Technicians for Best Buy’s “Geek Squad City” computer repair facility had a long, close relationship with the FBI in “a joint venture to ferret out child porn,” according to claims in new federal court documents, which also note that Best Buy’s management “was aware that its supervisory personnel were being paid by the FBI” and that its technicians were developing a program to find child pornography with the FBI’s guidance.
The allegations are made by lawyers for a California doctor charged with possessing child pornography, after the doctor took his computer to a Best Buy store for repair. Computers which require data recovery are typically sent from Best Buy stores around the country to a central Geek Squad City facility in Brooks, Ky., and customers consent to having their computers searched — and turned over to authorities if child porn is found.
While there is no question that Geek Squad technicians have notified authorities after finding child porn, the new court documents assert that there is a deeper relationship than has previously been revealed between the company and federal authorities. The court is now considering the extent of that relationship and whether it is grounds to throw out a pending child porn case, though it could also have ramifications for the dozens of cases which originate from the Kentucky facility annually.
[If a Best Buy technician is a paid FBI informant, are his computer searches legal?]
Defense lawyers for the doctor argue that Geek Squad City’s technicians acted as government agents by receiving payments from the FBI, regularly speaking with and referring cases to the FBI, and creating a program to search for child porn. If a government agent wants to search a computer, they need a warrant, and the case has raised issues of privacy invasion and violation of constitutional search and seizure rights.
Both Best Buy and the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles deny any violations in the search of surgeon Mark Rettenmaier’s hard drive, for which the FBI obtained a warrant after being contacted by a Geek Squad supervisor. That in turn led to a warrant and search of Rettenmaier’s home, which led to the discovery of “thousands of images of child pornography,” according to a reply brief by assistant U.S. attorneys Anthony Brown and Gregory Scally.
“The Fourth Amendment is offended by none of this,” the federal prosecutors wrote. “Nothing unreasonable occurred here, and there was no arbitrary invasion of anyone’s privacy by governmental officials…and there’s not a shred of evidence that anyone at the FBI directed anyone at Geek Squad City to detect and locate child pornography for the purpose of reporting it to the FBI.” ..Continued.. by Tom Jackman
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