FBI offered to Geek Squad a bounty on incriminating evidence found on long-term storage of computers they serviced and a lot of GS techs made those reports.

That is to say GS had no concern for privacy or fourth amendment protections during the era of rising surveillance awareness.

So I don’t care if they never wake up.

Yes, a handful of BestBuy employees accepted payments from the FBI to report on CP found on a customers device. So let’s all feel good about underpaid workers losing their jobs in this economy.

It’s up to you, but over here it looks like an abuse of power and a violation of trust. If they can’t be trusted not to look at the data they’re trying to restore (except directly in the service of restoring it) they they can’t be trusted with a business PC containing accounting data or legal correspondence either.

And a violation of trust in the service of law enforcement is still a violation of trust in the public. Considering how this would poison the service for business clients, I am surprised it doesn’t run contrary to Best Buy terms of employment (outside of mandated reporting, which is why mandated reporting laws exist for some cases).

On the other hand AT&T will gladly spooge your phone call records to the police if they ask for it. (No warrant necessary.) And Amazon’s Ring doorbell videos are sold to law enforcement whenever they want it (without permission of the doorbell owners.) But that’s finally resulted in trouble, and Amazon is rethinking this service.

It is interesting that in this economy which is intentionally managed to create a shortage of jobs and to lower wages, that employees are expected to betray the public trust and even engage in illegal activity at the behest of their employers just to stay employed, and that some of us might find this as an acceptable state of affairs. And yes, when business goes sour for the company, those employees will be discarded with no additional acknowledgment for their loyalty.

It’s up to you, but over here it looks like an abuse of power and a violation of trust. If they can’t be trusted not to look at the data they’re trying to restore (except directly in the service of restoring it) they they can’t be trusted with a business PC containing accounting data or legal correspondence either.

Have you ever done data recovery? Because I have, and part of recovery includes accessing random files to ensure they were restored/recovered correctly. I don’t go digging for incriminating shit, but I do have to make sure the data is readable before I hand it over to the client.

And you can be goddamned sure that if I see CSAM on your machine I’m turning you over to the police and I’ll gladly forego payment to see your ass in bracelets.i have professional ethics, but those don’t include protection of child abusers.