
FBI's Use of Paid Best Buy Informants Goes Deeper Than We Knew - dsl
https://gizmodo.com/fbis-use-of-paid-best-buy-informants-goes-deeper-than-w-1823561496
======
will_brown
From a legal perspective, this is a common game of cat and mouse law
enforcement regularly uses to circumvent the 4th amendment prohibition on
unreasonable search and seizures without a warrant.

In other words if law enforcement illegally obtains evidence, that evidence
can be suppressed and all evidence as a result (fruit of the poisonous tree
doctrine). But the 4th amendment only applies to the government, so a non
government actor can otherwise illegally obtain evidence (break in to your
home and steal said evidence and turn it over to law enforcement) and you
would not be able to suppress the evidence because the government didn’t
violate your 4th amendment rights, another private citizen did.

In this case you get entities arguing geek squad is the government/acting on
behalf the government, presumably because they took some small payments, on
the other hand you have the governments arguement that geek squad is not
acting on behalf of the government and in fact the criminals signed a contract
allowing geek squad to search and seize evidence of a crime from the
computers.

It’s a well settled area of law, but it’s controversial.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _you would not be able to suppress the evidence because the government
> didn’t violate your 4th amendment rights, another private citizen did_

Could you bring a civil suit against the informant? Has anyone?

~~~
gamblor956
Yes, you could bring an invasion of privacy suit against them. I'm not aware
of anyone having done so since usually informant doesn't have the resources to
justify that sort of lawsuit.

And in the case of Best Buy, they're not acting illegally in the situations
described in the article.

------
sbierwagen
Fun fact: oil change places sell your odometer reading to your car insurer,
who may increase your rates if you drove more miles than you said you would:
[https://splinternews.com/how-car-insurance-companies-spy-
on-...](https://splinternews.com/how-car-insurance-companies-spy-on-your-
mileage-1793860442)

~~~
miketery
How is this legal for the oil shop to do?

~~~
akira2501
I'm not sure your odometer readings qualify as protected information. More
importantly, on many cars, it's in public view.

So, what's the difference from the oil shop selling this data or from the
insurance agent driving to your house and just looking through your side
window?

~~~
r00fus
Odo readings on digital displays (ie, every in-dash display for at least a
decade) require you to power-on the vehicle.

Since this isn't possible for anyone not in the car when it's locked, it's not
really "in public view".

~~~
letsgetphysITal
Absolutely correct. In this instance, you have given consent for the staff of
the service centre to power on your vehicle and even drive it around to get it
inn to the service area. They will also take several measurements of your
vehicle such as tyre tread depth, brake pad wear, fluid levels, date of
registration, and the mileage to ensure that the correct serviceable parts are
replaced for the age and service life of the vehicle. You explicitly consent
to them collecting and storing this information as part of the works carried
out on your vehicle, in keeping with their policies for how they use this
data. This policy states that they may (will) sell this data to insurers.
These are the terms of business, and if you don't agree to them you are
welcome to take your vehicle elsewhere. The others will also have the same
policy, so you'd better be able to source your own diagnostic equipment, or be
willing to drive cars made at the latest in the 90's.

~~~
gruez
>You explicitly consent to them...

it's a stretch to call signing a multi page document that you don't have time
to read "explicit consent".

~~~
kfriede
Whose fault is it that you don't have time to read? If you are being asked to
sign a document that you feel you have not had reasonable time to read, you
should not be signing that document.

~~~
gruez
That's reasonable until you realize that most people are very busy and don't
have enough time to read every contract they sign. Not to mention the amount
of peer pressure they might be under from the staff ("just sign it, it's just
standard stuff"). Plus almost all of those contracts are on a "take it or
leave it" basis, so if they do not agree, they just wasted their day and have
to reschedule with another shop, who might also have the same clause in their
contracts.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
> The image found on Rettenmaier’s hard drive was in an unallocated space,
> which typically requires forensic software to find

So say someone, known or unknown, emails you a bunch of unlawful zeros and
ones, you open it or it displays automagically. Or you accidentally type a web
address wrong and go to unlawful pictures dot com.

Anyway, you delete the file(s) and / or clear your browser cache. Your file
system deletes the entry in the allocation table (or however it works) but the
drive still has the relevant magnetic / electrical charges to recover the file
using a data recovery tool.

Are you still in possession of the unlawful zeros and ones if you've _deleted_
the files in the only manner you are aware of - assuming the average person
doesn't understand the underlying technology???

~~~
meowface
The data merely being present on your hard drive isn't enough for law
enforcement to make a strong case. They'd also need to prove how it got there,
and why.

~~~
idoh
That is not always true. Possession alone can sometimes be a crime if the
crime has strict liability. See [https://kellerlawoffices.com/child-
pornography-accidental-po...](https://kellerlawoffices.com/child-pornography-
accidental-possession-defense-possible/)

------
kevin_thibedeau
What legitimate purpose would a Best Buy employee have scanning unallocated
storage specifically looking for images? It sounds like they were deliberately
running FBI provided porn detection software. That is way beyond the scope of
what Best Buy's employees should be permitted to do.

~~~
wmf
Maybe the customer asked the Geek Squad to recover some deleted files.

~~~
dvtv75
About a decade ago, I worked at a beige box store. Someone brought in just his
hard drive, and asked me to recover all his files, as his thesis was on it.
So, I ran our recovery software (can't recall what it was) and found the drive
was completely blank. No system files, no data, no temp files, absolutely
nothing. The customer didn't seem upset or irritated at all, and thanked me,
paid his bill and left.

At the time, that puzzled me a bit, but now it occurs to me that he may just
have been making sure his data was destroyed.

~~~
darpa_escapee
Sounds like an expensive way to avoid using a hammer.

~~~
gowld
Presumably he wanted to transfer the hard drive to a 3rd part for use or
inspection.

------
beezle
Only a matter of time before we read about the FBI paid tech putting files on
the device in order to get his bounty.

~~~
ShorsHammer
You'd hope in high profile cases (or really all cases), a hash of the entire
drive could be taken upon seizure and given to a lawyer before any forensics
started.

Don't know much about forensics and maybe this already happens, but is surely
a good way for both sides to avoid unfounded accusations.

~~~
psyc
The evidence would have been planted by the civilian tech before seizure.

------
upofadown
I guess this is another example of the sort of tension caused when we make
laws intended to have law enforcement save us from ourselves.

So you work for the child porn police. You sit in your office and wait for
someone to call you ... but no one does. It turns out that the people who have
and trade child porn are not interested in talking to you. Everyone else tends
to avoid child porn. So what do you do? The very fact that you are being paid
to police child porn means that the citizens must agree that you should be
able to do your job. So that means that it is OK to start rooting around in
the normally private places that child porn is stored. So you do that.

Now the citizens are complaining that you are invading their privacy. Well OK
then. Why did was this law made if it was not intended to be enforced? Oh, it
was intended to be enforced? Whatever, this is stupid, so you continue doing
your job, but in total secrecy, now that it is obvious that that is the only
way you are going to to be able to do your job.

A good employee is often willing and able to compensate for the irrationality
of management. This is a common problem in all forms of human endeavour.

------
naringas
>“discover material that may be child pornography and we have a legal and
moral obligation to turn that material over to law enforcement.”

is this true? is there a legal obligation?

~~~
sambull
Can you imagine a plumber having a moral obligation to search through your
closet safe to find offending materials?

~~~
21
This is more like a plumber finding a human bone in the pipes.

~~~
hnaccy
This is more like the police paying plumbers if they find drugs in your house.

------
arca_vorago
Violation of the 3rd amendment if trojan/rat installed. Chilling effect
potentially violation of 1st amendment due to going public. Workaround
violation of 4th amendment.

Get a fucking warrant. It's the law. The supreme law of the land in fact.

ps. informants are the real criminals, they just want to make it seem noble
when they violate the rights of people en mass because they caught a bad guy
via fruit of the poison tree

------
TACIXAT
The original image found by Best Buy techs was in unallocated space which did
not hold up in court as justification for a warrant. Unfortunately, the
charges against him have been dropped. The accused had child pornography on 5
devices when the FBI searched his home.

------
Slansitartop
I'm thinking it might be a good idea to run a Boot & Nuke on any used computer
or used hard disk you get. Who knows what the previous owner put there?

------
diyseguy
I'm surprised they have to resort to this. I thought they already had
backdoors into our digital private lives.

