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.

[DaisyCutter]

Sure, if they misuse the data for personal benefit I agree. That's not the case here, however.

There's still the question of how exactly these techs came across the images, but there's not any info available on that.

[FunkyZero]

Couple of comments:
- There is no way to do data recovery without seeing the data fly past during the process. I’ve been in this business a long time and the file names and directory names I’m sure were a dead giveaway. At that point, it is illegal to NOT report it.
- Chances are, the guy deleted the illegal photos already in the past and thought they were gone, but the data recovery process unearths stuff like that, you can’t separate it and unless you know what you are doing, deleted doesn’t necessarily mean deleted.
- Secondly, I think he will skate. The evidence was not obtained legally and the search warrant for his home was based on that evidence as well.
- Lastly, never let anyone touch your private data who isn’t willing to sign a privacy/intellectual/non disclosure property agreement in advance. This is S.O.P. for us guys who do this stuff for a living.

[r9etb]

If you're trying to recover a drive's data you don't start at image thumbnails.

So? Who says the Geeks spotted the stuff right away -- wouldn't they have been more likely to have spotted it later, while checking data integrity on a healthy disk?

The fact I brought up hex parsers should tell you I know quite a bit more about this than opening an explorer window.

And the fact that you brought up hex parsers told me that you hadn't fully thought through the scenario.

[wally_bert]

I am glad I can fix my own stuff. Every now and then, I get a little side money in bringing other units back on line. Most of those gigs are word of mouth from fellow church members. All I carry these days is the A+ certification. For a couple of years, I bought into Microsoft Certification and carried some NT/2000. Got me absolutely nowhere. I may get a few more CompTIA ones sometime.

There is a BB a few minutes away and I see the VW in my neighborhood sometimes, usually at the same houses. One of my co-workers in another building told me of a neighbor's nightmare with them. From what I could gather, setting jumpers on HDs for master and slave is a challenge. Charged a lot of money as well.

I hit BB every so often and I almost never see the same faces twice at the geek squad area.

A long while back, when I was really frustrated with where I was working, I went as far as applying for a tech job. It would have been a 5 minute drive. When BB called me up, every few words was "Customer Service Rep." I reminded the fellow about my qualifications and the response was that I would eventually work up to a tech. job.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

A smart person will know how to encrypt their private files, most will not.

Is it possible to encrypt individual files? Or must you encrypt all of your documents at once?

[DaisyCutter]

Yes, it can be done by file, folder, or full drive. Just depends on what software you are using for encryption and what options you choose.

[pepperhead]

The expectation of privacy ends where? The man was no longer in possession of his data, in essence, he handed it to someone else.

And if he had it on video tape or a magazine in the back of his car and some mechanic found it? It is still his even if it isn't in his possession.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Anyone who sends a hard drive to another person to recover the data is a fool to expect any type of privacy.

[pepperhead]

Not really but the Geek Squad is never going to have a chance to go through my personal files because I am my own geek squad.

[Zhang Fei]

Sure, if they misuse the data for personal benefit I agree. That's not the case here, however.

Identity theft is one thing. There's also the peeping tom element. Can hotel maintenance staff be charged for peeking at hotel guests in their rooms from a hidden location while fixing the vents? Sure. Can department store staff be prosecuted for peeking at customers removing their clothing in changing rooms? Absolutely. The question here is whether computer technicians working on home computers can be charged for leering into computer hard drives while carrying out repair work.

[wally_bert]

Not looking at other people's stuff is a very big thing to me as well. Either at work swapping Dells around or at people's homes, I make it a point not to look and to try to forget anything I have seen.

[CA Conservative]

However, is it ethical for Best Buy to rummage through someone's hard drive?

According to the story, the guy brought in his hard drive to have data recovered. As a computer forensic specialist who often takes on jobs doing data recovery, I can tell you that you run across a lot of personal data while searching for the data that was deleted. From an ethical persective, I make sure i tell my clients that I will respect their privacy by not revealing any personal information I may find while doing my job, and by limiting my search as much as possible while still meeting their needs. That does not extend to protecting evidence of a crime, however, and I make sure they understand that as well. If they don't like that, take it somewhere else.

Of course, it is a simple matter to encrypt your personal data, so even if your hard drive is stolen, your won't lose your private information.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

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.

I hope this guy rots in jail.

[CA Conservative]

Devils advocate sez....
Perv/perp states “wasn't on there when it left here Geeks loaded it,prove other wise”

That's a lot easier to prove than you might think - take it from me, that's part of my job.

[supercat]

That's a lot easier to prove than you might think - take it from me, that's part of my job.

Suppose someone is unfortunate enough to have his computer taken over by a botnet which eventually causes it to self-destruct after having functioned for awhile, unbeknownst to its owner, as a child porn server. How much effort would you make to determine whether such a thing had happened, or to preserve evidence that it might have done?

[CA Conservative]

Meanwhile Granny is getting robbed two blocks over while the cops “investigate” what this guy has on his computer.

You are despicable. This is not a case of cops prosecuting someone for having porn on his computer. This is about someone participating in the sexual exploitation of children! (Yes, just having the pictures makes him a participant in that exploitation.) I want the cops investigating that, thank you very much!

[SouthTexas]

In my opinion, no. If he wanted it to be secure, he should have left it at home or as in your example, kept control of his vehicle and even that is “iffy” being on public roadways.

[Caramelgal]

Sounds like a plumber coming over your house and looking your drawers.

But what if I hire a plumber to come to my house to unclog a stopped drain and the plumber discovers while doing his job and trying to unclog the drain, finds that the cause of the clog is because I’ve been trying to cram human body parts down the garbage disposal?

Should the plumber turn a blind eye and just unclog the drain with no questions asked?

[boop]

"I really haven’t figured Internet porn. How can so much obviously illegal (Kiddie porn and beastiality etc) stuff be out there and not actively investigated. And, if there is so much free stuff out there, how is anyone making any money. I saw an interview with Larry Flynt in the mid 90’s who said the internet would ruin the magazine business because there is so much free stuff that no one would pay for it."

I don't know how this guy got the kiddie porn in the first place. Seriously. If there are sites he downloaded the images from, wouldn't they be shut down and the owners prosecuted? Who in their right mind would have a business, available to the public that could lock you up for years? It would be like having a cocaine selling website.

[CA Conservative]

- Secondly, I think he will skate. The evidence was not obtained legally and the search warrant for his home was based on that evidence as well.

You're proceeding on a flawed assumption. There was nothing illegal about how the initial evidence was obtained. He was paying them to recover data from the hard drive, which means they had to look through the contents of the drive to find what was deleted.

When files are deleted, the file table records are often the first things to be overwritten, so while the data still exists, there is nothing on the drive to point out where it is. When I am doing data recovery, I have scripts that will carve out files from the unallocated space on the hard drive based on file type. So if someone wants me to recover their vacation photos, I will run script to recover all JPG files. If it also recovers child porn, you can bet my first call is to the police, and you can bet the recovery of that evidence will stand up in court.