Cybersecurity » Techies Viewing Recovered Customer Data Were Gov’t Informants

Techies Viewing Recovered Customer Data Were Gov’t Informants

January 13, 2017

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Some technicians working at a Best Buy Geek Squad facility in Brooks, KY, were doubling as part-time paid informants for the FBI. The arrangement came to light as part of a child pornography case against a physician in federal court in Los Angeles. It’s legal for Best Buy technicians to search computers, and customers are said to authorize it, says this article in the Washington Post, but they note the question arises as to whether the fact a government law enforcement agency is involved will raise a Fourth Amendment issue. A spokesman for Best Buy said that as a matter of policy technicians who discover material that “may be child pornography” are obligated to turn it over to law enforcement authorities, but that the company had no relationship with the FBI and that “circumstances in which an employee received payment from the FBI is the result of extremely poor individual judgment.”

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