Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Are Geek Squad techs FBI informants?
Lawyers are questioning the apparent practice of Geek Squad technicians being FBI informants paid to search computers for illegal files, such as child pornography.
Mark Reilly of the Minneapolis—Saint Paul Business Journal:
If technicians at Richfield-based Best Buy (or anyplace else) come across child-pornography images in the course of repairing a computer, they’re obligated to contact law enforcement. And that’s what the government says happened in the case of a California physician who sent his computer to be fixed at Best Buy; a Geek Squad technician found child-porn images on the hard drive, flagged the FBI and the doctor was arrested.
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Lawyers say the FBI had eight “confidential human sources” in the Geek Squad repair center in Kentucky over four years. A judge is allowing defense lawyers to probe the FBI’s use of Best Buy technicians.
