Before You Give Your Computer to the Geek Squad

This article shines light on a serious, perhaps unstoppable police state trend -- The state apparatus working in tandem with Big Business to gather information, perform analysis, make policy and write law, enforce laws, and in most cases overreach their constitutional authority.  But the powers are out of the geeks Pandora's box and will not likely be put back anytime soon.

But here’s the rub: The Geek Squad technicians had a secret agreement with the FBI in which they were paid every time they tipped off the feds to child pornography on computers they repaired, so they reported the photo. FBI Special Agent Cynthia Kayle prepared an affidavit for a search warrant of Rettenmaier’s home, falsely saying that the image found was child pornography and not mentioning that it was found in the unallocated space or that the FBI had paid the Geek Squad employees who reported it.

     The judge issued a search warrant for all of Rettenmaier’s electronic devices, and FBI agents found hundreds of child pornography photos on his iPhone. Rettenmaier’s attorney discovered that the FBI had been paying Geek Squad employees a $500 bounty every time they discovered child pornography on a customer’s computer. The employees were identified in FBI files as “confidential human sources.” The attorney posited that because they were paid, they were de facto FBI employees and, as such, had to have a search warrant to look for the photos.

The judge disagreed, but he ruled that the search was illegal anyway because he would not have authorized the search warrant had the FBI told the truth – that there was a single image of child erotica found in the computer’s unallocated space. Federal prosecutors filed a notice of appeal but missed the deadline and dropped all charges.

.RSN: Before You Give Your Computer to the Geek Squad:



'via Blog this'