this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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FBI offered to Geek Squad a bounty on incriminating evidence found on long-term storage of computers they serviced and a lot of GS techs made those reports.
That is to say GS had no concern for privacy or fourth amendment protections during the era of rising surveillance awareness.
So I don't care if they never wake up.
Yes, a handful of BestBuy employees accepted payments from the FBI to report on CP found on a customers device. So let's all feel good about underpaid workers losing their jobs in this economy.
It's up to you, but over here it looks like an abuse of power and a violation of trust. If they can't be trusted not to look at the data they're trying to restore (except directly in the service of restoring it) they they can't be trusted with a business PC containing accounting data or legal correspondence either.
And a violation of trust in the service of law enforcement is still a violation of trust in the public. Considering how this would poison the service for business clients, I am surprised it doesn't run contrary to Best Buy terms of employment (outside of mandated reporting, which is why mandated reporting laws exist for some cases).
On the other hand AT&T will gladly spooge your phone call records to the police if they ask for it. (No warrant necessary.) And Amazon's Ring doorbell videos are sold to law enforcement whenever they want it (without permission of the doorbell owners.) But that's finally resulted in trouble, and Amazon is rethinking this service.
It is interesting that in this economy which is intentionally managed to create a shortage of jobs and to lower wages, that employees are expected to betray the public trust and even engage in illegal activity at the behest of their employers just to stay employed, and that some of us might find this as an acceptable state of affairs. And yes, when business goes sour for the company, those employees will be discarded with no additional acknowledgment for their loyalty.
Sometimes not seeing a few images is impossible if you want to be sure the restore or whatever actually worked.
I don't live there but doesn't the geek squad fix home PCs and such? Of course they shouldn't touch business PCs that is ITs job or maybe the MSPs, if your work doesn't have an IT department.
I don't leave porn or NSFW content in plain view on my PC, much less files that might be evidence for crime. I'd assume those who actually do have criminal evidence or CSAM on their PC might keep it tucked away where it's not obvious at the very least. On the other hand, I also know that Florida Man is active in all fifty states, and up to very dumb shit worthy of jail time. So they might not know better than to use CSAM as their desktop wallpaper.
I'd think finding CSAM by choosing a random media file and looking at it would be extremely rare, and if the tech restoring a drive of the worst offender would still find images more like bliss.jpg, maybe some images of last year's office Christmas party or the recent trip to Yosemite, rather than the accumulated CSAM section.
So if multiple techs at a service are finding CSAM worthy of reporting to FBI, I'd assume they're checking out the porn stash on PCs, or seeing if there are cheesecake photos buried in the My Pictures subfolders. From what I expect of humans, they hide stuff that's super private. But it's also possible that way more people than I expect are really that stupid.
The fact that FBI had a bounty with Geek Squad indicates it happens enough that GS techs routinely browse the data they restore, whether or not it's company policy, and it shows a lack of discipline in the ranks. What's more worrisome is what happens to those who keep their interpersonal sexts and cheesecake, and how tempted GS techs are to share pics with each other (typical in the surveillance sector) and post them on 4Chan. We've already had incidents like the fappening.
Repeat occurrences indicates a lack of discipline regarding privacy among Geek Squad techs. Repeat leaks to FBI, and a bounty both imply GS techs habitually sift through other people's files for their own gratification. And that's messy.