply with the Federal law that mandates maintaining the ages and addresses of all models on their site - or at least formally declaring that all models are over 18 - how this is done for sites that just buy DVDs of these images, I don't know. Unless the cops establish the ages of the females in question, or the state law says that ANY depiction of underage sex (and some even try to make cartoon drawings illegal) is illegal, they may have a problem proving their case. Of course, if the images clearly show immature females, that won't be much of a problem - it's hard to fake a naked ten-year-old.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I really hate these cases. On one hand this case means one less perv on the streets, and no one can really argue against that. On the other hand, it should be considered an invasion on privacy, which any right thinking person really should fight to protect any day of the week.
It's a Catch 22, and a dangerous one to start building a legal precedence on.
The idiotic fallacy in your post: repair technicians only invade the privacy of computers belonging to really bad people.
If the lock on your mailbox breaks, can the Post Office people open your letters when they come to fix it, you know, just because a return address in Kandahar, Afghanistan, looks kinda suspicious to them?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Sodomsky?
Are you serious?
That's like....occuponymous.
-Styopa
The kind of "Freedom" you guys enjoy in the USA has been earned. You had a great consitution and proper personal freedoms but you let various people scare you into shredding that constitution and those freedoms.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Won't someone please think of the children...
You see, mods are a lot like cars. They have break downs from time to time. Well, ok, more like Fords I suppose.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
How do we know that Stephen Richert isn't lying?
I AM NOT SAYING THAT HE IS LYING. I DO NOT KNOW. THAT IS THE POINT.
There is no way to tell whether or not he was trying to frame the customer and put the photos on the computer himself. For that reason the evidence should be excluded.
Circuit City is not the police. We treat police officers differently. Generally speaking, we assume that police officers aren't lying when they say they discovered evidence at X location. Despite that, we require police to follow strict rules when handling evidence to avoid tampering. Stephen Richert did not follow these rules and was not a police agent, his evidence should have been excluded.
This is just sloppy police work. What they should have done is gotten a search warrant based on Richert's tip. Then installed keylogging, troyjans, etc. into Sodomsky's computer, allowed him to pick it up, and then monitored his activity. If they saw that he was watching and downloading child pornography they'd have a more solid case.
Your clients can hold you liable for unauthorized access to their data?
Yet when someone takes their computer into a best buy, circuit city, etc, that person then becomes a client of said store, and has different rights?
The point is that they looked through his files without his express permission.
Was he dumb? Yes.
Were they wrong in going through his files, even for a test burn? Yes.
If they do a routine test burn, they should also do a routine disc read.
Why not have a test dvd that they copy, and burn back?
The fact is these stores LOVE to rummage through your files.
It's good PR when the company can say they help fight child porn.
It's a laugh riot for the employees to dig through your favorites and personal files.
It's not beyond reason to suspect that said files may have been planted.
It's wrong of them to do it, and legally, this guy has a good defense.
When you develop film, they HAVE to see the pictures to do their job.
Film developers are required by law to report anything involving child abuse or animal abuse (and probably murder, etc).
A tech installing a dvd drive does not need to look through your files, even for a test burn.
It's the equivalent of a plumber coming into your house and pawing through your stack of magazines on the lid of your toilet tank.
This did not warrant an arrest for this man.
It warranted an investigation, with the computer being returned and law enforcement going to a judge requesting a warrant.
It's called due process.
Come on people! Removable drives were made for (porn) this exact reason. If guests come over. Turn the drive off. If you have to take your computer in for repair. Leave the driver at home. Its that simple.
IANAL, but I suspect simple "probable cause" is sufficient to overcome the need for a warrant.
And "Hey, look at the kiddie porn I found on Sodomsky's computer!" would be probably cause...
Will you please point us all to any blanket requirement for the government to get a warrant for any and all searches? Because when you find it, you'll be the first person in the universe to do so.
What if this had been like trespassing on purpose and finding nothing, who's at fault now.
Seriously, there's absolutely no reason to look through a persons files to install and test a DVD drive installation/upgrade. The techs are the ones who should be in trouble in this instance.
I'm not saying the other guy should get his, but in this case, to preserve our right to privacy, this one should be thrown out. It's no different the than illegal search & seizure for the police.
This guy wold have eventually been caught, and even if it get thrown out, he's a marked man now. He'll burn in hell soon enough.
Sodomsky's partner, Gammorahsky, is reported to still be at large.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I freelance, and I work for a few casinos, sportsbooks, and some investment firms.
I have a very clear data policy publicly available on my site, and I ask all my customers to read them.
I have these to protect myself and to protect my clients. I always tell them what data/logins/access I need, and ask them to agree or deny.
Did Circuit City tell the guy that they were about to look into his files? Did they warn him what access they needed, and what they needed to modify? If not: well the guy is right.
Note 1: I am not sorry for a kiddiporn lover who gets arrested.
Note 2: My data policy can cost my life, so I am very open and strict about it. Most importantly I always ask clients to give me the least possible access necessary, so a data lifting accusation is out of question.
Note 3: The highest danger factor of being a tech in Central America is losing knee caps/life/fingers after stealing customer info data from a gaming operation. It is best to not even attempt is, and even better to not even get suspected.
The list goes on. I'm tired of reading Red Herrings people! Let us discuss weather the tech was actually right and the evidence should stand instead of all these other things. I think the perp is a bad guy too, but that doesn't allow me to step all over his privacy rights.
I'm afraid I've not got any follow-up on this, but in 2005 a man was arrested for molesting a child after a safe containing photographs of the crime was stolen from his house. Can anyone find if he was convicted?
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/files/risking_a_life_term_to_protect_a_child.pdf" [pdf]
your points may be valid but they are irrelevant.
If I break into a house and find a someone cutting up a murder victim then you might as well overlook the break-in - there are bigger fish to fry.
Sure, it was wrong, slapped wrist, don't do it again, but it pales into insignificance at a murder scene.
The house owner doesn't "lose the right" to not have his house broken into - I did something bad, but he's still a murderer.
If he *hadn't* murdered someone then he'd have a very legitimate reason to see me prosecuted.
We all have a right to certain levels of privacy, criminal or not...
The alternative is a future reminiscent of the old Monty Python skit.
If we continue to allow our privacy rights to be twisted and modified, our future may be a very unfunny version of the Spanish Inquisition where anyone at anytime can bust into our homes, cars, computer, lives on a quest to find anything incriminating for the sake of The Greater Good!!!
That's not a future I want to be a part of.
I don't want to feel that, even though I'm innocent, my privacy and my life can still be uprooted at any giving moment because someone felt like it...
Well even if this story is a fake, its not the first time stuff like this has happened when some pedo brings his computer in to be repaired, and service tech. finds the porn on his machine and calls the cops. I believe its law if they find the that stuff on customers machines, they are required to contact the police.
Based on this precedent, is my invention now free for the taking and sharing? I believe I would have only contacted for the installation of hardware and only the necessary drivers. Where does inspection of non-system files come into play?
Privacy is privacy, regardless of the content.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Can you get this roll of film developed for me? Thanks.
So I tagged it "nothingtoseehere."
Well,
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Only if his name is Dr. Locksmith.
Freedom != Privacy
The tech decided to "test" the new DVD burner by burning some of the guy's porn onto a DVD so he could take it home and add it to HIS stash! He likely found the kiddy porn amoong all the other porn on the guy's computer. In other words, the tech WENT LOOKING for porn on the guy's computer....just like he looks for the porn on EVERY customer's computer! I'd wager that the techs at Circuit City have the BEST porn collections out there for this very reason!
Interesting precedent. Now we can ask what would happen if a repair tech found evidence of tax evasion, like two sets of books. They call it into the IRS Tax Evasion Hotline (1-800-829-0433), and apply for the reward.
Questions:
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What were they doing looking for pictures anyway? Trying to find some goods?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I don't really disagree with your facts Mr ScrewMaster, but what happened here is a good thing. One less person that's consuming images of child sexual abuse is a good thing. I'm not saying that technician's should be trying to find these criminals, but what happened was a insignificant accident, and a good accident at that. ScrewMaster, you almost sound like you are defending the pedophile, and trying to lynch the technicians. This possibly can't be the case, but you sure have put a lot of effort into making undermining the seriousness of the crime they found. Just his bad luck that they found kiddie porn What? This pedophiles' bad luck started when he downloaded those images of child sexual abuse. What happened was deserved, not bad luck. Otherwise they'd just have made copies for their own consumption and nobody would have been the wiser. Why do you say this? Are you speaking from the experience of having been a techie? Is this what you would've done without a supervisor?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If the tech showed anyone some media that they did not have rights to, that sure seems like a DMCA violation to me. How many people constitute a "public performance"? The RIAA seems to insist that this number can be as small as ONE. If that's a valid definition for the RIAA, it should also be valid for anyone else. It must be assumed that if you have not been given explicit rights to a particular work, that you have no rights to reproduce or display it at all.
This does not mean I either condone or abhor anything that may have been present on that piece of storage media. All I am talking about is EQUAL rights under the LAW.
Encryption? Locks are only to keep the honest people out.
For most crimes the states and the feds have a deal:
It's one or the other but not both.
Now if he had 50 pictures the state can charge him on 25 and the feds on the rest.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Its about stupidity. You see, im not worried that they checked, not worried that they found. What worries me is how the HELL do you prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the guy was actually the user of that porn?
How do you prove he didnt get it by clicking on some pr0n spam. How do you know he didnt just get it off of google images and it got into his cache.
What has to stop is the assumption that people are responsible for whatever shit gets dropped in their box. They arent and most specially arent when using microsoft software. Anyone can put the pr0n there.
NO SIG
there is no expected right of privacy with a private organization unless clearly stated
This is why I maintain a spare drive...for times I have to send my laptop in for repairs (not the kiddie porn thing).
Load a clean copy of an OS on there, verify that it works, then submit the machine with that in. And NO, I'm not talking about pirating Windows by installing a second copy. Ubuntu works fine. If they can't use it, they can wipe the drive and install Windows on it again. It's just going to get wiped and re-Ubuntu'ed when it gets back anyhow. I then slam my Windows drive back in and voila!
I have too much sensitive data on my drive to turn it in. And I've seen too many clients lose literally their ENTIRE business' data because they didn't do backups before sending a computer in that was later wiped.
As I have backups, if it's my hard drive that dies (or the machine is replaced by one that's somehow different enough to make my original drive not work, I can recover my data.
It's easy. Buy the smallest hard drive you can with the thing. And get one of an acceptable size after-market.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The shops should be raising their privacy expectation. There are many ways to test burning a DVD without plowing through customer's files. Why not just plug in an external drive with a test image and burn that instead? Child pornography or not, I see this as the tech shop's hypocritical attempt to justify amoral business privacy practice.
I once had a signature.
Suppose the contract included installing the software that came with the drive. This requires booting the computer in Windows.
Now suppose the files were in plain site. Maybe one was his background picture. Maybe there was an open folder that had thumbnails with names like "6yogirlXXX.jpg" that were clear enough to see. You get the idea.
Or maybe just the filenames were in plain site. If a tech sees "My 7 year old daughter and me having sex.jpg" at the very least he's going to call his supervisor who will probably call corporate legal.
Now, there's nothing to say this is ACTUAL kiddie porn. It could be a very good hand-drawing or computer animation both of which are legal in America. My point is that if the images were "in plain view" and they were indistinguishable to a layman from legal animations, state almost certainly immunizes him from lawsuits if he calls the cops and may actually obligate him to do so.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are two issues here that need to be distinguished. One is whether the techs had any business going through the guy's files. The other is whether the state can use what they discovered against him. To the first, I would say that although it isn't safe to assume that the techs won't go through your files, they don't have any business doing so except to the generally limited extent that it is necessary for their work. Obviously if you have a problem with corrupted files they're going to want to look at the files, and they may well need to look at various kinds of system files and config files, but most of the time there is no good reason for them to look at other files. If they want to test a DVD burner, they can perfectly well use a file that they keep for that purpose.
On the second issue I am surprised at the trial court's ruling. As a rule, the state is entitled to use evidence whether or not it was legally obtained so long as it wasn't the state that broke the rules. If the person who obtains evidence is a police officer or is acting as an agent of the state, the evidence must be excluded if there was no search warrant and it does not fall under one of the exceptions to the need for a warrant. If, however, the evidence is obtained by a private party acting on his own, not at the behest of the police, it is generally admissible even if the private party had no right to do what it did. The principle is that the state should not be penalized for actions outside of its control. The Fourth Amendment constraints government action, not that of other parties.
They said they were looking for files to burn to test the hardware. There are plenty of files on any given computer that they don't need to search for them, and they especially didn't have any excuse to open them.
If he needed to bring his machine in for upgrading there's a good chance he didn't have the technical savvy for removing his HD beforehand.
Consent to change the fluids in my vehicle is not consent to open up the glove compartment looking for motor oil. The legality of its contents is irrelevant because if you opened it, you broke the rules first. Nobody here is the good guy and they should be in trouble just as much as he is.
Is the standard really "what I think" or is there some kind of common-sense standard techies use before wasting police manpower?
On the flip side, what if I'm one of those guys who thinks "if there aren't at least two of them and they aren't doing the dirty deed, it's not porn"? Will I be arrested for not reporting a single-actor KP picture just because it didn't meet my tough grading criteria?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Your response?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's all well and good to debate the general case of whether there is an expectation of privacy when you hire someone to work on your PC. But what matters in this case is the specific agreement. I'm sure the store has a standard form with lots of boilerplate where the customer grants them rights to do such and such with their computer, waives certain liabilities, etc. The specifics of that agreement are really what's important, without that you can't say whether it was legal or not.
It is not necessary to view data in order to duplicate it and verify the integrity of the duplication. Anything beyond that is not only unnecessary, it can be viewed as criminal trespass.
Since Child porn requires child abuse of the worst sort, the sort of person who has this stuff is just a guilty as the sicko who made it. Have fun in the joint !
How can anyone defend privacy on a computer when the lives of children are involved?
Some states have enacted laws that make IT resposible if they don't report evidence of criminal activity on a work computer.
Does one not have a moral obligation to report evidence of crime?
Rule #1: Don't store any controversial material on your hard drive.
Rule #2: Always surf and download through proxies.
Rule #3: Use good cleaning programs such as Clean Disk Security and Tracks Eraser Pro.
Rule #4: KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
need to go away. Possession is NOT a committing a crime. Too easy to manipulate. Now actioning against someone else can be but that never seems to work out for law enforcement. I rather see someone waxing his carrot to whatever porn or what have you(you know freedom) than he/she/it killing someone else by any means possible for any reason. Unless you are harming someone else you aren't committing a crime. Otherwise we might as well burn what little is left of the constitution and start killing each other proper. You understand the only reason law exists is to keep us from killing each other and the legal system exists to referee. A lot of recent law just seems bent on cutting(moralism) its own throat(amoral legal trust). I hope they realize when our trust is completely gone and the legal system breaks down the first ones we're going after is the moralist fools for blowing it. Keep your religious moral crap to yourself where it belongs. We may love the idea of america but its obvious many don't and are not smart enough to realize it. You have to accept the bad with the good or the free state is just hypocrisy.
Absolutely, if the stuff is in plain sight. My concern is for what I know (because I've witnessed it on many occasions) what goes on in service shops. Machines come in, techs fix them and, if nobody's looking, sometimes they'll cruise around looking for good stuff. Sometimes they do it when the boss is looking, because he doesn't care. That kind of behavior is what I'm talking about, and it goes on everywhere because there's no accountability. Sure, if you're brainless enough to leave a naked picture of an underage girl on your desktop expect to get hammered. That's an extreme case, though ... the fact is most of us have files on our systems that are perfectly legal but that we'd rather keep to ourselves. The ONLY way to do that is to have an encrypted partition, and the self-discipline to use it, or to just not give the tech your drive. That annoys them, because it's extra work, but that's too bad. My need for privacy is more important than their convenience.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...or stored them on an external drive, or installed the dvd burner himself, or encrypted everything and hidden the files three layers deep. Etc. Etc.
Look. They guy brought his PC to a tech guy for a simple dvd drive installation. Clearly he's not a technology guy. He was fool enough to think a tech guy wouldn't look at what was on the machine. Clearly he's no rocket scientist. He had a drive full of naked children being molested by adults. Clearly he is a sick deviant freak.
It's been almost 20 years since I've had to touch a computer belonging to a customer, but I still occasionally fix things for friends and family. Routinely, if I'm fixing a computer -- even doing an upgrade -- I check the system out to make sure its in good shape.
These techs did the right thing here.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Hitler and Stalin came in quietly. W. was freely elected (kind of). The part that amazes me is the number of idiots who argue for lose of gun rights or lose of civil rights (such as privacy), and think that they are being patriotic. The entire group that steals our rights, wraps themselves in the flag, while so many others ignore that.
I would not say that we earned this. We have earned our freedoms. But I will say that due to spineless assholes we are losing them rapidly. I only hope that our children will have the ability to imprison these same idiots who stole and gave them away. These traitors deserve to swing.
Freedom is not earned. It is given. What have YOU done to "earn" your freedom? Likely bubkus.
Same goes with privacy. You're either given it or you don't get it at all.
As far as I'm concerned, if a crime is discovered by any means, than the offender should be open to prosecution. If the crime is discovered in the process of some illegal action, then that action should be punished independently of the crime. My only concerns are of the fairness of punishing someone for a crime of theirs that was only discovered because they did the right thing by calling attention to a more serious crime.
So naturally there will be confusion about some things. I think in instances like this applying real-world logic where available works well.
Imagine this was an employee who came to his home to do the repair. Saw child pornography laying out and decided the phone the police. Leaving an unencrypted file in your computer is essentially the same. Encryption provides a closed box. It's your business as long as it's behind (relatively) closed doors, but when you service the computer and provide access you are making those files not otherwise locked public.
This extends to documents of personal or financial nature which frequently come up in cases of theft.
In real life we use locks to protect our valuables. It seems people still have some confusion regarding how this applies to the digital age, but I think it applies directly.
Quack, quack.
Post AC!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Who here really thinks that the geek squad is gonna stay out of your personal files?
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
I worked on a PC Repair Bench in a small town in WY. Someone brought their PC in for a cleanup and in the process of going through temp files and looking for common places that malware lurks(in this case a limewire download folder), I found a few kiddie porn videos. I immediately went to my boss and showed him what I had found. We then called the police, who sent a cop over to investigate. The officer viewed the files and they then confiscated the PC. Long story short, the whole case was thrown out because they didn't have a warrant to search the computer. They asked me if I would testify(because I don't need a warrant to search the computer) and I told them that I would, but it never got to that point. The case was thrown out, and that customer never did business with us again.
When we first found the videos, we did some investigation of our own, and we found out that the owner of the PC had at one time applied for a job where I was working(as a secretary or accountant or something), and we had her resume on record. She had previously operated a day care out of her home, which was the red flag that made it unquestionable as to whether we were going to call the police or not.
I know that the computer had several logins, and I'm pretty sure she had a teenage son. It was under his account that I found these files. It seemed that he just downloaded the content using limewire and viewing it, so I'm not sure the whole scenario was quite as insidious as it could seem. That is not my judgement to make. That is why we have the courts and a jury system.
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
He probably had !!!!13.jpg on his desktop in plain view. Maybe they didn't need to look very hard to uncover the pedo's stash.
Coming to somebodies house to do a repair and snooping around. Or coming to somebodies house and snooping around, finding child pornography and not reporting it.
I mean lets face it. If the guy had any sense of security he gave that up when he gave unchecked and unlimited access to all his data.
It might not exactly be ethical but if you leave a stranger with unchecked access to your data you have no way to know what he will do. That extends to data of a personal or financial nature. It's your responsibility to take reasonable steps to protect your data.
Quack, quack.
What I can't fathom is why the lawyer didn't plead that the monkeys have planted the pr0n. This, by itself, is sufficient to induce the smidgeon of reasonable doubt that is needed to acquit.
while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for pr0n
Isn't there a big stink with geeksquad about the employees going through customers harddrives for music, videos whatever and they all share them. Haven't they said that they were isolated incidents and it's not normal procedure, well it's sounds like it's normal procedure at circuit city.
Damn it bugs me that this (and the other article about not having to give up his encryption keys) centers around child porn for issues such as this, but I'd like to think that if I brought a computer in for repair I should damn well be assured of some privacy and not have some tech geek rifling through my contents.
They say it was to find something to burn, wtf is that?! They should have some standard usb thumbdrive with various sized files to make sure the burner is stressed properly.
The only time they should be going through a customer's harddrive is when they are installing a new one and formatting it.
I don't think the customer should have the onus on them to back up all their bookmarks, personal files, history, cookies passwords etc, and then delete all that stuff, and then restore it back when they get the computer back from the shop just to ensure their privacy is not violated.
I'd love this guy to get pinched based on the content he had, but this should not be allowed. Those employees should be fired for doing that, and if it's standard policy of the store, well they should be sued.
I had a job working for Computer City in Canada back in the day when it was owned by Future Shop. Did we "peek" at what people had on their computers when it was in service? Sure.. sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. If he had a folder on the desktop called "here's me having sex with my wife" - who wouldn't want to open it and see what's inside?
And yes sometimes there was porn (typical 18+ stuff), but even if I had found child porn I would stay out of this affair. It's really none of my bussiness of how he got it or what the circumstances are. It his is private property and I have no right to help myself into his files, that's an illegal search, and I would never want it done to myself by someone else.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Quack, quack.
Lock personal data.
This could easily be applied to anything. If it's not locked you should assume that the data is insecure. These could have been financial records or personal information.
Quack, quack.
"They just happened to notice he had kiddie porn on his computer"
.jpg's because they hope there's porn there....
How does that happen exactly? I mean, you're fixing a DVD burner, you put it in, and you want to test it, so you grab some files, and you start looking in them? Or... they look for all the
I guess I'm having a hard time.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say they were trawling his hard drive for cool stuff and they got more than they bargained for?
Something very similar happened to me when repairing someone's pc.
I as running a defrag in XP and some of file names rolling by, at the bottom of the management console, caught my eye. I stopped the defrag and noticed items in an unemptied recycle bin, so I opened it. There were plenty more files with very suggestive names. Not wanting to ruin my dreams, I didn't open anything. I shut off the box and told my manager, who called the cops. Here's what I found out from the officer that arrived.
1) If you have suspicion, report it.
2) Do not open/copy/delete/empty anything.
3) Shut down the box and wait for the law to arrive.
Once the officer arrived he took my statement and called in for a warrant to search the PC. Within 20 min.s he got a call back confirming a warrant had been issued to search the pc. The officer attached a write blocker to the drive and checked out some of the files in question. Suspicions were confirmed and the officer took the pc in custody as evidence, and had other officers sent to pick up the suspect.
All of this transpired in a matter of hours.
So if you have suspicions, just report it to your boss, and leave the box alone.
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
I've installed many drives and burners. There is no need to peruse the users files. At all. Period.
Especially if you want to test the burning. Stick with your own files, you know what they are, and supposedly if they are good. Any old thing you find on a users drive could be anything, especially corrupt. And if you aren't very familiar with that file, how will you gauge the accuracy of the burn if you are even bothering to. Lots of users have corrupt data, video, etc files on their drives, and often don't even know it.
Simply put, that tech had no right or permission (assuming it wasn't hidden in the paperwork) to go through his files.
I'm not defending a possible pedophile, after all, the fascists start somewhere. And it's usually defended with the statements like, "What's your problem, he's just a criminal"...
The techs may have invaded his privacy, but that (probably) doesn't affect the criminal case. Sure, he may have a good invasion of privacy civil suit against the techs and/or Circuit City under State law, but fat lot of good that will do him when he's rotting in federal prison.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Looking for video files to burn to test DVD burner sounds like peeking at privacy to me. The simplest test is to put in a DVD and they copy that DVD to a blank one. Searching for video files and pictures is a clear indication of the person's intent to dig into PC Owner's privacy.
Learn to fix your own shit.
Oh well, natural selection is still trying to work at least.
My thinking on this is that computing power is finite, so they (whoever "they" is for you) have to choose which file to try to decrypt, so if you have 100 fake encryped containers and 1 real encrypted containers and they can't tell the difference, they'd waste a lot of time. Of course there is always rubber-hose cryptography, but that's a different issue, and if you're enough of a concern to highly placed spooks or cops, you're screwed already, passphrase notwithstanding. Camp X-Ray for you!
Anyway, my point was (I do have one somewhere) is that how screwed would you be in the UK to have a file of random data that you can't prove isn't an encrypted container? Would what seemed originally like a clever trick to play on the authorities basically sentence you to life in prison, since there is no passphrase to turn over?
My father's name is Kenneth.
Depends on what you use. If you encrypt every file separately, yes. But encrypted containers, via on-the-fly-encryption (OTFE) like Truecrypt, Drivecrypt, PGPdisk, etc, are not at all a hassle. You create a container once, and mount it when you want to use it. There is no excuse for not using encryption. How many horribly injured people once thought that seatbelts were too much of a hassle?
...which is what a number of you are saying and I don't want to reply to 9 different people. But, if you are installing hardware you also are installing the software. And that means the tech's probably had administrative access to the machine in question which would make using windows encryption moot. Also, what they did is standard practice. The machine is not considered ready for pickup unless the machine is tested. Luckily or unluckily, depending on your view, they found it browsing the guy's my documents folder which on most systems is a shared folder anyways, which means that it was publicly available.
I don't know what I would've done in their place. Philosophically and morally I know that searching the HD for jpg files is not very different than rifling through someone's dresser drawers looking fir dirty pictures. But when you're sitting there at someone's computer, it doesn't feel nearly as sinister. I've seen people do it.
What's weird is that this discrepancy between our actions in "real life" vs when we're sitting in the computer is also what lies behind the explosion of child porn cases. People who would never create child porn, or try to buy it in "real life," will search for it online and download it. For some reason, things done via the computer seem different. That wee little voice that tells us "you shouldn't be doing this" hasn't quite caught up. I don't think it's just the illusory feeling that you won't get caught--it's just so much easier to do stuff online.
If you allow the government to benefit from law-breaking, they will look the other way on the law-breaking that benefits them. Be very wary about that.
How about this:
should someone who draws pictures of child porn be treated as a criminal?
If you think so then please tell us exactly what crime is being committed.
As a service tech myself, trust me, it is extremely easy to stumble upon customer's data that they probably didn't want you to see. If these techs were looking for files to burn, they could have possibly clicked on My Documents at which point they were presented with the thumbnails. Heck, I've seen computers so unorganized there are JPG and AVI files all in the root C:/ drive and WINDOWS/WINNT folders, not to mention the desktop. I've seen plenty share of porn on customer's computers even when I haven't been "looking" for it. It's all over the freaking place. And for some people here on /. suggest that every single service tech out there purposely goes looking for customer's data to view and exploit for their own entertainment is ludicrous.
Where I work, we're not allowed to carry flash drives. And I honor that. My coworkers honor that, and I hold them to it. We take customer's data privacy very seriously, and I've seen people terminated because of it.
Now I'm not saying that every single service tech out there respects customer's privacy...on the contrary. There's been numerous stories lately about how they haven't. But what really annoys me is that tons of people are just "assuming" that all service techs are corrupt. That near offends me, personally.
Without knowing further details as to how these techs found those images, I won't make any judgments or assumptions. What stands is the fact that this guy had possession of illegal child porn and should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. Period.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
Can I be jailed if I have a picture of the Mannekin Pis as my desktop wallpaper? Who exactly is being sexually abused or exploited there?
No sig today...
Sodomsky? That's his real name, not a joke?
Thanks for the comments. Stuff like this makes me continue to bother with Slashdot comments!
In college I was working in a lab where I discovered that a grad student known as 'the porn king' was trafficking child pornography.
Sadly due to police screw-ups with the evidence and warrants, there was no admissible evidence. The student was released.
On the other hand I know of a man who was arrested because a drive sent for repair was found to have an image of a child.The man arrested.
Sure... you can say, download no adult images. Sure, you can say that a person is responsible for every file on their drive. But where does the penalty and the judgement show any sense of fairness or balance.
Also, while trying to avoid the conspiracy angle. We have to admit that it's pretty damned easy to get a file on a person's drive. Windows, Mac, or *nix. Add to this some of the horrifying things I've seen done in child custody cases to make one party or the other look bad... passing judgement based solely on images found on a hard drive becomes fairly weak.
In the cases above, the student trafficking had several CD masters of child pornography, but the CDs were inadmissible as they were obtained from his house with warrant, but the constraints of the warrant were badly defined and executed. In the case of the other man, it turned out that the image was found as a result of inflating an archive of what was supposed to be 250 adult images.
The legal system seems to be very direct on this. You bring one image into the court as evidence and there is no question of origin, intent, or guilt.
Personally, as a father, I have very strong opinions against Child Pornography. I also have very strong opinions about punishing the right person for the right crime.
(Figures this will either get rated -1 or flamebait. Just my $0.02.)
This may not be relevant but I think it's worth pointing out that the reason the tech was supposedly looking for files is bullshit. They probably made that up after they discovered the files. The tech was almost certainly looking for normal porn or movies on purpose to copy it. Using a video file to check if a burner is installed correctly is utter nonsense.
I know in some Best Buys it gets so bad that it's not even techs individually doing this sort of thing. Last time I had a friend working at one they even had a server setup where they copied customers files that were interesting so everyone could get at them. I can't imagine Circuit City is any different.
This thing is only going to get worse. Fact is some people are always going to have reasonable reasons for trusting someone else to work on their computer. A lot of these techs even use tools to override any normal security just to make their jobs easier. People are going to have to get smart about not putting things they want private on non removable media. Software is going to have to become more mature at making sure normal users know where there information is on their drive and know how to remove it also.
So my question is this, if you hire a plumber to fix your sink,and he instead goes rooting through your underwear drawer and finds something illegal, should that be allowed in court? I personally don't think so, and while I hate the child molesters as much as the next guy, letting someone who commits a crime turn in a second criminal and walk away scott free himself seems like the height of insanity to me.
And while I think those that molests a child should get life, the way these laws have been rewritten scares the hell out of me. The addition of non minor images,cartoons,and even adults whom some judge decides "looks lolita" can have your life ruined? WTH? As the law is written now there is way too much that is left to judge's and prosecutors discretion. And with all the hare brained cases we've seen lately,like the 17 year old who was sent to prison for consentual sex with his 15 year old girlfriend,I think the judges and prosecutors have proven they can't be trusted with this much power.
Sadly, the whole kiddy porn thing is spiraling into the 21st century version of the red scare. Even if you can prove yourself innocent,which would be pretty hard with the laws today being pretty much "eye of the beholder",just like with communism you'll be looked at as "the accused child molester" by all those around you. We really need to redefine all these laws and make it actually about protecting kids again,instead of the insanity of the witch hunt that this topic seems to be heading towards.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
First Buttofuoco, now Sodomsky? Who's next to be arrested for sexually deviant behavior involving minors? Maybe Fred Azmastah or Larry Kyocksmoksi?
If anyone with a suggestive names drops off a computer at my desk, I'm doing some snooping...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Am I the only one who found the name Sodomsky fitting? Although I guess Sodomandgomorrahsky would be better.
...then "he looks suspicious" can get you arrested.
The fact that the employees at the computer company considered using pictures to burn is disgusting and disgraceful, and they should be punished. Would you like people searching through your computer and looking at personal pictures of you, your partner, or your children?
More than likely they thought it was 'normal' porn and wanted a copy for themselves.
Also, where were the pictures stored on the computer? Were they in a directory on the C drive named 'pictures'? If the pictures were hidden within a deep directory structure then the people must have been hunting specifically for pictures.
The point isn't that they found child porn, it's that people at other computer companies could be pedophiles, and they could be looking at pictures of your children...
All of these things should be taken into consideration rather than celebrating that another pedophile has been caught.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
I assume you're asking whether mere possession should be a crime, though. The same question could be asked about possession of illegal drugs, firearms, etc.
The same question could be asked about possession of pictures of illegal things like murder. Should possession of holocaust pictures be illegal?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I used to work tech at a SUNY (State University of NY) school. Our official policy was to not report pirated software/music/movies, but we were required by law to report child pornography. I am not sure if this also applied to non-government employees.
If possession of child pornography is illegal, the guy should be punished.
If peeking through his hard drive during repair is illegal as well, the two repairmen should be punished as well. But that should have absolutely no influence on the first case.
The law shouldn't be a game where you get a free pass just because the other side broke the rules when discovering you.
Perhaps like spammers need "bullet proof hosting" users of pornography, file-sharers, spammers and all types of people who have incriminating info on their PCs need "bullet proof PC repair" services ...
How could the court use what was found on the harddrive as evidence when the repair people had access to the harddrive?
.. in the States, at least, even porn that _looks_ like child porn is illegal, regardless of the age of the "actress".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are things, that even a lawyer is obligated to disclose about their client.
Really, am I the only one to remember, that in the pre-digital photo era there'd be a story every year of somebody getting into trouble after a technician in a photo-developing lab would notify police of questionable contents of the film submitted for development?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Either the guy was a complete idiot (in which case, if he got caught for committing a crime, he must pay for it.) or he wanted to get caught. The simple fact that he would willingly give evidence of his crime to a third party clearly indicates either instance.
when downloading regular porn! Searched for "amateur" in ed2k (eMule) last week, and guess what 1 out of 10 downloads were?
I swear I deleted them, but the point is, had my DVD burner been replaced 3 to 4 days ago, maybe I would be cellmate of this Sodomsky guy now!
(and I SURE dont want to be cellmate of a guy with a name like this!)
Its like that professor case, browsing the internet in classroom - busted for showing pornography to kids.
Come on people, the net is filled with porn, spyware, adware, rootkits, exploits, botnets, backdoors! The avarage computer has more than a slim chance of having some kind of criminal material.
I think the courts are crazy to state that there is no privacy in computer repair. What if you have your company's business plan on the hard drive when your display card fails? Do you simply refuse to send that computer in for repair? Do you let every law enforcement agency in the country have a copy of your business plan?
This ruling leaves very few good choices.
Based on my experiences with Circuit City "Technicians", I would say it's most likely they put the porn on his PC to cover up the fact that none of them knew how to install the burner.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.
"Against unreasonable searches" is NOT a requirement for a warrant for all searches, now is it. The only thing the 4th Amendment says about warrants is that they require probable cause and must be specific.
The only way you can interpret the 4th Amendment as requiring warrants for all searches is if you're completely ignorant of English and therefore unable to parse two independent clauses.
For the installation of a DVD drive I think it would be quite arguable that they should NOT have looked at the guy's files. But, suppose he brought in his computer to fix a virus instead? I don't know what steps those particular techs take for virus removal, but if step #1 is "see if it's fixable" then poking around in the files might be necessary. I end up with lots of friends/family/co-worker's computers that are running slow or have some other general symptoms. If they don't want to format or re-image then what choice is there except look at the files? If most chain-stores that do pc repair (or anyone, really) has the client sign a form when they drop it off, really they should just add a paragraph stating that their files might be examined and they waive their right to privacy, or the other way around - that whatever the tech sees is confidential. Problem solved!
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I am a police officer and have testified as a witness in many trials. I am also well-versed in most criminal and constitutional case law, and with Florida criminal statutes.
Typically, trial and appeals courts don't examine whether or not you had a *right* to privacy. They usually examine whether "under identical circumstances, would a reasonable person expect privacy?"
In other words, if you're doing something in your un-fenced back yard, you have no "reasonable" expectation of privacy, even though you are on private property. On the other hand, if you are in your home, you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Sodomsky! No, wait, don't tell me: he has an accomplice called Gomorransky.
Speaking as a service tech supervisor who works at a similar big box retailer, I can tell you that the disclaimer that everyone signs when bringing in their computer for work specifically says that the technicians can access whatever data they feel like. So this really has nothing to do with rights to privacy and all this other nonsense, since you legally signed away all privacy when you agreed to have the technicians do the work.
So the technician is not limited to see whatever it is he/she wants to on your computer. They are limited however in that they can not publish or distribute publically information that is stored on your computer, that would be a violation of your privacy. If child porn is found however, we are required by law to report it to the proper authorities.
If you don't like those terms, feel free not to sign and take your computer elsewhere, although I imagine any other actual reptuable repair shop will have a similar disclaimer as it's necessary for their own protection.
Well I felt like an idiot because I looked, and sure enough there was a post above mine making the same point. It wasn't there when I posted the reply, I swear.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
By law, health care professionals, such as Doctors, and nurses, are required to report child abuse signs they see to police, even if there's no real abuse. Similarly, mechanics are required to fill out the paperwork on cars that don't pass inspection... do you really think privacy still exists today, in this crazy world where there's a webcam, security cam, or some other type of recording device on you 90% of the time... You can't even really watch tv and expect privacy since the survey people are watching.
I would bet my house that that specific tech always seems to stumble on to child porn somehow. I spent a painful year in the Geek Squad, and we called the police for child porn at least 5 times while I was there. It was funny how it was always the same people that found it and their excuse was always that they were doing a virus scan and just happened to see it flash by. Weird how they got any work done when they were just watching virus scans. I probably fixed more computers than anyone there and in that entire time I only stumbled on to something remotely interesting once, and that was because I was doing a data backup where I had to pick and choose what files would go on the DVD.
And create this account before your computer breaks, since you may not be able to login and create it after the moment of failure that requires this repair.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
On our service order Disclaimer, it specifically states that if there is Child Pornography on the computer, the police will be called. This is a sheet they sign to... This has happened to us at our store, and we just presented that sheet!
The only way you can interpret the 4th Amendment as requiring warrants for all searches is if you're completely ignorant of English and therefore unable to parse two independent clauses.
I mentioned the exceptions. You can't just work off the language itself in the Constitution, you have to follow the judicial precedents as well (which is how the exceptions arose). If you knew anything about U.S. law you wouldn't be quite so smug about your conclusions. Warrants are required in the vast majority of situations, including "searching" through someone's hard drive.
When you mouth off without knowing what you're talking about, it makes you sound like a snotty 15 year-old (no offense if you actually are 15).
When I am put in such a distasteful position as this. There is nothing inherent in the installation of a dvd drive that gives a repairman the right to rifle through personal files. "Looking for something to burn"? It could have been done with an external drive full of "testing files".
I would protect this man's right to privacy in the same way I would protect a bigot's right to spout hate.
If I ran across the files, I'd also likely break his legs at the knee caps when he came in to pick up his computer, but that's another matter all together.
I couldn't figure out why people here were so upset about this, then I realized...
:>
You're imagining something happening to YOUR computer that you are unable to fix (despite probably having enough parts to build another complete system=) and that you have to hand your precious rig over to some noob who will proceed to destroy it in every way possible.
Stop imagining that, it's not helping.
This is about people who are too stupid to delete the kiddy porn off their computer before handing it to a stranger - let's face it, they'll be the ones who show up on "To Catch a Predator" actually trying to molest little kids. We're just catching them early.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
In the case of installing a burner such as this one, I find that there are enough files in the Windows folder itself to give a damn good test (Updates and such) to ensure such a burner is working.
I've even been asked to install a combo-drive for the express purpose of viewing DVD's on the system and the test is damn simple then. Try to play a dvd movie. If I see problems with it, then I'm obligated to begin investigating the graphics and cpu's to determine where the problem is and it gives me another point of sale.
Simply put, the ethical issue revolves around the reason the techs needed to go into the my docs folder to see if things were working correctly because as I stated, to test the ability of a new burner, simply use the Windows folder as there's plenty of stuff in it and the verify data mode ensures that everything was burned correctly. You also have the option of taking the disk to another system with a known working drive and using the Nero tools testing the quality of the disk itself. Did it burn correctly or are there errors on the disk?
The main advantage is you never touch the private data of the users nor do you touch the program files folder when installing.
Now I've had users bring systems in complaining about not being able to open certain files types and have had to investigate though I usually take a bit of time to ask them to show me the specific file they're having problems with and usually it's an Office format and they need the latest converters or version of Office to open the damn things (Another Sale). So by doing my job correctly, I've managed to earn a rep as a good tech who fixes systems and doesn't invade my clients privacy unnecessarily and this helps get me repeat business while covering my ass and preventing customers from suing it off in this lawsuit happy country.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
This is true in cases where changing the drive is an option. I have been in the spot where changing out the drive will void the warranty, and all of the sudden the repair is not allowed. External drives for real data is required, or stick with companies that make drives easily replaceable.
So not only is the guy too stupid to take the five minutes to install a DVD burner, but he's also too stupid to take any incriminating files off of his computer before handing it over to someone else!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Now I'm not defending child porn, but having lawyer friends that have dealt with this sort of thing a couple of times. (A computer is being searched for a document pertaining to something else and "child porn" is found.) Talking to them what seems to happen at least some of the time is that Pvt. Smuckatelly goes to google and types "porn" then browses around porn websites (which is dangerous enough in itself) is happy, and leaves. What he didn't realize is one of those sites that said "must be 18+ to enter, didn't actually have 18+ porn stars, and he couldn't tell the difference.(can you tell the difference between a 17yr old and a 18yr old?) So either these files end up in a temp space or saved, all the while he thinks they are legit 18+ files. But wait, the media gets a hold of the story, and a man is labeled perverted for looking at so called "child porn" etc etc. Now I know everyone on /. are geniuses and all, but how many of you "might" not have cleared your temp folders and "might" unknowingly have child pron on your HD? Not many, but the regular idiot computer user is just that, an Idiot. Of course this is not always or even usually the case, but I'm just saying, its possible.
But as for the people producing child porn, they should die a thousand horrible deaths.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
"The key difference is whether the STATE has violated your right to privacy. You can't bargain with the state to set a higher or lower expectation of privacy; we have a Constitution that sets a minimum floor of privacy for everyone. But, you can negotiate with a computer repair service--if one service offers "no privacy-we'll read all your files" and the other say "complete privacy, for a little bit more money" then you get to pick which one you like, and to sue the "complete privacy" company if they break their word."
Actually, criminal law kinda trumps civil contract law. If the repair guy finds out that you're committing a crime, not only does any privacy contract become preempted by criminal statute, but the tech is now on notice of a crime, and HIMSELF goes on the hook if he does NOT report it. It's called "accessory after the fact".
And no, you do NOT get to sue, because once the tech gets wind of your crime, the contract of nondisclosure is discharged by a "supervening illegality", in this case, the tech's duty to report you for CP discharges the NDA, because NOT reporting it is against the law. Hence, the supervening illegality.
No silly CIVIL contract is going to protect you if you are involved in a CRIMINAL act. Not even the most expertly drawn up NDA is going to stop someone from being obliged to report you if they find out you're breaking the law, especially if it's a criminal offense.
On top of that, most courts nowadays will consider your entering this contract in bad faith, because you were knowingly and willingly attempting to conceal a criminal act. Heck, the tech could even be charged with obstruction if he tried to go with the NDA he signed.
The only way you can bust someone civilly for exposing you to prosecution is if that someone is your defense attorney, and they wind up breaching their duty to defend you. You can give your lawyer a full confession, and lawyer client privilege OBLIGES them to keep mum. That is the ONLY exception I know of to the "eminent domain" that criminal law posesses over civil matters.
In this case, any money you paid above and beyond the standard rate for "privacy premiums" would likely be owed back as equitable relief, becasue the tech is NOT engaging in any breach of contract that causes you damage, because the contract itself becomes discharged. Since the guy can't complete the contract (he'll go to jail for obstruction/accessory), the contract would most likely be "rolled back".
And you may not even get the money back. Last time I checked, possession of CP is a felony most anywhere, and civil forfeiture laws often call for seizure of "any property involved in a felony", which would probably include any money you spent on trying to cover it up.
As far as privacy is concerned, apart from the tech guy not being a government agent, but simply by putting your computer into someone else's custody you almost certainly give up your "right to a reasonable expectation of privacy", which is what the Supreme Court has established is the basis for 4th amendment protection.
Qualified Disclaimers:
I am not a lawyer.
I DID get straight 4.0's in law class at college.
I ALSO read the RCW's for Washington State.
I founded a large photo sharing site during the .COM boom. We didn't actively scan the photos for illegal content, otherwise we'd be responsible for the whole let (we were a provider, safe harbour and all that stuff).
.com boom and bust thing with the tens of millions and hundred employees, was that a couple of years later (after the shutdown), I was contacted by the FBI to follow up on some info we reported long ago. I was flown to Kentucky to testify. This creep was in jail for fifteen years, state prison, for molesting children. Largely because of my detailed testimony, and the fact it was a federal wire crime, this guy was put away for life in a federal prison, no chance of parole.
.COM rollercoaster are pretty much nothing as compared to the fact that we helped put away someone who harmed children, for life. (And I'm told, it probably won't be a very long life, in federal prison on those charges...)
However, whenever there was truly bad stuff on our site, it was reported to us, and we followed up on it, forwarding the info to the authorities as appropriate.
The best thing to happen about the whole multimillion dollar
All of the grief and ups and downs of the
Related to the story: I do agree privacy is important. Not yanking your hard drive before sending it in for service, in my opinion, pretty much voids your rights to privacy. It's not unreasonable to expect that the techs might end up looking at what your bringing in, at varying levels of details, on purpose, or by accident. If you're doing something highly illegal with any tool, don't take the tool in for service. Don't bring your unmodified fully automatic machine gun in for service, if it's illegal in your country. Duuuuhhhhh. But it's also been my experience through the photo sharing site, that the creeps who are into child porn, aren't the brightest folks in the world...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I discussed UK laws against indecent images here.
Although your post is relatively insightful, I'd like to ask you about your claims that "child porn is clearly a very bad thing" and that "children must have been abused to create it".
As I discussed in the article which I have linked above, a jury will usually decide that naturist images are "indecent" and therefore pornographic in a statutory sense. Do you not feel that it is somewhat absurd to claim that naturist images of children are a "very bad thing" and that "children have been abused" to create such images? Convictions involving naturist images are not rare; they constitute a significant proportion of convictions under the Protection of Children Act.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
What if the techs pulled up iTunes and decided to burn half the guy's library for a test?? If caught who does the RIAA go after the guy cause he took his computer in for repair and made his files "available"???
....but am I the only one who finds the guy's name of "Sodomsky" to be a little ironic given the charges?
Sig unrelated.