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FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad to Increase Secret Public Surveillance
- butterfi 10y agoTo my knowledge, Geek Squad had a shaky reputation to start with, I can't imagine this is going to help.
- chris_wot 10y agoNext thing we know, their store will be blown up by a rogue undercover female agent who loses her mind to a nefarious villain, but everyone will be saved by the local Geek Squad weirdo, his sleazy friend and irresponsible, lazy yet remarkably likeable slacker who has somehow managed to become store manager and whose best friend is a reluctant covert CIA agent with remarkable athletic and mental abilities.
- clarkcox3 10y agoIf you're repairing someone else's computer and come across child porn, aren't you obligated to report it? (if only to cover your own ass, as technically you are now in possession of cp).
- notatoad 10y agoYes, if you come across anything illegal while repairing somebody's computer you are obligated to report it. However, you're not allowed to go looking for illegal stuff while repairing a computer. And if the FBI is advertising cash rewards for "accidentally finding" illegal content, that sounds a lot like an illegal search.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoRight. Accidentally finding something illegal is one thing. Deliberately snooping every file on every computer that enters the shop is quite another. Given the $500 reward, I suspect the latter situation is closer to the case.
- ribosometronome 10y agoThe article seems to indicate that not only were they poking around but they were recovering deleted files. Good that they may have caught this fellow -- especially given his profession -- but that's probably rather horrifying for a significant portion of other people who brought their computers in for repair.
- SoylentYellow 10y agoIt is even worse in the article. Geek Squad employees were snooping into unallocated disk space to try to find evidence.
- cmdrfred 10y agoIs that a special law for repairing computers or just in general. What jurisdiction does that apply under?
- daxorid 10y agoCan you cite the specific statute? I have never heard of a legal obligation for non-healthcare workers to report crimes.
- cuckcuckspruce 10y agoIt's called misprision of a felony[0]: Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/4
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- akiselev 10y agohttps://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/laws-policies/statutes/manda/ https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/laws-policies... For anything to do with children, quite a few professions are mandated reporters including LEOs, all public and private school personnel except volunteers, social workers, and several other rather large fields. Depending on the state that list expands considerably. Even the clergy of religious institutions are included in 27 states, superceding confidentiality. Other than LEOs, mandated reporting for general crimes depends largely on state laws except for fiduciary duties.
- jacquesm 10y ago> And if the FBI is advertising cash rewards for "accidentally finding" illegal content, that sounds a lot like an illegal search. That sounds even more like an incentive to plant.
- jlgaddis 10y ago> ...if you come across anything illegal... No. If you come across child pornography (in the U.S.), you are legally obligated to report it.
- Spooky23 10y agoYou always need to consult an attorney on this. Some professions are mandated to report any suspicion of child abuse. In NY, any teacher, medical provider and others can lose their license for failure to report. Your general obligation, or obligation as an IT guy may vary... and you may have liability risk. Personally, I'd consider it an ethical duty to report such a thing. But I wouldn't do so in an official capacity without advice of counsel.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago> Your general obligation, or obligation as an IT guy may vary... ... by state.
- cortesoft 10y ago"Not allowed to go looking for illegal stuff" What law says that?
- ezoe 10y agoI'm not lawyer. But Japanese law has no obligation to report a crime, any crime.
- stingrae 10y agoI am not sure if it is the law. But there is a moral and ethical reason to report a crime if observed, depending on the severity and impact to the victims.
- gshulegaard 10y agoI see your point, but I also think that is substantially different than: > 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.
- differentView 10y agoHow would you know if it's cp?
- dbot 10y agoThere is a reason that safeguards like attorney-client, priest-penitent, and spousal privilege exist. For most of civilization, these are the people with whom we entrust our deepest secrets. Society doesn't work if these relationships aren't respected. Today, our deepest secrets are usually stored somewhere on a hard drive. When we turn them over to the "priests" of PC repair, there is no real protection beyond the terms of a one-sided, clickwrap contract. I've never used a repair service for this reason - I'll either fix the problem myself or throw the device away. It sucks, but articles like this suggest it's not a bad idea...
- hackuser 10y ago> safeguards like attorney-client, priest-penitent, and spousal privilege Let's add the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, protecting your "papers, and effects" though it's not currently respected. It seems obvious to me that your modern "papers" are what is on your hard drive.
- danielweber 10y ago> It seems obvious to me that your modern "papers" are what is on your hard drive. And they are protected in your possession. If you turn over all your papers to a third-party, though, that changes things. eta We may need more privileged communications, but they are very rare. Creating one is probably a good idea, but this will have to happen legislatively. Geek Squad finding child porn isn't much different from the photo processors of old finding it.
- hackuser 10y ago> they are protected in your possession. If you turn over all your papers to a third-party, though, that changes things I believe that interpretation is standard for U.S. courts. However, it's not in the wording itself. (Courts of course, must interpret the law beyond the wording; I fully support that. The law is not an algorithm, and also someone must apply the law to individual situations. Otherwise the First Amendment, for example, would protect slander, threats, shouting fire in a crowded theater, etc.) I don't like that particular interpretation. It implies the 4th Amendment applies only in your windowless basement, with no communication in or out. That isn't realistic, and is especially unrealistic in the age of the Internet.
- finnn 10y ago"Would you like to share you location with this site?" holy shit that's malicious. On an article about surveillance, no less
- digler999 10y agoMy reading of the article about windows 10 ads in File Explorer was abruptly stopped by an intrusive, full-screen ad video.
- ekianjo 10y agodisable javascript.
- ReverseCold 10y agoBreaks JavaScript, internet no longer works for anything newer than 1995.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago... when the internet didn't take over what you were trying to read with a full-screen video ad.
- cortesoft 10y agoBut every page had blinking marquees, crappy color schemes, and frames.
- fencepost 10y agoIf you're willing to have some sites break a bit at first then improve for ones you visit regularly, uMatrix in Firefox is excellent. Many items are disabled by default, but for sites you visit regularly you simply save the rule tweaks you've made for future use.
- ekianjo 10y ago
- throw2016 10y agoThe chances of a specific geek squad 'operative' chancing upon a 'target' the FBI is interested in is so low and minuscule one has to wonder how its worth it unless they are operating a dragnet or the FBI has too many people on staff. If the bar is so low one has to wonder how many high value companies are not infiltrated by FBI, NSA and other 3 letter agencies. When commentators here suggest the answer to privacy or surveillance is 'technical' it comes across as false empowerment. How can individuals or groups win against nation state actors with near endless resources, time, influence, power and armies of bureaucrats and engineers working 24/7 to achieve objectives? It's a nonstarter and the solution has to be socio-political. The law doesn't stop them, if anything they are adept at skirting around laws, misleading judges, working the system and banding together to protect themselves. Even worse there is zero consequence when things blow up, and its those leaking information who are hounded.
- Spooky23 10y agoYou might be surprised. I've worked in large scale IT and I'm aware of investigations and convictions of people having this shit on corporate devices. For a national chain like BestBuy serving the general public, they probably have an incident weekly. This article was light in details. Seeing this type of material is traumatizing, and it's important to give employees clear protocols to follow so there's as little question as possible about what to do. I find the compensation for tips potentially troubling, but there isn't much context. There's a lot of smoke in this article, but not a ton of fire regarding specifics.
- throw2016 10y agoThis is not smoke, it's a smoking gun. Protecting employees from child porn and trauma is no doubt a sensitive issue but given the article does not even touch on that this just muddies the waters. The focus here was on FBI's illegal data collection methods, misleading judges and recruiting operatives in best buy. These geek squad staff are for all essential purposes FBI operatives and as detailed in the article at one time there were 8 operatives including the manager in a single location! It will be amiss to expect more evidence or 'context' than this. If the FBI can expend so much energy and time on lowly geek squad how much time do they expend on Facebook, Google, Intel, Amd, Linux, VC Funds, security standards, industry standards. The list goes on. Things are seriously broken but many of us seem to be in a kind of denial quick to think the worst of others while failing to hold ourselves accountable to the same high standards.
- rrggrr 10y agoHow long before some disgruntled geek squadette plants illegal content on an innocent person's hard drive? From time to time analogous incidents occur in food preparation (contaminating food), medicine (injuring patients), and even law enforcement. The problem with digital crime is the difficulty in determining who did what, when, with certainty.
- mnm1 10y agoI only want to know one thing: how does the government intend to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Geek Squad employees themselves didn't put the alleged porn pictures on the device? Does Geek Squad have a chain of custody and other such procedures? Was the device tracked every single moment and NEVER, not even for a second, allowed alone with anyone outside the government (this actually seems impossible unless agents were present when the device was taken in)? Seems to me like that would be a good way for Geek Squad scumbags to make some extra cash from the government while the government looks the other way and tries to convict innocent people. Also seems to me like this case should have been dismissed already based on these concerns.
- Esau 10y ago"how does the government intend to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Geek Squad employees themselves didn't put the alleged porn pictures on the device?" Well, that's the rub, isn't it? We're talking about non-law enforcement personnel who are going to be rewarded if they find something. And at that salary level, where people are frequently living month to month, it is indeed conceivable that somebody would place evidence just for the money.
- Spooky23 10y agoWhen I worked at a big computer chain in the 90s, my coworkers would sacrifice their left pinky for a $21 spiff for moving a Viewsonic monitor. $500 would be a crazy motivator, especially for the ex-military types who were drifting around after the service.
- ramblenode 10y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13358287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13358287
- vermontdevil 10y agoBest Buy is in trouble PR wise. Even non-tech people on NextDoor in my area are telling others to avoid Geek Squad for computer repairs due to this.
- differentView 10y agoDon't most people just go along with it and say "I have nothing to hide".
- goodplay 10y agoYou say this, but I've noticed "servalince-fetegue" on (surprisingly) non-tech people. I think the general populace are starting to wise up to what is happening; perhaps not on a large enough scale to effect anything, but it's happening nonetheless. I think the future might not be as bleak as it currently seems. Talk with people. Explain what's going on and why it's bad. Despite the common rhetoric of people not caring, many do.
- drvdevd 10y agoPeople in the computer hardware/software repair industry should be infuriated by this as it erodes trust in their profession generally -- not just Best Buy. I know I'll be recommending that friends and family just backup, destroy, and/or reinstall, and avoid repair shops unless absolutely necessary. And of course -- Don't buy from Best Buy.
- dredmorbius 10y agoFrankly, I'd hope that this extends to financially and legally.
- tomohawk 10y agoI wonder if that's how they bugged Sharyl Attkisson https://sharylattkisson.com/reporter-wars-my-secrecy-battles-with-federal-government/ https://sharylattkisson.com/reporter-wars-my-secrecy-battles...
- jdavis703 10y agoI sent my Macbook into the Apple Store's Genius Bar to be fixed (yay unibody design). They wanted the drive's encryption password so that they could "backup" my data and add it to a new drive if needed. It looked as if they just store this password in the "notes" field. Of course I didn't give it to them, but it pays to be extra paranoid, even about services from companies you think you should trust.
- jacobsenscott 10y agoThis is exactly why the right to repair your own equipment is so essential.
- leesalminen 10y agoThey asked for my password during a screen replacement on a MBP so they could "make sure it worked after replacement". Ehh, no.
- bluesmoon 10y agoThat's nothing. The Buy More in Burbank has a joint CIA/NSA lair hidden beneath it and the Nerd Herd are operatives. There's even this one guy with some kind of Database (possibly NoSQL) installed in his brain.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sacheendra 10y agoFor people who didn't get that, that's a Chuck reference.
- 5v3nd0ttg 10y agoHaha, I actually did a search on the page for "chuck". Well done!
- leesalminen 10y agoI've been to the Best Buy in Burbank and asked the greeter if I could get a tour of the dungeon. Apparently they get asked that a lot.
- cortesoft 10y agoYeah, Chuck was definitely web scale.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- huffmsa 10y agoPosse comitatus act for the 21st century. "And the meek shall inherit the earth"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- linkregister 10y agoThis story is shocking and deserves public exposure. The OC Weekly seems like the bizarre indie magazines available at a Communist coffeeshop in Berkeley, CA. Maybe it's just the illustrations. Either way, the medium distracts from the message.
- brightball 10y agoSo they watched Chuck on NBC?
- TACIXAT 10y agoI just want to post a few excerpts from court documents that always seem to be missing from these articles. Warning, descriptions of sexual imagery of children. >The picture in question was “of a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck.” (Dkt. 152 at 7.) Presumably in the form of thumbnails, Agent Riley also saw “partial images of genitalia of young girls” and states that “[i]t appeared there was a lot of [child pornography] as the tech didn’t have to scroll, the window popped up with image after image of [child pornography] and child erotica/grooming images.” [1] >A later search of the iPhone revealed alleged child pornography that is charged in Count 2 of the Indictment. [2] On the classification of Best Buy workers as CHS >During 2007 and 2008, I am aware of four employees of Best Buy Geek Squad in Brooks, Kentucky, who contacted us regarding child pornography on customers' devices. To best track the relationship with these individuals and document contacts the FBI had with them, we classified these individuals as confidential human sources ("CHS's"), though they were simply employees at the Best Buy Geek Squad who happened to be in a position to report child pornography that technicians had come across on devices during the course of repair. [3] 1. Case 8:14-cr-00188-CJC / Document 173 / Filed 12/19/16 2. Case 8:14-cr-00188-CJC / Document 76 / Filed 10/30/15 3. Case 8:14-cr-00188-CJC / Document 176-1 / Filed 01/05/17
- throwaway729 10y agoThe key question for me is whether the CHS's were trusted and spontaneous. Trusted in the sense of there existing a chain of evidence that doesn't depend on the CHS's. Spontaneous is the sense that BB staff weren't running scans carte blanc for the FBI on every HDD that passed through their facilities. Trusting CHS's is debatable. The lack of spontaneity is damned scary, though.
- TACIXAT 10y agoIt sounds like the techs were not on a fishing expedition, but came across the images in performance of their normal duties. >The hard drive arrived at Best Buy’s Brooks, Kentucky facility on November 25, 2011, and an initial search was performed by a Best Buy employee at 9:00 p.m. on November 28, 2011, revealing that the “drive appears to have been restored, underlying data visible.” (Bates 853.) Best Buy called Rettenmaier less than thirty minutes later; he authorized “Level 2” repair and identified “[p]ictures, excel files, quicken files, text and word documents” as the most important files to recover. (Id.) >On or about December 20, 2011, Best Buy technician John “Trey” Westphal observed what he deemed to be inappropriate content on the hard drive. (Dkt. 152 at 4.) His discovery occurred after the data recovery repair for images—“to determine that the repair was successful [Westphal] must access the files to verify that the files were recovered intact.” (Bates 823.) The later search of Rettenmaier's home turned up child pornography on 5 separate device. Those facts lead me to stand where I do on this issue.
- EdSharkey 10y agoLike Best Buy doesn't have enough problems. What a shame.
- mirimir 10y agoI wonder what "'not exactly' child porn" means. I mean, some child beauty pageant stuff seems iffy. Consider JonBenét Ramsey: https://goo.gl/images/50otkX https://goo.gl/images/50otkX
- jMyles 10y ago> shared lists of targeted citizens Wait, what? The story says this and then nothing more about it. What do we know about this? Where are these lists?
- ravenstine 10y agoI wouldn't hand my computer over to anyone, Geek Squad or not. It's handing the keys to your life over to some person whose motivations you have no idea of. Rather than repair my computer, I would buy a new one. I recommend everyone do the same. Think of it as insurance for your livelihood, and the most guaranteed insurance at that. Well worth the money, especially considering the average lifetime of a laptop.
- lizavp 10y agoWent to Best Buy to purchase a laptop for my Mom. Geek Squad had installed the "free anti-virus" that came with the laptop. They opened a brand new factory sealed laptop. I noped right out the door.
- arrty88 10y agoAnyone know if apple's geniuses work with the feds?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]