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."

Comments

Re:Apple care

[KDR_11k]

How about telling the tech to supply his own data for burning? Even if there is material on the HD that's legal, how can the tech assert he has the right to make a copy of it? E.g. if someone made movie on his PC, had to send it in for repairs and the tech makes a copy of that movie, isn't the tech liable for copyright infringement?