“To be clear, our agents unintentionally find child pornography as they try to make the repairs the customer is paying for. “Any circumstances in which an employee received payment from the FBI is the result of extremely poor individual judgment, is not something we tolerate and is certainly not a part of our normal business behavior. We are proud of our policy and share it with our customers before we begin any repair. From time to time, our repair agents discover material that may be child pornography and we have a legal and moral obligation to turn that material over to law enforcement. "Best Buy and Geek Squad have no relationship with the FBI. Update: Best Buy issued the following statement to Network World: + What do you think? Share your opinion about Geek Squad techs acting as FBI informants on our Facebook page +īut the real question is why in the world was a Geek Squad staffer running a carver on the laptop? His job was to get the thing running, and I doubt recovering deleted files would make much difference. 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. To prove child pornography, you have to prove the possessor knew what he had was indeed child porn. So, it was proper to use such a tool in this case. Rettenmaier, it was engaged in data recovery off the client computer. The company claims that in the case of Dr. + Also on Network World: Peeping into 73,000 unsecured security cameras thanks to default passwords +Īs it turns out, Best Buy had a valid reason to run such a tool. It's used to recover old files that have been deleted or damaged. Carving (or file carving) is defined as searching for files or other kinds of objects based on content, rather than on metadata. Plus, the file was found in the unallocated "trash" space, meaning it could only be retrieved by "carving" with sophisticated forensics tools. 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. The FBI has pretty much guaranteed the case will be thrown out by its behavior, this illegal search aside. 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.Īccording 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. This revelation came out in a court case, United States of America v. + Also on Network World: Yahoo's secret email scans helped the FBI probe terrorists + That, ladies and gentlemen, is about as blatant a case of unconstitutional search and seizure as it gets. The Orange County Weekly reports that the company's repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants. And it seems the geeks are making a few extra bucks.
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