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Why You Shouldn't Trust Geek Squad (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: The Orange County Weekly reports that Best Buy's "Geek Squad" repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants. This revelation came out in a court case, United States of America v. Mark A. Rettenmaier. Rettenmaier is a prominent Orange County physician and surgeon who took his laptop to the Mission Viejo Best Buy in November 2011 after he was unable to start it. According to court records, Geek Squad technician John "Trey" Westphal found an image of "a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck." Westphal notified his boss, who was also an FBI informant, who alerted another FBI informant -- as well as the FBI itself. The FBI has pretty much guaranteed the case will be thrown out by its behavior, this illegal search aside. According to Rettenmaier's defense attorney, agents conducted two additional searches of the computer without obtaining necessary warrants, lied to trick a federal magistrate judge into authorizing a search warrant for his home, then tried to cover up their misdeeds by initially hiding records. Plus, the file was found in the unallocated "trash" space, meaning it could only be retrieved by "carving" with sophisticated forensics tools. Carving (or file carving) is defined as searching for files or other kinds of objects based on content, rather than on metadata. It's used to recover old files that have been deleted or damaged. To prove child pornography, you have to prove the possessor knew what he had was indeed child porn. There has been a court case where files found on unallocated space did not constitute knowing possession because it's impossible to determine who put the file there and how, since it's not accessible to the user under normal circumstances.
That reminds me of the Apple store: had to replace the screen of a MBAir. The "Genius" guy asked me to give my password so that he can check "eveything is ok" after the replacement.. Nothing to hide there, but I only made him a guest user / password (was a replacement at no charge). Why the heck would he need to login?!
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than their warrantless searches
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
GeekSquad is full of shit. Was away on a working vacation (being a remote employee who travels the country and logs in from wherever I happen to be at the time). My laptop died on a trip. Needed it replaced ASAP. Picked up a netbook from BestBuy locally, since shipping one would take too long. They were the only option in town where I happened to be at the time. The power supply on this netbook died in under a week. Took it in to BestBuy to replace the power supply. GeekSquad demanded a $40 "fee" to remove the hard drive from the netbook, and place the hard drive into a new netbook... Again, for a failed power supply, which is external to the netbook to begin with! They simply wouldn't replace the power supply, they claimed they could only replace the entire unit, and had to swap the hard drive. Fucking scammers. So much for the BestBuy "Warranty"
Ok so when you need some plumbing work at home, why shouldn't you trust the guy and have him visit all rooms, open all cabinets, and let him check your pending invoices to be sure you paid everything on time?
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Ah, the classical "I have nothing to hide" fallacy.
The problem is that if the device is not fully working (to wipe the disk), most people don't know how to remove the disk and backup + wipe clean.
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Kiddie porn on a computer doesn't imply guilt for the owner. He could have been the subject of a rick-roll type thing, via email or web, and quickly deleted the offending image, which he may have had no intention of downloading/viewing. It's not even close.
And, the individuals involved should be sued into homelessness for invasion of privacy, etc. Best Buy, too, to the extent they were aware and didn't prevent it.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Because it precedes a Firing Squad.
This one was a possible paedophile. Since it was only one photo, it was probably something sent to him, or from a popup on some random website.
What else do they look for? Credit card numbers? Tax records? Other identity theft info? Anything embarrassing they can ransom?
The other problem is they used a tool to scan unallocated space for deleted files. That takes time. Are they charging customers for that extra time?
...and with a few moments of searching the web, they could have a nice handy thumb drive full of images they would "detect" on some guy's computer, and get a nice little bonus from the FBI...
"Yeeeah, I found another one this week. Yup, it's surprising how many of these weirdos have computer problems and show up at my store. How soon does my check get here?"
"Illegally searched his computer, get paid to find illegal material and HEY SURPRISE I FOUND ILLEGAL MATERIAL WHAT ARE THE ODDS? Lie to a judge to obtain a search warrant, etc. etc."
There's a reason we demand a certain level of ethics from our law enforcement professionals, mainly so that the cases they put together have even a slim chance of making it through a trial without being tossed out by even a barely competent judge. Did this guy have child porn on his computer? Who knows, the Geek Squad guys have so completely muddled the issue to line their own pockets with the FBI's help we'll never find out.
I often wonder if you "by any means" types would be so cavalier about situations like this if it were you under the FBI's lens.
No, I don't mind. Because I don't have any illegal drugs or child pornography for the plumber to find.
What about the illegal drugs and child pornography that the previous occupant left hidden in the wall, next to the water pipes? You know, the ones you now have to prove aren't yours?
Because the legal eagles at Best Buy's geek squad are so careful not to report non-crimes and raise a massive shit storm over nothing. Certainly, they would never grab a copy of anything else interesting they might find while rifling through your file system.
Certainly they would never look at any private but legal images hoping to find something to report.
And how do you do that with a computer with solder-in SSD (e.g, MBAir)?
It makes me wonder how much Tumblr porn came from Best Buy uploaders.
Perhaps none.
Maybe they're all great people.
But they vacuum machines for reward money, or at least a few of them have, says the article. Most of them are probably great. But a few of them have sullied the reputation of the Geek Squad, perhaps beyond repair.
The big problem: a lot of good people at Geek Squad get besmirched for the actions of some greedy fellow employees. It would seem that management likely knew about this. What protections do they provide their customers? They should spell it out and enforce it. Data is money, assets, and pretty private stuff.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Greek Squad are incompetent, dishonest morons. THAT'S why you shouldn't trust them.
Well, you didn't. But for $500 some kid at Best Buy might put some on your computer for you.
You sick pedo fuck.
I have a second concern along the same lines . . . let us assume that the Geek Squad isn't engaging in shenanigans for profit. How are they inspecting my hard drive, and can they assure me that they won't cause a data loss?
What about the illegal drugs and child pornography that the previous occupant left hidden in the wall, next to the water pipes?
Something like that happened to a friend of mine. He bought a warehouse and found a big stash of dvd players and car stereos in a walled-off closet when he gutted the office area. The warehouse had been owned by a bank (foreclosure) for a while, and if he hadn't needed a different office configuration the stuff could have stayed in the walls for a long time.
lucm, indeed.
I would take this with a grain of salt, I worked for Geek Squad during 2011 (admittedly not in orange county California, but SOP is pretty much the same everywhere). Combing through someone's stuff was something that would likely get you terminated. During the automated diagnostics lots of well known virus scanners were run, some of them flagged known hashes of cp. On rare occasion when checking those logs to see if there were software related issues you might be able to charge something extra for if the customer was OK with the work, a message about that would be in the logs, happened twice at my store. The SOP was also not to contact the FBI, but local law enforcement and let them handle it from there(local for the customer, if they were out of town it likely would end up eventually handled by the FBI). But there was never any searching through someone's stuff, unless you didn't care about having a job there anymore.
what about that home video recorder i left behind the drywall behind the fridge 20 years ago? i just woke up from my comma yesterday
Well you had better put your parentheses on. You're scaring the kids.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And how do you do that with a computer with solder-in SSD (e.g, MBAir)?
Well, you don't buy one in the first place.
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A 3/8" drill, duh! :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
What about the two millions dollars in gold left by the occupant a few hundred years ago?
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The 15" anal plug.
Similar thing happened to a family member of mine as well when he bought his first house. He is a police officer and had a bunch of his cop friends visit. One stopped by at the start of his shift to drop of a present and brought in his canine partner. Well, the dog alerted in the middle of the living room and they discovered a stash hidden there. So they took the dog around the property and found a bunch of stuff in multiple rooms, including those bales like you see on TV. I can only imagine the kind of response that he would have gotten if the cops weren't his friends and knew he'd just bought the house.
You trust strangers every time you hand someone your credit card or read the # over the phone (...)
You trust the professionals to whom you request a specific service (and usually you pay) to perform that specific service. You don't ask them to look for interesting files, have the illegal ones reported, and some other legal files not reported but used illegally by them.
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what about that home video recorder i left behind the drywall behind the fridge 20 years ago? i just woke up from my comma yesterday
Well you had better put your parentheses on. You're scaring the kids.
you cant trust any one
The killed Kennedy?? At least we have the long awaited answer!
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The important question is wether the Geek Squad company wants some punk employees to sully their reputation in the marketplace to obtain a private reward of $500 for activity completed on company time.
I would think that the bosses at Geek Squad would take control of the situation and fire some troublemaker employees.
Yes, he might be paedophile, or just someone who downloaded some file expecting it to be something else and deleted it immediately... hence it being in the trash.
Stories of people downloading stuff, either by direct download or P2P and ending up with something different aren't all that rare.
Even a few months ago there was a story of someone downloading what they believed to be Ubuntu ISOs (IIRC), only to find out they were pretty nasty hardcore porn.
And like the article says, would a person smart enough to be a surgeon be dumb enough to send the computer for repair with a third party knowing it had child pornography inside?
Onda Technology Institute
Where is your name? Are you trying to hide something?
Nobody has the right, but that doesn't mean they won't do it. No one has the right to pick your pocket or break into your house, but... you know where this is going.
Even I don't have any illegal stuff of any kind in my computers and, a few months ago, when I sent a laptop to repair the keyboard (single key replacement), something that absolutely needs no software interaction by the technicians, I wiped my drive completely. More than the fear of anything illegal being found, I was afraid for my own personal data, the probability of identity theft, my work falling into the wrong hands and the like.
Onda Technology Institute
"they work at Best Buy" was a sufficient clue...
Seriously. How competent can they be?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
No but recently editors prefer to botch a quick summary than use something prepared by a regular user:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
https://slashdot.org/~hcs_%24r... (first one)
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Which is why if you do accidentally download something like that, you must clear your cache, empty the recycle bin and repeatedly overwrite all the free space on your disk.
Emphatically YES! Smarts in one narrow field doesn't guarantee smarts in every field: John Podesta is a Smart Guy, but he was stupid enough to fall for a phishing attack.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If you're then given a check by an FBI agent in return for a report on what you found while breaking and entering, are you still just an arbitrary citizen or a de facto agent of the government?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Which is why if you do accidentally download something like that, you must clear your cache, empty the recycle bin and repeatedly overwrite all the free space on your disk.
Yes, because everyone knows how to do that. And of course, the commands to perform those actions are so easily available...
Emphatically YES! Smarts in one narrow field doesn't guarantee smarts in every field: John Podesta is a Smart Guy, but he was stupid enough to fall for a phishing attack.
It's not a "field", it's common sense. He doesn't need to be an IT expert to know that he's taking chances if he sends a knowingly tainted computer for repair. It's just pure common sense, nothing else.
Onda Technology Institute
Yes I have. Almost daily, actually. And I'm not talking about mission-critical knowledge in all else. I'm talking about pure and simple common sense.
Onda Technology Institute
Because four times last year, I repaired systems they said were unrepairable and had attempted to sell a replacement system.
They used to be tech, now they are systems salesmen
From the cited article, where exactly is it written that privacy is an inherent human right? It's not that I'm anti-privacy, but I'd really like to know where either in the US constitution or in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Privacy one of those rights?
Their name makes them sound like they're the sort of experts one expects here on /. Except that once one talks to them, they really don't have much of a clue about anything other than the most mundane of tech issues
Since you ask:
US Constitution, Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home
or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Anything else you'd like me to Google for you?
More like "Why you shouldn't trust the FBI"
Twinstiq, game news
Exactly. The bigger issue is that they are looking through all your files. The number of people who have nude pictures of themselves or other people legally far outweighs the number of people with illegal pictures. This means that the guys at Geek Squad will definitely lookat the nude pics of their customers. Even the ones that were intentionally deleted by people before they take their computers in for service to prevent such a thing.
If this is not a violation of privacy then what is? Why are they looking in the first place if they usually only find legal stuff? What do they do with the legal nudes they typically find? Do they also shows those to the other FBI informants/repair monkeys they work with? Or maybe make personal copies?
Exactly who do you think has been instructing them about all these rewards and policies?
so what if you get them from just an ad on a web site, malware, or what happened to Julie Amero?
Shouldn't TFH be "Why someone who engages in criminal behavior shouldn't trust Geek Squad?"
What about if you have legal adult naked videos/pictures of yourself having sex with your wife? Do you want the teenage geek squad employee to look through those videos/pictures too? After all, he would need to look inside those videos/pictures if he wants to ascertain what they contain.
Not only that, but he's looking at the deleted files too. So even if you or your wife deleted that content, he will be able to find it. The same goes for your phone. I assume the FBI has the same deal with cell phone repair technicians. Do they also look scan/watch all your pictures/videos including your deleted ones too?
And at Best Buy during work, how does it work if a manager catches an employee going through the private videos/pictures of customers? Does the manager give the employee a free pass if the employee offers to split the FBI reward with him? Or does the employee need to make a copy of the hard drive to bring home to review at home at his leisure? How does that work exactly?
journalism majors can BS people into upsells and that is why the tech people where just stockboys.
The Geek Squad techs were, according to the article, "active informants" for the FBI, which is to say, they agreed to be beforehand. That means they are agents of the government, which means they are under the same restrictions as the cops. So if you think it's OK for Geek Squad to search your computer without a warrant, you believe it's OK for the cops to do the same thing, because it is the same thing.
Aside from that, the FBI did additional searches without warrants, like to get warrants, and apparently continues to hide evidence. They claimed the informants told them they (the informants, that is) had "accidentally" run the carving software that was, in no way, involved in repairing the computer, and found the image. So either the informants (at least one, and likely all three) lied to the FBI under penalty of perjury, or the FBI agent getting the warrant perjured himself to the judge. Or both.
There isn't an FBI agent involved in this case that doesn't belong in prison for corruption. Same for the prosecutor, at this point, because it is long since possible for him to not be aware of the FBI's corruption.
Best Buy is the least guilty of anything, and apparently, according to the update at the bottom, actually have policies prohibiting their employees from accepting any kind of reward for reporting this stuff. Whether or not they'll fire the employees named (there are three) for doing so remains to be seen. They are correct, though, that once they become aware of child porn on a computer, they're required to report it.
For at least 250 years, it's been known that, "common sense is not so common."
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You have all rights. The Bill of Rights lists the rights Congress is explicitly never to infringe upon.
"The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose." This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the "powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police," "not surrendered or restrained" by the Constitution of the United States."
==================
Hippie Logger Jock
==================
You trust strangers every time you hand someone your credit card or read the # over the phone. You trust your bank with the history of all your credit purchases. You trust other strangers when you hand over your car keys to the garage or a valet. You trust them when you give them your house keys so they can inspect something while you're at work. You trust, not just one doctor or one nurse, but an entire health care organization with your medical history and details when you go into a hospital to get a checkup or sick care.
People have to live their lives.
But my doctor isn't paid $500 by the FBI if he "finds" a balloon full of cocaine up my ass.
Not really...
A single file was found in deleted space on this guy's machine, was he truly a criminal who intentionally sought out illegal material or did he have this single file on his machine through no fault or intention of his own? (eg browser cache, malware, spam etc)
At the very least, i'd expect someone who was actively looking for such material to have a lot more of it than just a single deleted file.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I worked at best buy both in computer and geek squad.
I can say with certainty that everyone's computers were searched for music, videos, jpg, etc (so they could be backed up allegedly)
These "backups" were definitely shared with other techs in the event of anything interesting was found which most often was the case.
Customers usually had tons of photos, music, etc. Most of the time it didn't include illegal stuff so though. I know one of the stores I worked at had a huge library of pilfered mp3.
I would never ever have over my desktop or notebook with a live hard drive in it. I would send it in with it removed.
Indeed. If there was ever a case where reasonable doubt it would be one where a single illegal image was found.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Or, what if that porn you downloaded, legitimate other than for copyright, contains kiddie stuff? Especially if it's been sitting on your disk for months, awaiting its turn to be watched?
Thus, you need to immediately go and watch the entirety of your porn stash! All of it, not just the beginning of every piece -- it's an obvious trick to hide it from cursory search by attaching a fake part at the start.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I'm always suspicious of single parenthesis. Why'd the other leave?
If I'm into child porn then I should be regularly having my computer serviced by Geek Squad.
When I get busted I can now blame that they planted it to receive a reward?
The big problem: a lot of good people at Geek Squad get besmirched for the actions of some greedy fellow employees.
But I'm sure some of them are great people. Better build a wall around them.
Because they illegally search you computer thus showing an incredible lack of ethics.
The outcome of the specific case is immaterial.
Absolutely. Since the dawn of verbal communication, I'm fairly certain that almost every single one of us has realized just how uncommon it is- after all, we're the only ones who have it.
You can analyse validity of warrants and question the admissibility of evidence all you want, but that overlooks a fact: Most prosecutions don't go to trial. They end in plea bargains. Sure, that particular evidence might be unusable - but the fact that the FBI knows about it may well be enough to get the suspect to confess anyway. The particular example in the article did lawyer up and fight it, but how many times has a similar story happened that didn't become interesting and public enough to get noticed?
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
But wait, you ask, what does that have to do with anything? Well, according to the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, this amendment upholds the individual's right to privacy by forbidding the government from forcing you to accept the prying eyes of its agents into your private home without due process.
We have common sense in the areas we care about. Not so much in areas we haven't given much thought to.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The basis for them is scientifically questionable as there is no clear scientific evidence that child porn leads to rape. Of course that doesn’t matter as it's a totally fear based law. The same is true for the sex offender list. You ever wonder why it's mostly filled will drunk college students and minors? It's because sex offender doesn't correlate with violence being used. When the law makes people guilty of something without there being any intent to victimize or even any victims there is a serious problem. That is exactly what the case is with these sorts of laws. While I don't like the idea of child rape banning child porn does nothing to stop child rape and there is no consensuses or scientific basis for equating paedophilia with child rape. There is less than 1% chance that a first time child porn offender has ever raped a child and the recidivism rate is also less than 1% unless there is other prior criminality. In other words people whom are prone to violence are the ones who rape- not people attracted to children except for some small subset- just like it is true for adult-on-adult. Yikes!
Why are we filling our prisons with a bunch of perverts who aren't even a threat! I can tell you. It's religious bigots and politicians. The homosexual is politically unacceptable so they're just moving targets to a smaller minority which is even more defenceless than gays were in the 1950s. On the contrary most child rapes are that of parents, friends, and people who *know* the child. And there are almost no serial murders as the media would have you believe- they come about once every gazillion years they are so rare.
There is evidence that pornography being readily available reduces rape though cause we have statistics that show that when pornography was legalized rapes went down, and then back up- when re-criminalized, and then back down again when legalized once more. I forget the country this study was done in, but it doesn't really matter. Point is unless you can show that paedophiles somehow differ from the general population in terms of rape there is no reason to think child porn will lead to rape. If we don't let emotions get to us it actually would make more sense to have some sort of government entity produce it in a similar manor to hollywood style violence. That way you have rapes go down AND no kids are harmed in the production of such disturbing content. In fact violent sexual content is probably more important than any other as it gives those whom are prone to violence (which may not be all those who view violent content) and outlet for that.
I went to a LAN once and as usual there is a bunch of file copying going on at the start, so I grabbed a bunch of stuff, games, movies and yes some pron. Months later I was running out of space and started clearing stuff out. Buried deep in the dump folder was a whole bunch of bestiality pron, shift deleted that, but to this day I cannot remember which friend I copied it from, always wondered if they were also unaware of it, or if they had a darker side I was not aware of.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
So tenants don't have a right to privacy?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
maybe they don't know how to do it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm always suspicious of single parenthesis. Why'd the other leave?
There was just too much between them.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Umm... the location of your valuables so he knows his way 'round when he returns later, so he's done robbing you before you're back from the movies?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is Best Buy we're talking about. I'd already be surprised if they didn't take a cut of those 500 bucks.
Why, you think they only rip off their customers?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's that? Oh, you mean that crumpled piece of paper our politicians wipe their ass with?
Yeah, I read it. Boy, it sure was a good laugh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, you shouldn't. The law should adapt and know that it is clearly not possession if that happens. The law must be there for the people. The people are not there for the law.
Because what if I send you a nice wallpaper of a green hill and use steganography to put an image of childporn in it?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Warrants are for any property that isn't in plain view to someone working on behalf of law enforcement. Since the FBI had already contacted this person and offered $500 if they found any child porn, they were working on behalf of law enforcement when they investigated the contents of the unallocated space on the drive. (unless the computer was brought in to recover deleted files)
Funny thing that "I've got nothing to hide argument". A couple of colleagues trotted out that argument when discussing the UK's new monitoring laws. They all agreed they have nothing to hide, so don't care about it. Then one the people in our office was informed of a tax inspection by HMRC (Revenue & Customs) and suddenly they all got a bit twitchy and started looking at what they're putting through their books (they're all self employed - we're basically serviced offices).
My "I thought you have nothing to hide from the government" comment didn't go down well...
More to the point, what if you're offered the money before you break in?
Anything else you'd like me to Google for you?
I'm struggling to find out the speed of light - can you help me please.
Your comment and mine are not mutually exclusive.
Having said that... get over the fact that child porn is pretty high up there on the public revulsion scale, and prosecutors salivate at the prospect of convicting such a person. People remember the perp walk and the mug shot, not the dismissal.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What about if you have legal adult naked videos/pictures of yourself having sex with your wife
You best keep personal files encrypted at all times. Windows Encrypting filesystem works if you NEVER give out your account password (Be sure to backup your Files and EFS credentials).
Plan Ahead. Create and maintain a separate Admin username/password you can provide to a technician if necessary
have that in place before the system even breaks.
Yes. Can you please search what these words mean if they are not enforced. I believe you should use 'hollow' in your search.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You have a truecrypt container? Jackpot! Plant a CP pic on it and get a warrant, 500 bucks ca-ching!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Great. It should only require a few years of dealing with tough-on-crime prosecutors and judges to make use of that, whilst your name is being publically dragged through the mud.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Emphatically YES! Smarts in one narrow field doesn't guarantee smarts in every field: John Podesta is a Smart Guy, but he was stupid enough to fall for a phishing attack.
Yeah, the lesson I took from that is pretty simple and clear: DO NOT READ EMAIL AT 4 AM WHEN YOU ARE NOWHERE NEAR IN CHARGE OF YOUR FULL FACULTIES. Not sure why Podesta hadn't already figured that one out.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Once I found a large amount of wadded up cash and what I assumed was coke in the top back of my bedroom closet -- six months after living there.
Lisp gives you nightmares like that... ;-)
John_Chalisque
About 30-40 EUR at the local hardware store?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
c, you're welcome.
When you need a plumber, you call a plumber. And you are there to greet him, and watch him work, ask questions about what he's doing, and pay attention to what he's doing so your bill doesnt show that he replaced your water heater when in fact he changed a couple of sink knobs.
Also, when you need a plumber you dont call the homeless that hangs out downtown who likes to smack copper pipes together to make "music". Doing so would be comparable to calling Geek Squad when you need a computer technician.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
I love this argument. Is that what you'll be saying if a senator starts suggesting that we should have surveillance cameras installed in every home with a direct line to police or NSA to stop domestic abuse, or drug trafficking, or terrorism?
After all, what's the harm? If you arent doing anything wrong...
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
If you think that's bad don't even think of having your PC repaired in Texas http://www.techrepublic.com/bl...
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
"Once I found a large amount of wadded up cash and what I assumed was coke in the top back of my bedroom closet -- six months after living there."
So, Terence, when did you stop 'assuming'?m After the first test sniff?
Don't trust the Geek Squad!
Use the Nerd Herd.
I would think that they offer the same deal to any computer repair shop. They can certainly take advantage of it even if the FBI doesn't inform them of the program directly.
Cool, feel free to forfeit your own constitutional rights, but kindly leave mine alone thanks.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
BBY doesn't pay for turning over the kiddie porn, the FBI does. Did they not tell you about it when you were there? They told me at Staples, and that was in 2000.
If a guy leaving his stuff for 5 years in the house of his ex-wife loses the ownership of his former property, I wonder the sanity of claiming to the heirs stuff hidden/abandoned so long ago. How long is too long ago? By that logic, we should start searching the heirs of that roman coins or pirate treasure...
Maybe they should be named the Geek Police Squad? Well after all, at least you'll know what your in for..
I wonder if users are smart enough to replace the hard drive, with a new hard drive, that has nothing on it but an operating system.
You trust strangers every time you hand someone your credit card or read the # over the phone (...)
You trust the professionals to whom you request a specific service (and usually you pay) to perform that specific service. You don't ask them to look for interesting files, have the illegal ones reported, and some other legal files not reported but used illegally by them.
First off... Geek Squad are IT professionals in the same way a burger flipper at Micky D's is a chef. They aren't.
Secondly, I sure as hell would not leave a plumber I didn't know well alone inside my home... With access to my valuables. Said plumber may be a consummate professional... but he's still some random I don't know.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Hey the geek squad use to be good but that was back in like 95 before best buy bought them.
Time to offend someone
So THAT's why the answer is always c.
You'd be CRAZY to take your computer to them. You'd be crazy to take your computer to ANYONE, unless you can watch them. ANYTHING on your hard drive will be checked...COUNT on it.
No, I don't mind. Because I don't have any illegal drugs or child pornography for the plumber to find.
Exactly what are you afraid of them finding?
There are currently over 10,000 federal statutes. Can you say, categorically, that you are not currently breaking any of them?
Ignorance of the law is not a defense. It is entirely possible to be breaking a law and have no idea you are doing so. Still want to let people, who are looking for wrongdoing, nose through all your stuff?
Anyone arguing that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear really needs to reexamine their assumptions.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
You trust strangers every time you hand someone your credit card or read the # over the phone. You trust your bank with the history of all your credit purchases. You trust other strangers when you hand over your car keys to the garage or a valet. You trust them when you give them your house keys so they can inspect something while you're at work. You trust, not just one doctor or one nurse, but an entire health care organization with your medical history and details when you go into a hospital to get a checkup or sick care.
People have to live their lives.
And every now and then we find out that some of those people are not worthy of that trust. That's part of living life.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Great. It should only require a few years of dealing with tough-on-crime prosecutors and judges to make use of that, whilst your name is being publically dragged through the mud.
Yes, exactly. Only people who have little first-hand experience with law enforcement or the courts would think that being innocent will make things easier. An innocent person can easily be bankrupted and have their lives altered by having to defend themselves against the criminal justice system.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Browser cache is an interesting consideration. I bet if you google image search for some freaky shit like chicks in dog collars you might find chicks with dogs in them in some of the results--you know, the results displayed as images, downloaded and cached to your hard drive along the way. Are they downloaded scaled down, or sent as full size (well, GIS scales to something like 300-400 pixels) and displayed scaled down by the browser?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Since you ask:
US Constitution, Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Anything else you'd like me to Google for you?
Well done! There is also the 9th Amendment to the Constitution: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The company that had lower prices on their public website, higher prices on their internal in-store site, and then charged you based off the internal site saying you had miss-remembered public price if you called them out on it.
Oh, yes. And even before smartphones were widespread, I printed off the web page when I went back in. The address bar didn't even say "bestbuy.com" for the internal site so I told them to try there, but they refused.
If you know how to do any of that, you're not taking your computer to Best Buy to be fixed.
He thought Delete meant Delete.
The basis for them is scientifically questionable as there is no clear scientific evidence that child porn leads to rape.
Well...there's pretty good evidence that child rape leads to child porn. Best not to incentivize its creation.
.. that I have yet to talk to anyone with a 'Geek Squad' shirt that knew what the hell he or she was talking about.
Child pron is NOT illegal because it supposedly leads to rape. Child porn is illegal (in the U.S.) because children have to be sexually abused in order to create it. At least, that is the justification which the Courts have given for allowing this suspension of the First Amendment. I actually support that logic.The problem is that things which do NOT involve the sexual abuse of children are labeled as child porn and are thus illegal. While I consider all child porn to be disgusting, any publication which did not require sexual abuse of minors to create should not fall under the legal categorization as child porn.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You show an appalling lack of understanding of how modern web browsers work. They download quite a lot of content without you ever demanding any of said content to be downloaded. If you watch perfectly legal porn on your computer, your browser is very likely to prefetch some seriously bad stuff - it's just trying to be helpful, after all.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Geek Squad tends to be predatory on their customers and constantly upsells based on fear of what is unknown to the customer. I can undercut them significantly, still make money, and not resort to dirty tricks.
"What about if you have legal adult naked videos/pictures of yourself having sex with your wife? Do you want the teenage geek squad employee to look through those videos/pictures too? After all, he would need to look inside those videos/pictures if he wants to ascertain what they contain."
If your wife is cute, maybe he'll earn himself some extra money by uploading your private pics and videos to some porn sites. Won't that be fun!
Or, maybe you're young, and you have some racy pics of your wife or girlfriend from a couple of years ago. Was she underage when that pic was taken? No? Can you prove it? I'm sure you'll enjoy being investigated by the FBI, just because some Geek Squad member wanted to get his $500 bonus...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
BBY doesn't pay for turning over the kiddie porn, the FBI does. Did they not tell you about it when you were there? They told me at Staples, and that was in 2000.
He's just quoting the rule book, and not what the managers of the Geek Squad actually tell people unofficially. I have a friend who worked Geek Squad part time just to get all the free junk from Intel that Geek Squad members became eligible for. The unofficial policy at his Geek Squad was to look through everything, find everything, and make a copy of anything your fellow coworkers might enjoy looking at. I actually wanted to work there part time as well. Not to steal peoples nudies but because my friend was getting a free $300-400 SSD or a new CPU from Intel about once every 3-4 months.
There are currently over 10,000 federal statutes. Can you say, categorically, that you are not currently breaking any of them?
Have any copyrighted pictures or videos that you don't have a receipt for? Rip a copyrighted tune from Youtube? Have a friend send any of those? Have a normal photo of your female child in a bathing suit at the shore? Some minimum wage geeksquad drone figuring that 500 dollars is 500 dollars, and "better safe than sorry", welcome to the legal system.
We have to set limits on accessibility, and the old "nothing to hide" is a bad slippery slope.
Finally, anyone claiming to know exactly what is or isn't on their computer better be saying that about a computer that has never been connected to the internetz.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There have also been suggestions that they planted child porn in order to get the $500 bounty.
I wouldn't trust Geek Squad anyway. A while back, I bought a tablet at Best Buy, and asked GS to stick a screen protector on it. It took them -hours- to do that, and to boot the job was not really impressive, with obvious globs of dust stuck between the plastic and screen.
If they can't get such a basic thing done, why would I trust them with anything more complicated?
I believe the legal logic is that a child cannot give consent to be in pornography ( or agree to a contract ) so the assumption is some kind of coercion.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
My taxes, bank statements, identifying documents, jewelry, checkbooks, etc...
The principle of least privilege applies here. The plumber shouldn't have access to everything in your house either because he's trustworthy or "because you have nothing to hitde". The plumber should have access to you plumbing and as little else is as practicable because he/she doesn't require access to anything else.
They are no less IT professionals than, say, a senior network engineer at Google. Why?
Because nobody will be an "IT professional" until there exists a licensing organization to enforce ethical standards.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Why You Shouldn't Trust Geek Squad"
Ummm, because they're a bunch of ninnies who couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Well you had better put your parentheses on. You're scaring the kids.
It's not his fault- he was speed-reading and hit a bookmark.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Yes, exactly. Only people who have little first-hand experience with law enforcement or the courts would think that being innocent will make things easier.
Or that being innocent even matters.
Many prosecutors couldn't care less about your guilt or innocence- what guides them is if they think they have a winnable case or not.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There are currently over 10,000 federal statutes. Can you say, categorically, that you are not currently breaking any of them?
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
If you read the article, it does not appear he intended to be a criminal. Accidentally downloading CP isn't a crime. Given there was only a single image retrieved from the trash, it's hard to prove anything was intentional about this act.
"... means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress."
Wrong. Virtually every constitutional scholar disagrees that it means "infringed upon by Congress" or "only by Congress".
That argument was floated around for a while in an attempt to try and gain traction by limiting the scope of who could be doing the "infringement", but it never found any validity on the courts.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So why then is simulated child porn also illegal? (Eg animations, paintings, barely legal people pretending to be children)
....you have nothing to fear.
I think it was Joseph Goebbels who said that. Totally someone the USA needs to emulate.
No soldier, doesn't include tenants not related to the Federal Government.
Even I don't have any illegal stuff of any kind in my computers
How do you KNOW you don't have any illegal stuff on your computers? IF you use said computer for webbrowing, the predictive caching that all browsers do now load all sorts of stuff into the cache that you have ZERO clue about.. Not to mention malware pulling ghod-knows-whatever onto your system... Having played "Windows Janitor" for close to 20 years prior to my retirement, I'd NEVER say "I KNOW I have nothing illegal on my systems", rather "I *hope I have nothing illegal on my system", but then again I don't use Windows anymore either, so I have a slightly better feeling about "illegal stuff on *my* computers" than you, if you still use Windows...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
If there was ever a story that reeks of being a fabricated urban legend, this is certainly it.
Better known as 318230.
I didn't realize that it was until just now. Excellent point, what I said is apparently not the only motivation, seems more in line with the ACs points.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Just an arbitrary citizen. You are not an agent of the government for reporting a crime. The reward is not payment for doing a job. And there is no legal decision or law that I'm aware of saying otherwise.
That will not come up in this case, because of all of the other clearly illegal things that happened. So it won't change now.
Luclily I live in a country that believe in innocent until proven guilty and to protect that innocence and does not make mug shots public.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If a guy leaving his stuff for 5 years in the house of his ex-wife loses the ownership of his former property, I wonder the sanity of claiming to the heirs stuff hidden/abandoned so long ago. How long is too long ago? By that logic, we should start searching the heirs of that roman coins or pirate treasure...
Having just bought a house, it seems to be typical contract condition that everything left in the house at time of purchase now belongs to the new owner. From there, it seems that it would depend if the seller had the right to sell the objects left in the house. Roman coins and pirate treasure probably fall under other laws that the seller could not just ignore. In the case of other people's objects, it probably gets murky. So, if I buy a house and find a box in the wall with stuff in it, it's mine unless some other condition would cause somebody else to have a stronger claim than the seller of the house.
not to worry, the compiler will catch it.
Scandinavians and those of other small Northern European countries believed they lived in a happy, tolerant, socially cradle-to-grave protected society, and regularly mocked the US for being cruel and hard-hearted to the down-trodden. Until waves of immigrants flooded in, and now they're cutting programs.
Point being that maybe your country isn't as perfect as you think it is.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You know it's possible for a website to serve any image to you computer, right? Some older web browsers would save those files as images in a folder whether you wanted it to or not. One of my coworkers had an unfortunate incident image searching a pillow block bearing, and when he later went to back up his computer to the company server, he inadvertently copied a whole host of unsavory (but not illegal) thumbnails. None of this was done by malware. It was 100% human interaction. Had one of the images been illegal, it would have been trivial for a prosecutor to show that he had "ownership" of the material, since he had to log into a password protected computer to move the files.
The bigger problem is that people have to prove their innocence these days. In Houston a guy was arrested on meth charges for having a sock full of kitty litter in his car. This poor bastard spent time in jail while the whole mess was sorted out. When prospective employers google his name, his arrest on drug charges shows up as the first dozen hits. (analogy would be if it were his auto repair shop that called the cops)
This whole country has become so ass-backwards when it comes to people's understanding of burden of proof. It's impossible to prove a negative. Hell, I can't even prove there's no bits on this computer that couldn't be misconstrued as CP. Let's see: one of my best friends from high school is on the sex offender list, I went to church with a guy that just got convicted of producing CP, a family member has been fired from a child care facility, and I am reading this article on how to evade getting caught by the FBI. Yup, I'm definitely a suspect. Better lock me up for life!
This is the same company that tells you the widget you want is not in stock, since you don't want to buy the extended protection plan. Real outstanding corporate citizens, these guys.
Pass them around the office and rate them on a scale of 1-10, duh!
for instance...
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
It's not a "field", it's common sense.
It's not common sense to know that if you delete something from a computer it can still be recovered. It's something that some people are aware of, and some aren't.
You seem to misunderstand what "reasonable doubt" means. This case barely meets probably cause, if the article can be taken at face value. It wouldn't even meet a preponderance of the evidence standard for a civil case. In all criminal cases, reasonable doubt is the null hypothesis. The defendant doesn't have to prove it. It is up to the prosecution to prove *beyond* reasonable doubt that a crime was committed by the defendant. So what several jurisdictions have done instead, is passed laws where it is trivial to prove they have been broken. Define the law in such a way that guilt is always assured, you just have to find the right law to charge somebody under. I'm probably breaking seventeen laws just by posting this.
Why do people believe your rights come from a document?
Your rights come from some group of people, somewhere, some time, maybe even you, right now, standing up and saying no. If a lot of us believe random other people (state actors or not) should not go pawing through our lives without just cause, then that's how society should work because we ARE society.
And absolutely no, I do not believe Best Buy has any business going through their customers' property in any way beyond that needed to perform the services they've been contracted for.
Though getting my money back has been, uh, diffcult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I don't trust them because they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
I found a huge collection of VHS pornography in one of my walls as well as some weed and some sex toys when I demolished a wall in my beat up piece of shit first house. Bastards didn't have the decency to actually leave a VHS player behind.
But being the ever kind person I built them into new wall we added when we created the master bedroom for a next generation to lament over.
One day when they create a relativity drive that is able to travel faster than the speed of light I really hope they call it C++
Buddy, if I have to check up your ass for anything, somebody better pay me $500 AND take me out to dinner
Exactly my point, but please read the parent post.
He wasn't just stupid, he was ignorant in an area vitally important to his job and the country. One of his passwords was "P@ssword" sent over plain text. Another of his passwords was "Runner123", crackable by a dictionary attack in seconds. He also used "Runner5678", also easily crackable. He obviously reused passwords, hence his twitter account was hacked after his apple ID password was leaked. He didn't have 2 step authentication switched on. He used open wifi hotspots on public transport, and as we all know he fell for that phishing scam. He very nearly became part of "President Hillary's" cabinet, possibly Secretary of State. I don't know what areas he's smart in but he sounds like an idiot to me.
Don't trust ANYONE with your data, christ. Google that shit and learn to fix it yourself >_>
What's to say that the Geek Squad isn't planting evidence..?? Seems like it would be worth it for them to do so; since it could net them an easy $500 per report..? I would never take a computer there, and I would never buy a computer from Best Buy ever again.
-Myke
As I wrote earlier this morning, we only have common sense about stuff we care about.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If you know how to do any of that, you're not taking your computer to Best Buy to be fixed.
Why? You're implying anyone with the software knowledge is able to do something better for every situation?
It's all hypothetical, because there's no Best Buy in less than a couple hour's drive away.
I might have someone bring them a Laptop that won't power on, because I don't want to fool with it.
It would have to be almost brand new, but out of warranty for some reason..
(I don't currently own a laptop that's new enough and expensive enough to justify the inevitable costs, but imagine I went out
and bought a $3000 laptop, and then 1 year later, one day after the warranty expired, the hardware stopped working -- maybe the vendor slipped a component in set to self-destruct in the Motherboard.)
You need to take out like 50 screws if you just want to just catch a glimpse of the CPU --- replacing a component on the motherboard, or the whole board itself is definitely something you pay somebody to do, in order to save 30 hours or more of headache.
Best buy is one of the few companies left you can pay to take a look at it; if you have one in your area, anyways.
If it can do sharp turns at the speed of light, is it a C#?
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Not using Windows and I always turn off predictive caching. Furthermore, my webbrowsing ecosystem is very limited to about two dozens very specific sites.
Onda Technology Institute
I know exactly what *you'll* find on my computer that has been connected to the internet:
Noise.
Baring an exploit in the disk crypto you will find only noise and I'll be damned if I'm going to enter or tell you the password.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
That can be modified.
So the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't apply to the Second?
They might screw up my Linux partitions.
If you give your keys to a contractor for him to perform some work in your house, don't you have the common sense to predict that if he's there alone, he might be doing more than just the work he was supposed to like browsing through your stuff including your garbage?
Onda Technology Institute
I thought we were talking about giving one's computer to someone to fix. That's certainly what I was talking about. And if you're trying to suggest that it's common sense to know that deleting a file makes it no more gone than putting something in your trash can does, that's exactly the claim I was disputing.
I know exactly what *you'll* find on my computer that has been connected to the internet: Noise. Baring an exploit in the disk crypto you will find only noise and I'll be damned if I'm going to enter or tell you the password.
Congratulations citizen! You win the internet. You do know that your encrypted disk had damn well better be well encrypted, becuse it's existence makes you very interesting indeed.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Shift - Del the files /w::\
cipher
done.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I was establishing a comparison between the two. If you KNOWINGLY had something on your computer you know you shouldn't have and send it to repair, you're incurring in the same risks. I can't imagine someone as a surgeon not having even the slightest hint that such a thing might happen if he had something to hide.
Onda Technology Institute
You're implying anyone with the software knowledge is able to do something better for every situation?
I'm implying that anyone that knows this much knows not to trust Best Buy with anything and they'd at least go to an independent shop or travelling tech if they didn't want to deal with it.
Sorry, are you arguing with someone else? I was never disputing any of that.
Perhaps you have something relevant in your Google on illegal search and seizure?
It just keeps returning Google image results of DJT watching two hookers pee on the Constitution. I think you broke it.
Yes, but if someone who doesn't know much about computers deletes something, then they DON'T knowingly have it on their computer. They think it's gone.
Laws vary. Some laws specify that CP has to involve an identifiable victim known to be under 18 at the time. Some laws are far more encompassing, and ban stuff that never did involve a real child.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
They are no less IT professionals than, say, a senior network engineer at Google. Why?
Because they work in retail and have no formal qualifications. Nor do they do anywhere near the same job.
Secondly, the word "professional" is derived from "profession", which means an occupation involving prolonged training or study. Someone who bolts together computers is not a professional, they're a labourer, someone who sells services is not a professional, they're a salesman, someone who fixes things is at best a technician, but more often they're just a labourer following instructions. Tradesmen/women are another form of career... but I dont want to confuse you too much.
Given that Geeksquad are employed as casual staff with little to no formal training and given sales responsibilities. They're casual storepersons, not IT professionals.
Remember that many professions have no formal bodies setting standards (and many of those who have formal bodies, still have no standards). There's no board governing researchers, but you cant call yourself one without formal training or at the very least, demonstrating enough competence to prove you studied to understand what you do.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Oh, now that pisses me off. I never got anything nicer from Intel than a Pentium Pro keychain (a factory discarded cpu in lucite), and that was back when I worked at Electronics Boutique. I also got to go to some US Robotics product presentation where I got a free external 56k modem. I didn't get shit when I worked at Staples, but here's the Geek Squad (a name that I find insulting), barely competent, overcharging like crazy, searching private data, and getting all these free toys!
Statutes? Cripes, what about the Code of Federal Regulations?
I, for instance, had no idea that when I washed my fish in a national park at a faucet not provided for washing fish, I was breaking 36 CFR 261.16(c)
Thank you, that is a perfect illustration of my point.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's not very difficult to make sharp turns at the speed of light. All you need is a mirror.
If this is not a violation of privacy then what is?
It is an unenforceable violation of the 4th amendment. Why should the FBI, any law enforcement agency, or the courts care?
You trust strangers every time you hand someone your credit card or read the # over the phone. You trust your bank with the history of all your credit purchases. You trust other strangers when you hand over your car keys to the garage or a valet. You trust them when you give them your house keys so they can inspect something while you're at work. You trust, not just one doctor or one nurse, but an entire health care organization with your medical history and details when you go into a hospital to get a checkup or sick care.
We also trust that they are not conducting searches in violation of the 4th amendment as an agent of the government or worse.
So they used civil assets forfeiture on his property taking his house and car, right?
Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
It is if you are an officer, prosecutor, or judge.
Since you ask:
US Constitution, Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home
or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Anything else you'd like me to Google for you?
Those are void where prohibited by law.