4 ms·

If I'm an electrician on call-out to someone's home and, totally by accident, I discover someone tied up in their basement, should I report it to the police? I

If I'm an electrician on call-out to someone's home and, totally by accident, I discover someone tied up in their basement, should I report it to the police? If I'm repairing someone's computer at their request and, totally by accident, I discover illegal material on it, should I report it to the police? It seems pretty straightforward to me that you can, and in fact you really ought to. Maybe you disagree with what counts as "illegal" (like if didn't report finding pot in someone's home in a country where it's illegal) but that's a different discussion from whether this is generally reasonable behaviour.

manjushri 9y ago
The "totally by accident" excuse is not valid when people are paid bounties to conduct vigilante surveillance. How much money would it take for someone in need to plant evidence?
- jbigelow76 9y ago
  Anybody dumb enough to go source a bunch of kiddie porn to plant on computers to collect bounties probably doesn't have the smarts to actually pull it off correctly.
madshiva 9y ago
It's not that you should or not. Is that you don't know if it's illegal or not. It's like you see someone tied up, thinks it's illegal but it's maybe not. Maybe they play a game and it's on purpose. Same apply with the content, you don't know if it's illegal or not. You are not judge, stick to your job.
Lewton 9y ago
> totally by accident not an accident if you're paid to do it
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  The article does not clarify the nature of the payment. It's not clear whether or not he knew he would get paid when he reported it. It's not necessarily that the FBI has an arrangement with technicians to snoop around.
piracykills 9y ago
For sure you should - but if you're incentivized to find such a thing, what's to say you won't leave some drugs hidden in their basement yourself? If the pay off was high enough, especially with young, generally low wage employees it might be quite tempting.
- quietbritishjim 9y ago
  That's a fair point.
apocalyptic0n3 9y ago
These people weren't being paid to find things "by accident" (or at least they weren't when this was first reported a year or two ago). They were being paid to look for what they suspected were crimes. This is more akin to an electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen, seeing a locked basement door, picking the lock, and rifling through the boxes in the basement to find illicit materials. This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it could be done without a warrant. The problem is that the FBI both ordered and paid these people to do it, and I personally don't see a difference between that and having an FBI agent take your machine from you and perform the search themselves. There's also the ethical problems for Best Buy, plus the incentive (payment) to create a crime (copy illicit materials or visit sites that would make it look like the person was going to do something illegal) and report it.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  > This is more akin to an electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen, seeing a locked basement door, picking the lock, and rifling through the boxes in the basement to find illicit materials. Which still produces admissible evidence. Government agents are bound by the constitution when it comes to searches, private individuals are not. There can be other clauses in a state's constitution that enshrine an expectation of privacy that may be usable to dismiss such evidence, but as far as federal law and the US constitution is concerned a private individual can break a window into your house, find illicit materials, report them to the police and some time later you are sitting in court defending yourself. > This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it could be done without a warrant. Yup, and now that there's evidence such reports are being rewarded they screwed that up. If a government employee requests or incentivizes you to perform a search on their behalf you become an agent of the government for the purposes of that search, 4th amendment applies and if such activity is discovered the evidence is inadmissible. Incredibly stupid move of the FBI.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
It really depends. I can imagine this incentive was started because either employees came across images and didn't think much of it, or dismissed it because they didn't want to deal with the hassle. The article mentions a picture of a naked child; didn't mention any abuse or sexual acts, so it could be the owner's own, I mean just look at how many naked baby pictures are out there. It's a gray area then. With this incentive, it was reported; without it, the employee may have shrugged it off. I think they're incentivising "better be safe than sorry" with some monies.

manjushri 9y ago

The "totally by accident" excuse is not valid when people are paid bounties to conduct vigilante surveillance. How much money would it take for someone in need to plant evidence?

jbigelow76 9y ago
Anybody dumb enough to go source a bunch of kiddie porn to plant on computers to collect bounties probably doesn't have the smarts to actually pull it off correctly.

madshiva 9y ago

It's not that you should or not. Is that you don't know if it's illegal or not. It's like you see someone tied up, thinks it's illegal but it's maybe not. Maybe they play a game and it's on purpose. Same apply with the content, you don't know if it's illegal or not. You are not judge, stick to your job.

Lewton 9y ago

> totally by accident not an accident if you're paid to do it

mfoy_ 9y ago
The article does not clarify the nature of the payment. It's not clear whether or not he knew he would get paid when he reported it. It's not necessarily that the FBI has an arrangement with technicians to snoop around.

piracykills 9y ago

For sure you should - but if you're incentivized to find such a thing, what's to say you won't leave some drugs hidden in their basement yourself? If the pay off was high enough, especially with young, generally low wage employees it might be quite tempting.

quietbritishjim 9y ago
That's a fair point.

apocalyptic0n3 9y ago

These people weren't being paid to find things "by accident" (or at least they weren't when this was first reported a year or two ago). They were being paid to look for what they suspected were crimes. This is more akin to an electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen, seeing a locked basement door, picking the lock, and rifling through the boxes in the basement to find illicit materials. This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it could be done without a warrant. The problem is that the FBI both ordered and paid these people to do it, and I personally don't see a difference between that and having an FBI agent take your machine from you and perform the search themselves. There's also the ethical problems for Best Buy, plus the incentive (payment) to create a crime (copy illicit materials or visit sites that would make it look like the person was going to do something illegal) and report it.

snuxoll 9y ago
> This is more akin to an electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen, seeing a locked basement door, picking the lock, and rifling through the boxes in the basement to find illicit materials. Which still produces admissible evidence. Government agents are bound by the constitution when it comes to searches, private individuals are not. There can be other clauses in a state's constitution that enshrine an expectation of privacy that may be usable to dismiss such evidence, but as far as federal law and the US constitution is concerned a private individual can break a window into your house, find illicit materials, report them to the police and some time later you are sitting in court defending yourself. > This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it could be done without a warrant. Yup, and now that there's evidence such reports are being rewarded they screwed that up. If a government employee requests or incentivizes you to perform a search on their behalf you become an agent of the government for the purposes of that search, 4th amendment applies and if such activity is discovered the evidence is inadmissible. Incredibly stupid move of the FBI.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

It really depends. I can imagine this incentive was started because either employees came across images and didn't think much of it, or dismissed it because they didn't want to deal with the hassle. The article mentions a picture of a naked child; didn't mention any abuse or sexual acts, so it could be the owner's own, I mean just look at how many naked baby pictures are out there. It's a gray area then. With this incentive, it was reported; without it, the employee may have shrugged it off. I think they're incentivising "better be safe than sorry" with some monies.