Posted on 01/17/2008 6:03:54 PM PST by 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.
No he should take it cut it and make a shit load of dough....
I understand your point and that’s why I didn’t go into it’s not the government or the fact that it was child porn. When you hand “whatever” to someone else, it’s no longer exclusively “yours”.
Another pedophile bites the dust.
Good work Geeks!
hey did you read my mind?
*chuckle* I got a laugh out of that. I also used to do some photo tech work when they put the one hour lab in the pharmacy I worked at while I was in college.
ping
My feeling is that the computer wouldn’t boot up, so the Best Buy people needed to restore the operating system. It’s kind of telling that these people looked over his files while restoring his operating system. Many people have tax returns and other personal financial data on their computers. In general, if anyone wants to get his computer fixed (at Best Buy or anywhere elese) without having his data stolen and risking identity theft, it’s best to look over the service person’s shoulders while he’s doing his thing. Be very suspicious if he whips out a USB drive and starts copying your files to it.
This is like the guy at Moto Photo going thru your pictures when you drop the film off. If someone there saw a porn photo of my child and did not say anything, I would get him on harboring a criminal, or an accessory of the crime, or knowing after the fact. Either way, I can’t imagine anyone siding with this guy.
That may tell you more about the respondents than they wish. I wonder how many of them have something on their harddrive that they don’t want anyone to see.
If you don’t want someone to find it, don’t leave a trail, paper or otherwise.
If I invite you into my private sanctuary do I have “right” of privacy?
Not a fan of Best Buy or the Geek Squad but I don’t see a problem. The information wasn’t accessed illegally. He handed it to them knowing full well what was on it. It doesn’t seem any different than someone who drops off film to be processed. If this kind of thing is found calling the cops is a given.
So they think this behavior is unconstitutional huh? Uhm, last I checked the constitution related to the activity of the govenment, not a corporation. I’m glad they snooped and found the sicko.
Hardly.
The idiot asked Best Buy to recover data lost during a hard drive crash. The fact of the matter is that if Best Buy did not turn that hard drive over to the police, then the geek and the company could have been prosecuted for possession of child pornography.
The hard disk was in the possession and under the control of Best Buy when the images were discovered. The only way to absolve themselves of criminal liability was to IMMEDIATELY turn it over to the police. If they had returned the hard drive to the owner, knowing that it contained child pornography, they could have been prosecuted for disseminating child pornography.
Three cheers for the Geek Squad. But somehow I doubt this guy is going to pay the bill for recovering all his precious "data".
Meanwhile Granny is getting robbed two blocks over while the cops “investigate” what this guy has on his computer.
Police are as worthless as any other government agency that exists.
John
For a lot of people, the computer is their filing cabinet. Resumes, e-mails, social security numbers, bank statements, Quicken data, Adobe Acrobat scans of financial data and tax returns - all are now preserved on computers. The point is that you want to be making regular backups. If someone has to be engaged to save your data, you’d better be looking over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t either look over your data or make any extra copies for himself. A car mechanic can only overcharge you by thousands of dollars. A computer technician doubling as a data thief can charge tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to your identity and ruin your chances of getting future financing.
Anyone who hires these overpriced morons and their little VW’s SHOULD be arrested for sheer stupidity!
After hearing about their low prices, I visited a Best Buy once. As it was my first visit, I wanted to browse around. The salespeople were so persistent and obnoxious that I left and have never been back.
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