Best Buy's Geek Squad Finds Child Porn on Janitor's Computer, Janitor Arrested

Switched ^ | 1/16/08 | Terrence O'Brien

[Teflonic]

Best Buy's Geek Squad isn't exactly known for respecting people's property. This time, however, instead of us catching them, they caught a guy with child porn.

A middle school custodian sent in a hard drive back in August of 2007 to recover lost data. Upon performing their usual search (and invasion of personal privacy), the Geek Squadders at a Twin Cities location found over 800 images of young girls between the ages of 7 and 15 in various states of undress and performing sexual acts. The Geek Squad promptly turned the evidence over to the police. The police eventually obtained a search warrant and -- upon execution -- found more evidence in the janitor's home.

While we would like to say that this guy is sick and deserves whatever punishment he gets, we are disturbed by the conduct of Geek Squad employees who seem to make it a habit of going through customer data. Whether or not the data is illegal and leads to arrest, warrantless searches by non-law-enforcement personnel is disturbing on an ethical level and we're pretty sure unconstitutional.

[Popman]

The guy is an idiot. Private searches are not unconstitutional. Best Buy is not an agency of the government.

100 % correct

Dollars to donuts somewhere in the fine print of the agreement when you hand over your property be fixed by the geeks there is a disclaimer telling you by asking us to fix your property we might need to look at the contents

[Steamburg]

First, the Constitution is an agreement between the government and the governed. The Constitution is not a code of conduct between private citizens. This is not a Constitutional issue.

Second, when you give your files, computer or otherwise to someone else, you should assume that you have no privacy interest in those files, unless you have a specific non-disclosure agreement with that party. Why do you think there is so much litigation and so many rules governing your medical records.

Finally, the devastating damage that is done to your privacy every day by insurance and credit companies makes this pale in comparison. If the government continues to make inroads into governing health care, then we will have a Constitutional Issue.

[ktscarlett66]

I’m late on this (just found this thread) but I wanted to ask you a question. Do you come across husband/wife nudie shots often?

I’m not asking out of nosiness, lol. A few years ago, I had to take my PC into a local shop for repairs. There were *ahem* intimate shots of me that H had taken, on there, somewhere. None that I could be identified in but it would still have been pretty obvious who they were if they saw me in the shop. H was more freaked out about it than I was. I didn’t necessarily relish the thought of having them see them, on the other hand that’s the risk I took when we did it in the first place, knowing that at some point, it might have to in for repairs. I just kind of shrugged about the whole thing - I hope they never found them - but if they did, I’m sure it’s not the first time. If they shared them or put them online, well...my face isn’t in them... I just wondered if most repair techs find stuff like that, have a chuckle and go on with the repair.

[MarkL]

Do you come across husband/wife nudie shots often?

I never have, but then I've also never looked for them. There have been a few times that I needed to open existing files on the computer, but I would always try to make sure that the owner was there with me.

I suppose that there are some techs who look for such things, but I was always too busy. Plus it was none of my business and IMHO completely unprofessional.

Mark