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How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance (ocweekly.com)
In 2011 a gynecology doctor took his computer for repairs at Best Buy's Geek Squad. But the repair technician was a paid FBI informant -- one of several working at Geek Squad -- and the doctor was ultimately charged with possessing child pornography, according to OC Weekly. An anonymous reader quotes their new report:
Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy's Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer's request for repairs. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as "wild speculation." But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line...
Other records show how [Geek Squad supervisor Justin] Meade's job gave him "excellent and frequent" access for "several years" to computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered him "underutilized" and wanted him "tasked" to search devices "on a more consistent basis"... evidence demonstrates company employees routinely snooped for the agency, contemplated "writing a software program" specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers' computers without probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were "under the direction and control of the FBI." The doctor's lawyer argues Best Buy became an unofficial wing of the FBI by offering $500 for every time they found evidence leading to criminal charges.
Other records show how [Geek Squad supervisor Justin] Meade's job gave him "excellent and frequent" access for "several years" to computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered him "underutilized" and wanted him "tasked" to search devices "on a more consistent basis"... evidence demonstrates company employees routinely snooped for the agency, contemplated "writing a software program" specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers' computers without probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were "under the direction and control of the FBI." The doctor's lawyer argues Best Buy became an unofficial wing of the FBI by offering $500 for every time they found evidence leading to criminal charges.
Top 976 Complaints and Reviews about Geek Squad Quote: "I feel that they're a scam. They get people to buy their support and anytime they help it costs more money."
9 Confessions Of A Former Geek Squad Geek Quote: "A high percentage of Geek Squad employees lack basic troubleshooting skills such as correctly identifying malfunctioning components."
Geek Squad Complaints and Reviews Quote: "$430 Average loss"
Yelp Reviews for Geek Squad in San Francisco Quote: "Dealing with Geek Squad has been an absolute nightmare!! And judging by the hundreds of other reviews here, im guessing most of you feel the same way."
Geek Squad Consumer Reviews Quote: ""Cheat Squad," Not Geek Squad"
I find these prosecutions rather disturbing, as they amount to victimless thought crime.
Yes, there is a child victim, and the story is terrible, but there is no causal connection, and no need to demonstrate one. The child is the victim of a very different crime, by a different person, possibly long ago. In other cases, there may not even be a single child who has suffered, ever. And that makes no difference to the law.
Whats the point of treating it as a criminal problem? It makes about as much sens as the war on drugs.
What does all this achieve? Is there the slightest bit of evidence that our children are any safer for all these destroyed lives from the War on Porn ?
And if it helps you consider the question more objectively, the images themselves were not particularly shocking. Nothing compared to the sex and violence on an average night's TV.
Agent Tracey Riley admitted to U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney the so-called "Jenny" image found by a Best Buy Geek Squad technician, who doubled as a paid agency informant, "wasn't child pornography by itself."
Riley tried to recover by explaining that the picture, which contains no sex or genital angles, originated from a "well-known" child-pornography video.
If you have nothing to hide, why should it matter either way?
"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 (supposedly)
More to the point, if you're taking your machine to be fixed because it was compromised, doesn't that make it just ever so slightly more likely that the child porn on it wasn't your doing?
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If you have nothing to hide, why should it matter either way?
I see you didn't read the summary. They are paying people $500 to plant child porn on your computer.
Unfortunately, the 4th Amendment only restricts the government. There's nothing restricting your neighbor, a private company, or the employees of a private company from collecting a reward if they happen to notice you doing something illegal.
Ah spoken by someone who hasn't a clue and instead starts playing the role of statist apologist. When the government trains, directs, and pays a "private citizen", that person becomes an agent of the government. This makes those persons subject to the same rules; probable cause, warrants, oath or affirmation.. This bit I dug up on nolo.com The admissibility of evidence found by a private citizen usually turns on the government’s “share” of the search. In other words, how involved was the government? While cases where the government ordered or paid a citizen to conduct the search are fairly straightforward, others aren’t. In determining whether to admit the evidence in question, courts consider questions like: whether the government initiated the search how much control the government had over the private citizen who conducted the search, and what the private citizen’s purpose was in conducting the search. And what was the FBI doing? Oh yeah... paying them..training them...giving them lists of people to search extra carefully. You clueless, statist, cocksucking fuck. Now please go back to blowing your J. Edgar Hoover love doll.
This crap has to be illegal.
It's like giving a plumber access to your house to fix a plumbing problem, but then he also goes through the underwear drawer in your little girls bedroom as well as through all of your mail on your desk etc etc. I cannot believe that would be considered legal and I can't believe that what Best Buy is doing should be either..
I'm actually a little surprised that ransomware hasn't started dumping illegal images in victim's hard drives, just to discourage them from taking the machine to be fixed.
In addition, when there is money to be made and you've been told X is a target an unscrupulous person might "find" the desired evidence to collect a reward.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.