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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."
And here's an example of the tragic results...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Why are you painting Walmart as the bad guy? You think the person developing the film knew whose film it was? They probably picked it out of a drop box, and saw pictures of a 3 year old girl in a bathtub. I'd be concerned if they didn't act on these photos. Yea, this time it turned out it was the grandparent's pictures, but next time it could be "creepy neighbor #4," and the kid isn't his. Or maybe it is, I hear a lot of sexual molestation cases happen within the family.
When something like that comes up, yea, I think it should be looked into. The police, on the other hand, didn't do their jobs very well. That's where I think the system is flawed.
But, what's to stop law enforcement to start outsourcing more and more and more to 'private' businesses to spy on people and do their work for them?
General government incompetence for one... Also, we're talking about this specific case. I'm skeptical that the cops bribed circuit city techs to do their searches of hard drives for them. That would be pretty funny, especially because they went bankrupt, but it didn't happen in this particular case. I don't think circuit city stumbling onto this type of content when they're repairing your computer sounds like something we need a safeguard against. If there were evidence that a computer repair place were scanning through your computer whenever you brought it in, there would be something fishy there, but this sounds like a complete accident.
Anyway, I didn't say it's a GOOD system or was justified, just that it isn't actually cops in this circumstance. As a member of the ACLU, I am definitely with you that law enforcement and especially government needs almost all the regulations and oversight we can heap on them, if the government pays you for monitoring crime, you're law enforcement and should be barred from conducting unreasonable searches.