geek squad finds child porn on pc, people freak about privacy

[xnikki118x]

http://www.switched.com/2008/01/16/best-buys-geek-squad-finds-child-porn-on-janitors-computer-ja/

Best Buy's Geek Squad Finds Child Porn on Janitor's Computer, Janitor Arrested
Posted Jan 16th 2008 10:22AM by Terrence O'Brien
Filed under: Computers

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.

Somehow I think that
a) you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy if you're having people fiddle with your computer's HD, and
b) if they uncover anything illegal they are bound by law to report it, so sucks to be you.

WTF? How is this even a question?

[MrAngryFace]

good riddance lol

[Van Cruncheon]

yeah, normally i raise an eyebrow over intrusions into privacy, but kiddy porn just goes beyond the pale.

[MrAngryFace]

it was probably sitting in plain sight

[Eel O'Brian]

"A middle school custodian sent in a hard drive back in August of 2007 to recover lost data."

Why is there a question of privacy invasion here at all

he fucking sent the hard drive to them to dig through it, right

[CajoleJuice]

it was probably sitting in plain sight

Like Bz on TVC's computer lolz

[MrAngryFace]

lol bz

[hyp]

dude must've been desperate to recover those kiddy nudes.  fucking pervert deserved it for being a dumbass.

[Van Cruncheon]

if the geek squad idiots can find it, you're a tardo.

[Ichirou]

It's not unconstitutional.  Whoever wrote that article is a moron.  Geek Squad isn't the government, they're a private company, they don't need warrants to check your shit.  The janitor gave them the computer, they had no legal reason not to look.  If I worked at one of those places I'd probably be scouring clients' computers for porn too.

[CajoleJuice]

if the geek squad idiots can find it, you're a tardo.

what about apple geniuses or whatever those fegs are called?

[Eel O'Brian]

hey dude can you recover the data on this hard drive but no peeking

[CajoleJuice]

hey dude can you recover the data on this hard drive but no peeking

just JO no gay stuff

[BlueTsunami]

I work on family members personal PCs and I can see EVERYTHANG. Its not too hard and as MAF stated, its usually in open view (in folder structure sense)

Its not the same but it reminds of that story TVC posted about him bringing his laptop to the Apple Store and the BZ Butthole pic coming up while the dude was workin on his laptop or something

[Ichirou]

Uhm...ever come across anything weird while working on your family members' personal PCs?

[Himu]

owned.

[BlueTsunami]

Uhm...ever come across anything weird while working on your family members' personal PCs?

Nope (thank god). My male cousins would have Bang Bus stuff and every female Laptop/PC I've worked on is squeaky clean. I'm convinced women really don't watch porn.

[Ichirou]

Disappointmenton.

[Himu]

not even cheeseburger porn?

[BlueTsunami]

not even cheeseburger porn?

Nope, in that case the hunter would have to become the hunted

[Oblivion]

Wait, was this guy just downloading kiddy perform, or was he participating in it?

[Oblivion]

Both are highly illegal, so it really doesn't matter.

Wow, really? I didn't know that. Guess I haven't been watching enough Law and Order.

[MrAngryFace]

lol

[BlueTsunami]

Oblivion NO!

[flonamen]

Both are highly illegal, so it really doesn't matter.

Wow, really? I didn't know that. Guess I haven't been watching enough Law and Order.

Better destroy your hard drive pedo.

[TVC15]

I still have the bzhole pic, too.  I couldn't bring myself to destroy it.  As a mattaer of fact, I think I will send it to him on myspace right now.

[TVC15]

If I had a completely boring job like Geek Squad where I had to deal with retardos every day, you'd bet I'd be looking at their JO material.  You can learn more about a person by their turn ons than a psychologist could learn in a year.  Unless the psychologists asks for samples of your JO material.  Personally, I like Puerto Rican bitches on cherry red automobiles.  But that's just me.

[Ecrofirt]

I've got a friend who works for the local geek squad, and he was telling me they've recently added a bunch of stuff to their user agreements stating that they'll turn over PCs with child porn.

[Ecrofirt]

they've recently added a bunch of stuff to their user agreements stating that they'll turn over PCs with child porn.

So what, before it was like "Heres your HDD, we found CP but if you promise not to do it again we wont tell. Thanks for shopping at BEST BUY!"

Well, it's their way of telling you upfront that they're going to turn over your HD. Before you probably wouldn't find out until the police busted into your apartment at 4:00AM and cut off your balls.

[Mupepe]

yeah, normally i raise an eyebrow over intrusions into privacy, but kiddy porn just goes beyond the pale.

pretty much.  and if they're recovering data.  it's a little hard not to see certain things.

[Phoenix Dark]

A dumb pedo, who would have guessed. Whenever I have to get my computer checked out I make sure to delete all my porn - even the stuff I cherish.

[demi]

A dumb pedo, who would have guessed. Whenever I have to get my computer checked out I make sure to delete all my porn - even the stuff I cherish.

A dumb user, who would have guessed. Buy a flash drive and backup your shit, so you can plug and jerk whenever you want.

[recursivelyenumerable]

I worked at a computer forensics company for a while.  I liked how we'd always get in PDFs that were "password protected" using Adobe's encryption feature and 99% of the time the password would be a dictionary word that we'd find in a few seconds using our quite primitive password cracking software.  Our clients paid us $100 per document for cracking passwords too.

By the way, the leading computer forensics product (EnCase) is buggy crap, with the worst proprietary embedded scripting language ever (which I was sadly forced to spend the majority of my time working in.  our company billed clients $150 an hour for my services, and paid me $12 an hour).  It's supposed to be typesafe with automatic memory management, but I could show you about a dozen perfectly innocuous-looking expressions that segfault the application, requiring a reboot (or in one case, actually corrupting the application files so you have to reinstall).