
Geek Squad staff 'paid by FBI' to flag illegal imagery - alexcroox
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43315176?ocid=socialflow_twitter
======
jaclaz
Recent discussion (different article, same topic):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16533403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16533403)

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mfoy_
I'd say the linked item actually has the better article as it discusses some
of the issues with this.

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yanslookup
I think people are missing the issue here. Of course everyone agrees with a
see something say something policy. The issue is that they were getting paid
to report crime.

Given that these people are not trained law enforcement, are typically low
paid, and there is no chain of custody of the equipment whatsoever there is an
incentive and real opportunity here to make crime in order to cash in.

~~~
petertodd
Bingo.

Digital evidence is really easy to fake, often leaves little if any evidence
that it was planted, and the prosecutors don't have much incentive to look for
evidence to determine whether the digital evidence was planted or not.

A good analogy is imagine if dry cleaners were paid by the FBI every time they
found a dime bag accidentally left in someone's pocket. How many of those dime
bags do you think would get planted by the employees to collect their $500
reward?

~~~
Asooka
As long as the reward is less than the cost of the bag, none. Of course,
digital images cost nothing, so there isn't a right price to set. I suppose
they could do something like, if one person keeps "finding" the same images,
then maybe look into it.

~~~
_jal
Or, you know, you could have law enforcement maybe not turn the rest of
society in to paid snitches. Not everyone wishes to live in a reimplementation
of East Germany.

I realize that for many people 'pedophile' is the root password to the
Constitution (not my line), but the existence of horrible people should not be
an excuse to elevate authoritarians.

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nsnick
This is a classic example of the cobra effect where Geek Squad employees are
incentivized to plant child pornography on customers computers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The cost of being caught is incredibly high for the employee - they have to
illegally download and store, and distribute, the illegal imagery! and commit
fraud, and probably commit contempt of court, and be prepared for the fallout
from the falsely accused and their family.

There's undoubtedly far easier ways for an corrupt employee to get extra cash
that don't risk getting a conviction for sexual offences and for
fraud/deception.

Moreover, your work colleagues have an incentive to report you too.

I'm not going to say no-one would ever, but the level of short-sighted
stupidity needed is very very high.

~~~
vorpalhex
This seems a trivial crime to commit. Use an unmonitored public computer to
download your illegal imagery to a USB drive, write a little autorun script to
copy it half-randomly around and change some names, and boom - done.

Sure there's some chance of the employee being caught, but more than likely
they won't be. Plus, why would your work colleagues report you (once, for
$500) when they can make their own $500 repeatedly?

Remember, and this is the important part - criminals are not typically
longterm thinkers. They don't think about retirement, medical expenses, or
even next week. They're simply interested in obtaining the thing they want
today and believe, reasonably or not, that they can get away with it.

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powvans
If you discover child porn in the course of repairing someone’s computer, you
should report it. The problem is getting paid to actively search for it. That
sets up some perverse incentives. While it’s unlikely that an enterprising
Geek Squader would want to run afoul of the FBI, it’s a very bad idea to
create a profit motive for someone to plant this sort of evidence.

I wonder about Best Buy’s position in this? They aren’t exactly alienating the
non-pedophile public with this activity and aren’t going to lose business over
it. That said, deputizing your employees is sort of odd.

~~~
nsnick
I am pretty sure they are alienating a lot of their customers by having their
employees snoop on their customers' computers. The argument you are making is
"if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" which is ridiculous.

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Cthulhu_
There's a lot of freedoms being taken when it concerns child porn or terrorism
though.

~~~
FrozenTuna
Its also different whenever you physically hand it over to someone.

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snarf21
I don't think they should be paid but I don't see it much different than
seeing someone assault someone in the store. Again, not a full scan trying to
find violations but witnessing a crime as part of your job. A law was broke so
call the police. I personally think you lose your rights around search and
privacy when you publicly give it to someone else. Even therapists and
psychiatrists are allowed to break privacy when the patient is openly
admitting to planning to assault/kill someone else. This is obviously a
different seriousness but with a therapist there _is_ an expectation of
complete privacy.

~~~
nsnick
It is completely different because the Geek Squad employee has a fiduciary
responsibility to the customer who left their computer for repair.

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FrozenTuna
And that customer broke that responsibility first when giving the Geek Squad
employee illegal materials.

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nsnick
I don't think you understand what a fiduciary responsibility is.

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Waterluvian
I get it. When you're FBI and your life is having to look at child porn,
you've got plenty of reasons to be super motivated to catch these people with
whatever means necessary. And with something as awful as child exploitation, a
reasonable person can come to genuinely believe that the ends justifies the
means.

It's still manifestly wrong, but I get it.

~~~
NutriSugar
My concerns are the other issues.

What happens when children are stripped from families for normal images?

What happens when teens are caught for normal behavior?

What happens when people are put in prison over drawings?

All three of these have already happened.

And what happens when this gets automated and large entities like the
RIAA/MPAA get other illegal content added to these searches?

~~~
mfoy_
The first three are policy / legislation issues. Rather than focus on the FBI
/ GeekSquad / See-something-say-something bits, take issue with what
constitutes "illegal imagery".

Basically, all your concerns are about the scope of this, not the essence of
it.

~~~
kakarot
> Basically, all your concerns are about the scope of this, not the essence of
> it.

Congratulations, you've discovered the Slippery Slope argument.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope)

~~~
mfoy_
I think you replied to the wrong person.

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ebbv
I think the headline is kinda missing the point here; the issue is not the
flagging of illegal images once found, the issue is snooping around people's
computers that were left for repairs deliberately looking for illegal images
and the violation of trust there.

My computer doesn't have anything illegal on it, that doesn't mean I want a
Geek Squad employee looking around at what is there. And if they know there's
a payday from the FBI if they find something, you bet they are going to look
around. Then what happens when they find something not illegal but that they
like; pictures of my wife or friends and family at the beach or something.

This is really not acceptable on multiple levels.

~~~
tbyehl
I think most commenters are over-analyzing. Deliberately looking for evidence
of crime is high effort with low probability of being rewarded. Planting
evidence of a crime is very high risk relative to the reward.

People with access to someone else's computer snoop for their own
entertainment, because they can. The reward is low but the probability of
finding _something_ entertaining is high and the risk is practically non-
existent.

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JohnStudio
define "illegal" imagery .. two steps to avoid 1337 h@x0rs is to not send in a
personal hard drive in the first place. Ethics at the $10/h counter is about
as transparent as this glass of water I'm drinking. Morality, especially when
a smart 18 year old, sees cash -> a few bits of planted evidence -> huge pay
day (relative to what they know as such) can be a lot easier to overcome
thanks to money.

I replace the storage device on my Apple laptops immediately, and store it in
case a unit dies. Warranty services outside of the care of a local shop - mail
in stuff - is also a big no-no. Nobody looking at my 4th Amendment rights.

Call me paranoid, but if you are remotely ignorant to the fact that snooping
teenagers aren't looking through your stuff ... think again. It's just common
sense to just replace the drive as a matter of privacy.

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chasd00
It should cost Best Buy a $100 processing fee to report child porn. That's a
small price to pay to catch a criminal but too high to go actively snooping
through hard drives.

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sathackr
Previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16533403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16533403)

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asow92
Before I started programming in College, I worked as a Geek Squad "Counter
Intelligence Agent" and this is something that definitely came up in
conversations with veteran employees. State police were contacted and arrests
were made.

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erikb
Dear FBI, I'm happy to join the effort in my spare time. You probably have my
Whatsapp and bank account already, so let's just make it happen.

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SirFatty
As if I needed another reason not to shop as Best buy.

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Sevii
Would you hire geek squad if you knew they were paid to look through your
photos for the FBI?

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dragonwriter
I wouldn't hire Geek Squad even if I didn't know that. (And even if I didn't
know about the stories of their staff trolling through private data long
before the FBI started paying them to.)

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ericfrederich
When my son was circumcised the pediatric urologist said if we had any
concerns we could text a picture of it to him. I thought that sounded weird,
but could see how this is totally legitimate doctor trying to save himself
time and save ourselves an appointment, and money for an office visit.

~~~
lampenrad
Genital mutalation of a child is fine (assuming here it wasn‘t a medical
necessity. Maybe it was in this case, hence why I didn‘t downvote), but taking
a completely non-sexual photograph of a healing wound is considered weird.
Sums up modern America pretty well.

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quietbritishjim
If I'm an electrician on call-out to someone's home and, totally by accident,
I discover someone tied up in their basement, should I report it to the
police?

If I'm repairing someone's computer at their request and, totally by accident,
I discover illegal material on it, should I report it to the police?

It seems pretty straightforward to me that you can, and in fact you really
ought to. Maybe you disagree with what counts as "illegal" (like if didn't
report finding pot in someone's home in a country where it's illegal) but
that's a different discussion from whether this is generally reasonable
behaviour.

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
These people weren't being paid to find things "by accident" (or at least they
weren't when this was first reported a year or two ago). They were being paid
to look for what they suspected were crimes. This is more akin to an
electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen, seeing a locked basement
door, picking the lock, and rifling through the boxes in the basement to find
illicit materials.

This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone
unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it
could be done without a warrant. The problem is that the FBI both ordered and
paid these people to do it, and I personally don't see a difference between
that and having an FBI agent take your machine from you and perform the search
themselves. There's also the ethical problems for Best Buy, plus the incentive
(payment) to create a crime (copy illicit materials or visit sites that would
make it look like the person was going to do something illegal) and report it.

~~~
snuxoll
> This is more akin to an electrician being called in to rewire the kitchen,
> seeing a locked basement door, picking the lock, and rifling through the
> boxes in the basement to find illicit materials.

Which still produces admissible evidence. Government agents are bound by the
constitution when it comes to searches, private individuals are not. There can
be other clauses in a state's constitution that enshrine an expectation of
privacy that may be usable to dismiss such evidence, but as far as federal law
and the US constitution is concerned a private individual can break a window
into your house, find illicit materials, report them to the police and some
time later you are sitting in court defending yourself.

> This was the FBI trying to skirt around the 4th amendment by having someone
> unrelated to the FBI do the seizure and search bit of investigating, so it
> could be done without a warrant.

Yup, and now that there's evidence such reports are being rewarded they
screwed that up. If a government employee requests or incentivizes you to
perform a search on their behalf you become an agent of the government for the
purposes of that search, 4th amendment applies and if such activity is
discovered the evidence is inadmissible. Incredibly stupid move of the FBI.

