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Supreme Court Declines Case Over Techs' Right To Search Your PC
An anonymous reader writes "A few years back, a guy was arrested for possessing child pornography after techs at Circuit City found child porn on his computer, while they were installing a DVD player. The guy insisted that the evidence shouldn't be admissible since the techs shouldn't have been snooping through his computer — and a lower court agreed. The appeals court, however, reversed, noting that the guy had given Circuit City the right to do things on his computer — including testing out the newly installed software (which is how the tech claims he found the video). The guy appealed to the Supreme Court, who has declined to hear the case, meaning that the ruling stands for the time being. So, basically, if you hand your computer over to someone else for repairs, at least in some jurisdictions, they may have pretty free rein in terms of what they're allowed to access on your computer."
"Thou shalt not get caught"
This is right up there with handing the cop your beer or dimebag as you get your driver's license out after being pulled over - if you have something illegal, don't give it to people who A) know that it's illegal, and B) know who you are.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Yeah, the real message is that you just don't hand you collection of illegal images over to anyone if you don't want them found.
Like, if you have to go to the police station to bail out a friend, leave your drugs at home. These things are common sense.
Also this guy should rot in jail.
You know, you could always choose NOT to have child pornography on your computer.
A month ago a friend of my nephew was killed by a driver in a hit and run collision (I won't call it an accident). My brother in law told me that the way the police found the driver was that her boyfriend took the car to a repair place to be resprayed in a different color. Staff at the repair place looked at the damage and called the police.
If you see evidence of a crime you have to call the police. Thats the law where I live.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It would be almost brain-dead easy to put anything you want on a computer and then change the file properties to look like it was there before you gained access to the machine. I could do it on any given morning before I've even had a sip of coffee.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
"the techs should have not snooped" is a defense that implicitly admits the guy had downloaded the video. He get jailed, that's the spirit of the law.
What's troubling is that a pc which is tampered with by a third person, that is the tech repair guy, is then admitted as proof.
A random technician is elevated to the rank of police forensic tech! but how can you trust him not making mistakes (restoring somebody else's partition) or him being corrupted into intentionally downloading illegal stuff to a client PC? nevermind child porn, all you need to ruin a person are a bunch of mp3s, in this brave new world.
I'd say it's more like the mechanic would rip open the door or dashboard to find drugs, when he was supposed to replace the brakepads.
Dead guy in the trunk is like putting child porn as the desktop wallpaper.
Yeah, the real message is that you just don't hand you collection of illegal images over to anyone if you don't want them found.
You're assuming that "illegal images" is a cut and dry term. Not anymore. Have some myspace photos of your young looking friend in just her underwear? A "jailbait" inspirational photo in your picture folder as a joke? Manga which might be considered obscene?
No matter how innocuous you may think your hard drive is, if you are a heavy internet user there's a chance there's something on there that someone might consider child porn.
> Yeah, the real message is that you just don't hand you collection of illegal images over to anyone if you don't want them found.
There's a secondary message in this story, and it doesn't apply just to computers. If you're going to use a piece of equipment for illegal activities, you'd better be able to maintain that equipment yourself. Every time someone else gets access to that equipment, you run the risk of getting caught.
I'd say it's more like the mechanic would rip open the door or dashboard to find drugs, when he was supposed to replace the brakepads.
Dead guy in the trunk is like putting child porn as the desktop wallpaper.
I know nothing about the case. I know even less about car repair. However...
The fine summary is a little vague on the work that was actually done. It says they were "installing a DVD player."
If they were simply installing a piece of software to play DVDs, they probably wouldn't need to go snooping through his HDD to test it. But lots of media playback software tries to do friendly things like scanning your drive for media it can play. So the DVD player software might very well have done just that, and come up with the movie in question.
If they were installing a more general-purpose piece of software for playing back all sorts of media - VLC for example - they might very well have gone looking for a movie on his HDD to test. Depending on the hardware/software used to create a movie it can be in all sorts of different formats... And I've had clients come back and complain because we didn't associate the right filetype for their specific videos. So I always make a point of taking a quick look in My Documents to make sure everything is associated correctly.
If they were installing hardware, like a DVD drive, then they might very well have tested its burning capabilities. I'll routinely do that here at work. I've got a CD-R/W and a DVD-R/W that I carry around for just that purpose. I'll pop the disc in, grab something random off the desktop or My Documents, and try to burn it. Again, a good opportunity to stumble across something unsettling.
Again, I don't know anything about this case. Maybe the guy was just snooping. But maybe he wasn't. I know I've stumbled across some images on client drives that I wish I hadn't... Nothing illegal, that I noticed, but some stuff I really didn't need to see.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Have any naked baby photos of your kids? Remember the mother who got arrested at Wal-Mart after taking such photos to be developed?
This sort of thing isn't nearly as black and white as it is made to seem. Child pornography is a really HORRIBLE thing, and people who create it should be castrated, and people who DESIRE it need to be put into an asylum for psychological treatment. But I just pointed out something that could be subjectively called "child pornography" that probably in in the possession of the majority parents out there...
Hell, I always HATED it when I was a kid and at the family gatherings my mom and grandparents would inevitably drag out my baby pictures... To me, that was annoying. To some freak in law enforcement who's out there trolling the `net trying to entice people to download his government sanctified stash of child porn so they can "bust" them, they were guilty of creating and disseminating child porn...
Corporatism != Free Market
The OP did say "arrested" and not "convicted." I don't know about you, but my life would be hell on earth for those fifteen months. And probably for a long time thereafter, too, as idiots remember the arrest, and not the dropping of the charges for being stupid.
The power to arrest comes with some very serious responsibilities. The police, evidently, aren't aware of that. What I'm wondering isn't why the officer in this case arrested the woman ("stupidity" explains that in a population size of one), but why his/her superior was okay with it. Someone wasn't doing their job, and BOTH of them should be fired with extreme prejudice for simple incompetence.
Of course, I'm also wondering why it took the prosecutors 15 months to drop a case that 30 minutes of investigation could show was inept (drive to her granddaughter's house and verify the girl there matches the picture). There should have been heads rolling in the prosecutor's office, too, though I'll admit to not knowing if this was the case (I doubt it, though - I just don't trust the gubmint to get this right).
The problem is there is a mass global rebellion to copyright laws. You saw that over in Sweden where a previously unknown and niche party managed to get EU representation. You see it on /. on TPB, all over the internet. Its about as unpopular as prohibition was.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Wow. It was a picture of a kid in a bathtub. You think all bathtub photos of children should be investigated by the police? People like you frighten me more than "creepy neighbor #4".