[Zhang Fei]

I should add that while I am not a lawyer, I am The InfoSec officer for my organization and by handing them his hard drive and asking them to recover the data he effectively gave them permission to look at every single bit of data on the drive.

There is an important difference. An employee working for a firm has no right to privacy with respect to the data on his work computer, which belongs to his employer. In contrast, once a customer pays for a service such as data recovery on his personal computer, there is a contract between the service provider and the customer, and the service provider can be held liable if its employees misappropriate and use confidential data for personal benefit.

What these guys did was little different from what happens when a thief runs across a rape in progress while looting a warehouse. It's laudable that he reported it, but looting warehouses is still illegal.

[TheZMan]

Good post. Thanks.

[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.

[KingNo155]

Thank You Zhang!