Thursday, March 08, 2018

I don't get it.

So, via this piece at Ars Technica, we learn that the FBI (or at least certain of its field offices) has a pretty cozy relationship with Best Buy, via the latter's Geek Squad service department.

Apparently if the FBI suspects someone of having some kiddie porn on their machine and can't quite get a warrant, they just ask the Geek Squad guys about it when dude brings his computer in for service.

See, since you just handed the computer over to the dudes at Geek Squad and asked them to go rooting around in it, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy for all the smut on D:/shorteyes, you nasty bastard. Or at least this is how the courts have ruled thus far.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is as FROM MAH COLD DEAD HANDS about zeroes and ones as Charlton Heston was about muzzleloading rifles, has filed a FOIA suit to see what, if any, kind of Fourth Amendment-violatin' shenanigans are afoot here.

I, myself, have not really dug in far enough to have an opinion. I know that if you'd brought film with kiddie porn in to the one-hour photo lab where I worked back in the day, we'd have called the po-po. Happened at least once that I recollect.

I do have one question, though... Who in their right mind drops off a hard drive full of hard time with the local rent-a-neckbeards? That is, to use an apt term, criminally stupid.
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