You dont think they spend time in Jail before bail? And yes, breastfeeding is less.
So, public shame, possible loss of job, large legal fees, overnite jail time and bail fees.
Wanna risk that?
Just because they didnt get convicted doesnt mean there werent serious repercussions.
And that was merely the first hit on Google, there were pages.
Sure, and after the perp walk, getting fired, overnite stay in jail, large bail bond fee, and a huge legal fee, you’d *almost certainly *end up exonerated. :rolleyes:
Nobody went to jail. It wasn’t for “for less”.
No, I don’t want to risk it and yes it seems the police overreacted in that case. Dont see a reason to bullshit about it though.
When they handcuff you and put you** IN JAIL *overnite until you get bailed out, indeed, you went to jail. No one went to prison. *
But yes, the risk of *conviction *is tiny. The other risks are not worth taking.
When most people say “you could go to jail for that” they mean being imprisoned. Fyi.
What risk taking are you talking about? If you mean allowing the FBI to set up a network of informants to spy on regular people hoping for a crime, I agree that’s not a good way to go. Otherwise, I don’t know what you mean.
As explained by the Supreme Court in Horton v. California, the plain view exception is triggered when an observer, acting legally, arrives at a place from which the contraband may be plainly seen and its incriminating character is immediately apparent.
In this case, the tech was restoring lost data from a hard drive at the behest of the customer. This requires searching for data. That means the tech starts out legally searching for data, then encounters data with an immediately apparent incriminating character.
Where are you getting that from? I don’t see anything in the linked article about immediately apparent incriminating character. From what I read, the tech could have been anywhere on the snoopy scale.
This part is not clear. We would have to see if using the forensic tools to recover data from the unallocated space is a standard practice of Best Buy, or of hard drive restores in general. The comments in the text lead me to believe it is not.
Absolutely.
Although Best Buy’s website description of the recovery service they provide says, “If data recovery is necessary, the drive will be shipped to the Data Recovery Division at Geek Squad City for a full forensic diagnostic of the drive and integrity of the data.” This suggests to me that it is a standard practice. But if it should become clear that the techs were not doing what they normally do, the FBI’s claim is weakened.
That image’s immediately apparent incriminating character seems clear, at least for the purposes of probable cause. It was described in the AUSA’s warrant application as “…a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck.” In what specific way do you believe it’s not?
I am not questioning whether the picture was incriminating, I was questioning your matter of fact way of describing it as though the GeekSquad just happened upon the picture. You beg the question. There is no reason for us to assume that while recovering data they get an automatic preview of every picture file recovered.
I suppose a leftover cache pic of when someone image-searched **(DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF YOU FOOL!!) **the original cover pic for the Scorpions’ Virgin Killer album **(DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF YOU FOOL!!) **may have been seen so often it does not count as incriminating. Unless there’s 20 Gigs of other nekkid 11 year olds in the drive 
ISTM that the problem is the market demand would lean in the direction of “Check them myself? I’m paying YOU nerds!.”(*)
Hmmm… together with the prior disclaimer it does suggest that. But you all are right, the issue becomes if this thorough inspection of even the files in unallocated space(**) was improper conduct on the part of the techs or par for the course. (One would imagine that depending on the nature of the crash, it may not be effective to limit yourself to restoring allocated space.)
Though in practical everyday terms, Lotsa Luck getting a kidpr0n case tossed on these grounds, a court that so ruled would have to gird themselves for a public opinion shitstorm. Plus even if so, dude’s already as good as ruined, by now his counsel is fighting just to prevent him ending up at the mercy of the prison lifers.
Unless their standard QC practice is to check everything recoverable was recovered. But even if it can be done with not necessarily every file being opened, people would expect at the very least a QC sampling to make sure the recovery’s working(), and if it happens to not be your lucky day…
( No, seriously, think the average PC user that uses Geek Squad. “Out of respect for your privacy we did not look, check them yourselves” is not a succesful business strategy towards that consumer. S/He feels s/he’s paying for Geek Squad so s/he does not have to rummage through her/is files to see what survived.)
(** And just as with backups, many people will not secure-wipe their unallocated space. They may have their browsers set to dump the cache and page file after certain point X and very so often delete their Recycle Bin/Trashcan but will have let 6 months or more go w/o a backup OR a secure-wipe and then comes a crash that takes vital data… with leftover file-shrapnel all over the place. )
Sure there’s a reason. Encase creates thumbnails automatically for recovered graphic images, to choose a widely-used recovery tool as an example.
I don’t see Encase mentioned in the article either. Even if we accept a forensic analysis is standard Geek Squad practice when recovering a disk there’s no reason to assume they are using software that “has maintained its reputation as the gold standard in criminal investigations” since presumably, they generally aren’t doing criminal investigations.
Bricker, would you agree that a Best Buy technician who has an ongoing agreement with the FBI or any law enforcement agency is no longer a “private actor” for Fourth Amendment purposes? I find the fact that Meade was giving the FBI information about his facility’s discovery of child pornography in general…
…and his apparent lie about whether he was a paid informant very disturbing, and I’m surprised you don’t.
Sure, as a general matter no “search” occurs when you turn over your belongings to third parties. But there is a clear difference between a garbage collector who finds cocaine in your trash while picking up your trash, and one who finds cocaine in your trash while being paid to look for it by the DEA.
I worked extensively with the FBI when my then-current employer was hacked. Over about a 6 month period. I provided numerous statements, plenty of system logs, and so on. At one point I had a meeting with agents and a US attorney and they gave me a sandwich. Does that make me a paid informant? (Personally I consider myself a witness.)
Of course not. You were a party-witness associated with an existing investigation, and not actually paid.
True. I did explicitly mention that (“I’m not making a case about the law here…”) when I started discussing this aspect, although I haven’t repeated the disclaimer in followup posts.
I don’t necessarily think that what Best Buy’s employees did is or should be illegal, although I think there are major issues (that others have brought up) involved in them accepting money from the FBI.
If I, in the course of my work, found evidence of child porn, I’d report it too. But if my work involved me regularly interacting with people’s private data, I ought to be ethically bound to do what I can to see as little of it as possible.
Could be. I imagine you could phrase the issue in a way that would clue people in to this, talking about the security of their email and financial records (without mentioning porn), but even if you cant, plenty of professions have ethical codes that mean they can’t always do exactly what the customer wants. People who work with the personal computers of others ought to have one too. What’s on the average person’s computer is vastly more incriminating/embarrassing than what the average person tells their doctor or priest. It’s just that our legal and social framework is slow to react to the rapid change in technology and how its used.
Hard drives are commonly refurbished and re-used. Any information in un-allocated space could actually “belong” to a previous owner.