Geek Squad - The FBI & Your 4th Amendment

Jim Kim said:
You should probably grind the melted platters into a fine dust and mix it into moist catfood. Then spread the catfood around town for feral cat's to ingest. Then track down the cat scat and burn it. Capture the smoke and save the ashes. It's the only way to be sure.

If you take your computer to Best Buy for service, you deserve what you get.
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I agree with the Worst Buy part. Now as to the hard drive destruction thats probably not quite good enough. Nuking it from orbit is really the only way to be sure. But if you want some extra insurance nuke it from orbit and then do that if you can find the pieces...
 
Willypants said:
Question! Would a picture of a naked baby or potentially a toddler in diaper trigger these forensic systems? The kind of stuff that parents take pictures of like "first bath time" or something like that?

Because in my mind, i could see a legit dad bringing in his wifes computer(though maybe he doesnt disclose any story about having a wife) and he gets flagged for having questionable content. Anyone deal with this?
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I feel like this is a setup.... Willypants
 
Willypants said:
Question! Would a picture of a naked baby or potentially a toddler in diaper trigger these forensic systems? The kind of stuff that parents take pictures of like "first bath time" or something like that?

Because in my mind, i could see a legit dad bringing in his wifes computer(though maybe he doesnt disclose any story about having a wife) and he gets flagged for having questionable content. Anyone deal with this?
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Yes I have. In my early days I ran an IT shop at university. I was fixing a profs laptop and found naked pics of his young daughter (~1-2 yrs old) on there. I turned them over to the FBI and let them sort it out. Its the only correct course of action. I have no idea what the circumstances were that resulted in those pictures.

IMO just dont take pictures of your kid naked even if its an innocent picture...you might not see it as porn but there is some pervert out there that will and you wouldn't want it falling into their hands. The only way to make sure that never happens is for it to never exist.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
So what happens if the suspect had no idea the unallocated space was tainted with something illegal? He could have bought the drive used, or remanufactured, or someone else could have used the computer and tainted it. I seen warranty returns on WD drives that were just refurbs or other people's dead units. Are they properly scrubbed? Hell if I know. And tons of "end of lease" refurb computers/drives that end up on ebay/newegg contain sensitive company records. There's been reports about this.
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Exactly. Look how many lives have been destroyed by the media, by just mentioning someone got charged than found not guilty later. Maybe the media should be put under control. No writing of a persons charges until after he has been found guilty or not guilty. If found not guilty I'm sure that the media wouldn't cover the story. The sensationalism would be gone.
 
kju1 said:
IMO just dont take pictures of your kid naked even if its an innocent picture...you might not see it as porn but there is some pervert out there that will and you wouldn't want it falling into their hands. The only way to make sure that never happens is for it to never exist
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Sad but true. I remember a time when people from common moms and pops to famous photographers took innocent pics of their kids doing things in the nude (the old cliché of the baby on a bear skin rug come to mind). Now if you do, it's child porn...now I'm all against child porn it is damaging in so many ways, but going overboard with the definition hurts people too.
 
WhoMe said:
Sad but true. I remember a time when people from common moms and pops to famous photographers took innocent pics of their kids doing things in the nude (the old cliché of the baby on a bear skin rug come to mind). Now if you do, it's child porn...now I'm all against child porn it is damaging in so many ways, but going overboard with the definition hurts people too.
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Oh I totally agree those pictures are innocent...but really do you want them to ever land in the hands of someone that would sexualize them? I will go out on a limb and say almost all parents will say no to that question. Which means with todays technology the only solution is dont take them. Granted that was likely the case back in the times you are referring to but the risk of having physical photos stolen vs digital is MUCH lower...
 
Everyone has a reasonable right to privacy. Are we suddenly just going to ignore that innocent people get criminal records all the time? Yes there are people out there that legit do the crime. But what's to stop the FBI or others from planting evidence? Spoofing modification dates is not hard, and many American agencies have proven many times over the years, that they are not above planting evidence to get a conviction.

It's far from black and white!
 
I worked for a big box store, not Best Buy, years ago and we had a few of those people come in with the kiddie pics on them. We had an off duty cop as the security guard for the store and he would call them in when the techs would find it. One moron brought in an iMac with a folder on the desktop.
 
BloodyIron said:
Everyone has a reasonable right to privacy. Are we suddenly just going to ignore that innocent people get criminal records all the time? Yes there are people out there that legit do the crime. But what's to stop the FBI or others from planting evidence? Spoofing modification dates is not hard, and many American agencies have proven many times over the years, that they are not above planting evidence to get a conviction.

It's far from black and white!
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Here's the thing though, if they plant "evidence" then it's inadmissible in court since no warrant was given even with the rubber stamp judges the FBI uses they can't pre-date a warrant (at least I would hope not). More likely than not what these searches will do is put the person in the view finder of the FBI, now they will get their warrant, they will get records from your ISP. It more likely than not is about proactively catching bad people, not making bad people out of good.
 
kju1 said:
I agree with the Worst Buy part. Now as to the hard drive destruction thats probably not quite good enough. Nuking it from orbit is really the only way to be sure. But if you want some extra insurance nuke it from orbit and then do that if you can find the pieces...
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Who are you, Erwin Schrödinger?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Here's the thing though, if they plant "evidence" then it's inadmissible in court since no warrant was given even with the rubber stamp judges the FBI uses they can't pre-date a warrant (at least I would hope not). More likely than not what these searches will do is put the person in the view finder of the FBI, now they will get their warrant, they will get records from your ISP. It more likely than not is about proactively catching bad people, not making bad people out of good.
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Maybe but its fairly easy to abuse. Piss off the best buy tech and he drops something on your PC and manipulates the file system timestamps (not hard to do). Then he calls the FBI and you are in deep shit.
 
kju1 said:
Oh I totally agree those pictures are innocent...but really do you want them to ever land in the hands of someone that would sexualize them? I will go out on a limb and say almost all parents will say no to that question. Which means with todays technology the only solution is dont take them. Granted that was likely the case back in the times you are referring to but the risk of having physical photos stolen vs digital is MUCH lower...
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Yeah you picked up on the point I was going to make and then forgot :( this is a downside of the internet, much as I'm an internet advocate it's important to see the downside. But even then I'm sure the photographers that published their photos where aware on some level that they might be misused that has always been a risk, doesn't mean they shouldn't have done what they did (however I do disagree with parents who publish embarrassing photos that their kids, whether as kids or adults, don't want published).
 
steakman1971 said:
Ok, starting the post off saying I find kiddie porn disgusting and have no sympathy for people that have it. Let's suppose someone takes their computer in to have memory added. BB installs it. Does BB scan the hard drive looking for files? I don't see where they would have the right to rifle through the file system when they could run a mem tester. (And let's be honest, I bet BB does not spend a lot of time testing the quality of their work...)
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If the computer is there for memory upgrade they shouldn't be scanning the drive. For backups, malware, etc. it may be possible to accidentally find such stuff in which case you have to report. That's how it was when I used to work in CompUSA back in the day.
 
This is how Law Enforcement Agencies slowly erode your rights. The erosion happens with wire tapping during the Cold War (those pesky Soviets), going after pedos, and stopping terrorists because no one wants to defend those people; and the general public thinks, "well we'll let the Constitution slide for those people."

Meanwhile, those cases set legal presidents that are used to go after smaller and smaller crimes.

In 5 years, your mechanic will download your driving record and the city will issue you speeding tickets every single time you went over the limit.
 
So a geek squad employee can now place some CP on a drive and get a financial reward? Because past the existence of the file, what has to be proven and how? Nobody in their right mind thinks that these examinations happen in a totally controlled and well audited environment.
Am I totally off on this?

And going in a different direction regarding "I don't have CP so I don't care" or "I think it's OK to catch those filthy bastards." It's very easy to relinquish your rights under a premise that attracts you, and then gets used in other places where it hurts you.

Because what if suddenly the government makes crypto illegal and the GS starts rummaging your drives for old wallets?

Or perhaps, if this is allowed, why can't the government demand that as routine, they have access to your file system via software you have to run? Just to take the GS out of the equation... not so much fun anymore.
 
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lcpiper said:
Anyone who reports something is going to be called a confidential informant even if they do it for the first time if they get paid to do it. You could work for some Mom and Pop shop, find illegal content on a customer's computer, call the FBI. And if they offer you a reward, which they do for kiddie porn, and you accept it, you are a paid informant in the same manner some druggie stooly is that finks on street dealers for cash.
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They're not just stumbling across it by happenstance while repairing a computer, the article summery literally states:

It goes as far as to suggest that some hard drives were subject to forensic tools in order to search for illegal pornography that were not on allocated hard drive spaces.
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Therefore they were conducting a search, and apparently without warrants. Not only that, there was a standing financial incentive for Geek Squad to do this. So where did the Geek Squad obtain these forensic tools....the FBI....? And was the Geek Squad getting warrants to use these tools? Seems to me that the FBI is trying to do an end run around the 4th ammendment.
 
lcpiper said:
How are you going to plant evidence on a computer in away that would stand up to forensic analysis?

You would have to doctor the date time stamps, no files could have dates referenced after the last date of modification, log files, everything would have to match up or it would be discovered.

You could try, but you'd probably get caught.

EDITED, and besides that, even the employee's workstations they are using to perform the work would also have logged activity that their own IA people should be checking on. Just because they are reasonably decent repair techs doesn't mean they aren't on a full Enterprise Domain with all the standard business controls and processes that any decent IT department would have in place.
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I have no idea, and don't really care. Even if you're found innocent, or have the charges dropped before trial, the accusation sticks like shit.
 
Showbiz said:
They're not just stumbling across it by happenstance while repairing a computer, the article summery literally states:



Therefore they were conducting a search, and apparently without warrants. Not only that, there was a standing financial incentive for Geek Squad to do this. So where did the Geek Squad obtain these forensic tools....the FBI....? And was the Geek Squad getting warrants to use these tools? Seems to me that the FBI is trying to do an end run around the 4th ammendment.
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That begs the question is it an illegal search if its an informant doing it and not an employee of the FBI...
 
The other thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that malware can put things on a computer that the actual user has no idea about.

And if you want to be really tricky, malware could be used to hide files that the OS is not even able to see.

So deep scanning to find these files that were supposedly there but deleted at some point is not really valid either.

All the malware has to do is keep a special allocation table/db of the files it is hiding on space that is not being used by the OS or other applications.

The OS will still see it as unused space unless the malware is hooked into the OS and tells it to not write to the space that is being used by the malware to store the data.

Pretty much any machine that is being cleaned of malware should not even be looked at for this sort of thing UNLESS it is found in a very obvious place and UNLESS that specific person is already under investigation for such.

And what happens if the user had a drive replaced at some point and the drive wasn't brand new? Who knows what the previous owner would have had on there.
If the user took it to a shop and the place said that they put in a new drive, how would the user know if it was really a new drive or not? Would they even have a reason to question it?
 
cyclone3d said:
The other thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that malware can put things on a computer that the actual user has no idea about.

And if you want to be really tricky, malware could be used to hide files that the OS is not even able to see.

So deep scanning to find these files that were supposedly there but deleted at some point is not really valid either.

All the malware has to do is keep a special allocation table/db of the files it is hiding on space that is not being used by the OS or other applications.

The OS will still see it as unused space unless the malware is hooked into the OS and tells it to not write to the space that is being used by the malware to store the data.

Pretty much any machine that is being cleaned of malware should not even be looked at for this sort of thing UNLESS it is found in a very obvious place and UNLESS that specific person is already under investigation for such.

And what happens if the user had a drive replaced at some point and the drive wasn't brand new? Who knows what the previous owner would have had on there.
If the user took it to a shop and the place said that they put in a new drive, how would the user know if it was really a new drive or not? Would they even have a reason to question it?
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All child porn laws in the US require proof that the defendant "knowingly viewed or possessed".

State v Jensen, 173 P.3d 1046 (Ariz.App. 2008)
Barton v State, 648 S.E.2d 660 (Ga.App. 2007)

United States v Lacy, 119 F.3d 742 (9th Cir. 1997)
"trial court erred in not instructing that the defendant must know that the hard drive and disks contained child pornography to be guilty of possession of pornography"
 
kju1 said:
That begs the question is it an illegal search if its an informant doing it and not an employee of the FBI...
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If they're acting on the direction of the Government (which I would argue that they are given that they were using Forensic search tools) they the 4th amendment applies to them as well.
 
Showbiz said:
If they're acting on the direction of the Government (which I would argue that they are given that they were using Forensic search tools) they the 4th amendment applies to them as well.
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Do you have case law supporting this?
 
NoOther said:
There is nothing about being a paid informant to suspect the veracity of a claim. It is a stretch to suspect them of planting child porn. Honestly that would be the dumbest thing someone could do. That means they would have to be guilty of having child porn themselves, and not just them, but it would incriminate Best Buy as well.
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There's a difference between "search this particular computer for this. We suspect this computer of having CP on it." and "Here's a tool that will allow you to search every computer that comes into your store for CP, and BTW, we have a cash rewards program for finding any. Happy Hunting"
 
kju1 said:
Do you have case law supporting this?
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After an exhaustive 10 second search, I can't seem to find anything which involves the state giving forensic tools to private individuals. All the case law I've seen involves private individuals observing what might be a crime in the normal course of their business, and reporting it to the police. Which is why I said: "(which I would argue that they are", and not "they are"

The best article I could find in my exhaustive 10 second search is this:

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/PrivateSearchDoctrine.pdf
 
Showbiz said:
After an exhaustive 10 second search, I can't seem to find anything which involves the state giving forensic tools to private individuals. All the case law I've seen involves private individuals observing what might be a crime in the normal course of their business, and reporting it to the police. Which is why I said: "(which I would argue that they are", and not "they are"

The best article I could find in my exhaustive 10 second search is this:

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/PrivateSearchDoctrine.pdf
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This has the relevant analysis and legal authorities
http://le.alcoda.org/publications/files/NONPOLICESEARCHES.pdf
 
: A search conducted by a civilian will be adjudged a police search if officers instigated it, participated in its planning or execution, or if they gave the citizen an incentive to search.


so paying them would constitute a police search - because you are inducing them by incentive to search - by reason of payment
and thus a violation of he 4th amendment


it also inducement if you ask all companies to look for and inspect every computer for illegal material
(and not necessarily CP - could be Mail fraud,Tax evasion,financial info - stock fraud,extortion,blackmail,etc)

so you just can't direct businesses to look for it either

it must be found during normal work on computer - plain sight doctorine

you can't go looking for financial info or business contracts, or legal documents of a lawyers just because you are curious
or want to spy on someone because you can

you also can't reclaim a deleted or destroyed document or one lost on a recclaimed HD on a lost partition
it was s destroyed document or picture - much like the trash of a web browser

you can accidentally come across questionable material during web searches of LEGAL porn
but have the illegal stuff scrubbed off your HD thru normal use(most are temp files) - or you own destruction by use of computer
but have it reclaimed by a 3rd party(restored) and then arrested for a planted (restored) document

the law states thet it legal to view(by accidental web browsing) but not possess(so saving) - so if you delete material
you are in the clear

so if someone re-instates it - it is planting evidence to get monetary reward
 
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I read thru the entire list of posts. The tin foil is strong here. There are 3 factors - 1) if you have something potentially incriminating on your computer why are you bringing it to geek squad and if you do you deserve to be busted, 2) The internet has lost the concept of what rights are which if you are committing a crime you are no longer allowed to your "rights" and 3) If you have any intelligence (and if you are criminal that brings your computer to geek squad, well...) you have backups of the essentials and dban that drive then throw it away. I'm shocked at the feedback from [H] on this post. But in this day and age where the "soapbox" is huge, and the dialogue is insane or asinine...
 
When my company does data backups or transfers we actually tell them we don't sift data so its up to them if they want to be present and have us go through files.

On data recovery we create a dump folder with complete and partial files. No sifting.

However if they are dumb enough to have something like that on the desktop you better believe we have SOP for reporting to local law enforcement.

We also heavily push for secure erasure and taking a ball peen hammer to the drives.

I stopped buying used drives in the 90's because of the financial data I found.
 
I never saw anything illegal when I repaired computers, but then unless it was a file named '0CLDPRN.GIF' I never would have noticed and probably not even in this case (yeah DOS joke). I never sifted through people's data--just fixed the damn thing and returned it (well often I did on site service) so unless they had a big pic of something illegal as their screen saver or wall paper I would have never known...I respect people's privacy (but if someone had done such a thing, of course I would report it...it's illegal for a good set of reasons).
 
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NoOther said:
I think this is a lot of nothing. If you are paying someone to service your computer, then you are subject to what befalls you.
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I'm sorry, there's a big difference between having them find kiddie porn in your C:\Users\Username\Pictures\KiddiePorn directory and having them use forensic disk examination software to hoover the whole fuckin' drive.
 
Uncle said:
As a business, geek squad should have it written and made known to you what they will do with any illegal data they find and stipulate what the data will be. That they have to inform their customers that they are working on the FBI's behalf. This secrecy thing is is a dangerous road to go down. The Constitution defines what those rights are. Even the FBI has guidelines that need to be followed. As a hypothetical, if I was an arsonist that loves burning houses down, would that qualify geek squad to now report everyone that has a picture of a house. This is all about turning Geek Squad into a Rat Squad little by little. It takes yrs and yrs to change the mind set of society and its happening under our noses.
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Well, we do live in an AmeriKKKa where there's no such thing as truth-in-advertising, so that's out the window.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
So what happens if the suspect had no idea the unallocated space was tainted with something illegal? He could have bought the drive used, or remanufactured, or someone else could have used the computer and tainted it. I seen warranty returns on WD drives that were just refurbs or other people's dead units. Are they properly scrubbed? Hell if I know. And tons of "end of lease" refurb computers/drives that end up on ebay/newegg contain sensitive company records. There's been reports about this.
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Precisely the slippery slope we're decrying here.

And what if it were a spam message that contained an image that was declared "child porn" (even if the model was 18+)? Even if you erase the email, the image is still there, both in the residual and the temporary Internet files.

I'd call it a miscarriage of justice.
 
haste. said:
2) The internet has lost the concept of what rights are which if you are committing a crime you are no longer allowed to your "rights"
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It's sad that you believe this. The 4th amendment is written explicitly to protect people suspected and accused of crimes. Rights need to be strongest when one is accused of a crime and should be unnecessary when you aren't suspected or accused of committing a crime.

The only time you lose *some* rights, not even all of them, is after you have been convicted of a crime.

Besides that, the only reason people are even remotely ok with this is because it's child pornography. If it was say evidence of people smoking weed people would be losing their shit. Forgotten in this mess are the millions of people who are getting their private data rifled through until they come across the 1 in whatever number of people who actually committed a crime. I guess it's a personal threshold here but what's an acceptable number? 1 in 10? 1 in 1000? 1 in 1 million? How many innocent people need to get shit upon and their rights violated (even by your incorrect standard of losing rights when you commit a crime, you don't seem to care about all the people who did *not* commit a crime in your post) before you care?

One person even posted that he thought it was just fine and dandy that he potentially ruined someone's life because a professor brought his computer in to IT and it had pictures of his young daughter, not some random child, not some heinous sex depictions (child pornography isn't like your daughter sitting in a bathtub if that's what you guys think), but just regular pictures that he turned right on over to the FBI...and he said he didn't know or care what happened to the guy. Well, at a minimum he was investigated and that alone is reason to lose his job and possibly never work as a professor again.
 
I bet most of the populace think that Geek Squad actually works on your computer. They don't. They plug it in and its "Worked" on remotely. Same as Office Depot / Office Max.
 
mope54 said:
It's sad that you believe this. The 4th amendment is written explicitly to protect people suspected and accused of crimes. Rights need to be strongest when one is accused of a crime and should be unnecessary when you aren't suspected or accused of committing a crime.

The only time you lose *some* rights, not even all of them, is after you have been convicted of a crime.

Besides that, the only reason people are even remotely ok with this is because it's child pornography. If it was say evidence of people smoking weed people would be losing their shit. Forgotten in this mess are the millions of people who are getting their private data rifled through until they come across the 1 in whatever number of people who actually committed a crime. I guess it's a personal threshold here but what's an acceptable number? 1 in 10? 1 in 1000? 1 in 1 million? How many innocent people need to get shit upon and their rights violated (even by your incorrect standard of losing rights when you commit a crime, you don't seem to care about all the people who did *not* commit a crime in your post) before you care?

One person even posted that he thought it was just fine and dandy that he potentially ruined someone's life because a professor brought his computer in to IT and it had pictures of his young daughter, not some random child, not some heinous sex depictions (child pornography isn't like your daughter sitting in a bathtub if that's what you guys think), but just regular pictures that he turned right on over to the FBI...and he said he didn't know or care what happened to the guy. Well, at a minimum he was investigated and that alone is reason to lose his job and possibly never work as a professor again.
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#ThisShitRightHere

As I said previously: a miscarriage of justice. But indicative of the mob mentality our society has developed.
 
Krenum said:
I bet most of the populace think that Geek Squad actually works on your computer. They don't. They plug it in and its "Worked" on remotely. Same as Office Depot / Office Max.
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Having been on both sides of the fence at bestbuy you rely heavily on the MRI disc and its utilities however at office depot/Office Max typically the remote services are sub par and the Tech's have to do some actual work. Plus you can see the Depot techs doing work since they don't hide in a magical back room.
 
viper1152012 said:
Having been on both sides of the fence at bestbuy you rely heavily on the MRI disc and its utilities however at office depot/Office Max typically the remote services are sub par and the Tech's have to do some actual work. Plus you can see the Depot techs doing work since they don't hide in a magical back room.
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Not at the Office Depot I worked at. I wanted to do hands on but the manager there was very adamant about doing it remotely. I was hired as a computer tech but the majority of my time was assigned to sell printer ink. Of course this was years ago, so I don't really know the state of business there now, probably the same. The closest thing to working on a computer at Office Depot was fixing a ladies boot issues on her laptop. Windows wouldn't boot. I asked her if she had a dvd in the drive? So I opened the drive and found a copy of Beethoven, Fixed. She was happy.

I didn't charge her and my manager wanted me to charge her 70 dollars for working on her computer. I told the manager that I wouldn't charge her & according to company policy I didn't actually work on her computer and I quit. Worse job I ever had.
 
NoOther said:
EDIT: Just to clarify though, I think EFFs point was the paid relationship between Geek Squad and the FBI, not necessarily the finding of the materials. Why the FBI needs to pay them, I am not sure, if a Geek Squad employee finds illegal material, they are responsible for reporting it immediately anyway. Perhaps some of them weren't reporting stuff they found.
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I think the issue is that the FBI is paying GS to actively search. That's why it's a 4th Amendment discussion - the FBI isn't showing probable cause in order to violate your privacy, and is using a willing third party to make it easier for them to do so.

That's totally different than "I just happened to find XYZ in the course of doing the duty I agreed to perform for the customer..." and then being required to report.
 
nobody should ever be arrested for drugs again unless they are caught doing them as the police can't prove the person didn't buy their pants used and never washes them and they just happen to have drugs in them. Or maybe the house was purchased with crack sitting on the table and the new owners just never got around to removing it. Kind of like when you don't get around to painting that one room for a few years.
 
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