When Best Buy customers need to retrieve lost data, stores from around the US send their computer equipment to a giant Best Buy repair shop in Brooks, Kentucky, for its Geek Squad techs to work on…
…and, apparently, to search for child abuse imagery on behalf of the FBI.
Unbeknown to customers, recent federal court documents claim, the Geek Squad techs have been in a “cozy” secret relationship with the FBI, which over a few years has trained and paid them to search for child abuse imagery on computer equipment. Geek Squad employees have gone so far as to search unallocated space on hard drives – ie the place where forensics specialists use specialized software to find and retrieve deleted files.
That’s what happened to Mark Rettenmaier, a California gynaecologist, who took his HP Pavilion computer to Best Buy for repair in 2011 because it wouldn’t boot. When Geek Squad techs ran a search, they retrieved a deleted image of a young girl.
His house was subsequently searched, and Rettenmaier was indicted in November 2014 by a federal grand jury on two counts of possessing child abuse imagery.
But as the case has dragged on and documents have come to light, it’s looking like that image – and others like it – might not be permissible as evidence, given that the Geek Squad employees are accused of acting as government agents.
Defense attorney James D Riddet:
Their relationship is so cozy and so extensive that it turns searches by Best Buy into government searches. If they’re going to set up that network between Best Buy supervisors and FBI agents, you run the risk that Best Buy is a branch of the FBI.
Whether or not Geek Squad City technicians acted as government agents by accepting FBI payments, regularly speaking with FBI agents (on a first-name basis) and referring cases to them over the course of a few years, and working with them to create a program to search for abuse images, is core to determining whether their searches are permissible as evidence.
That’s because government agents need to first get a warrant, based on probable cause, to search a computer. Otherwise, Fourth Amendment issues around search and seizure come into play, as does the question of privacy violation, potentially turning Geek Squad technicians’ scouring of computers into warrantless searches by law enforcement.
According to the court documents in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier, the FBI has been paying Best Buy supervisors for the work, and management has been fully aware of it. The bureau has also been guiding Geek Squad technicians as they develop a program to find abusive content.
The court records don’t give many details on the frequency or amount of the payments, but according to documents and testimony, the FBI paid a number of Geek Squad employees $500 or $1,000 for the work.
The Geek Squad supervisor who alerted the FBI to the photo, Justin Meade, has denied being paid by the FBI, though prosecutors have acknowledged that the FBI paid Meade $500 in October 2011: two months before his co-worker found the photo.
According to a judge’s order, defense lawyers found that the FBI had cultivated eight “confidential human sources” in the Geek Squad between October 2008 and November 2012, with all of them receiving some payment.
The government is facing multiple problems with its case against Rettenmaier. As pointed out by the journalist who first wrote about the court case – Orange County Register’s R Scott Moxley – a few weeks before Rettenmaier was arrested, federal judges ruled in a separate case that child abuse images found in unallocated space couldn’t be used to win a possession conviction, since there’s almost no way to figure out who put them there, who viewed them, or when/why they were deleted.
FBI agent Cynthia Kayle knew that Geek Squad informants had found the image in unallocated space: a fact that, Riddet claims, the FBI failed to tell a magistrate judge who gave the investigation the go-ahead. Riddet is also claiming that the FBI falsified an official timeline to hide warrantless searches.
On Monday, Best Buy provided the Washington Post with a statement that denies the relationship between the FBI and the Geek Squad. Any employee(s) who got paid did it on their own accord and according to their own bad judgment, Best Buy said:
Best Buy and Geek Squad have no relationship with the FBI. From time to time, our repair agents discover material that may be [child abuse imagery] and we have a legal and moral obligation to turn that material over to law enforcement. We are proud of our policy and share it with our customers before we begin any repair.
Any circumstances in which an employee received payment from the FBI is the result of extremely poor individual judgment, is not something we tolerate and is certainly not a part of our normal business behavior.
At this point, a federal judge is allowing defense attorneys to probe the relationship between Best Buy and the FBI at a hearing in Los Angeles starting on Wednesday. A trial is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 6 in Santa Ana.
Max
Whether they where acting as government agents or not, I find it disturbing that it is apparently okay for them to look through and evaluate personal data (as long as they aren’t working for the government, and even then it’s just an issue of what they find being allowed as evidence in court, not that they where searching), when all they should be doing is fix the computer. And Best Buy seems to be proud of it. I get that they should turn anything illegal they might find during their normal work process over to law enforcement, but they shouldn’t be specifically looking. It’s like if you pay a mechanic to change your tires and he ends up strapping down your whole car to find some drugs possibly hidden somewhere.
Lisa Vaas
You sign over the data that’s on there when you hand it to Best Buy. What’s really disturbing isn’t that they’re looking at your PC, to my mind; it’s that Geek Squaders are allegedly using specialized forensics software to dig out content that had been deleted.
Max
That is part of what I am worried about, that it is normal that I have to sign over the data. I get that data might be lost in the process, and I can agree to accept that risk. But not to give them all of my data. Why would they ever need to know what data I have? If I have a Bitcoin wallet on there, can they just take my money from it legally? They should do their job and only fix what I pay them to fix, and only look at data that they have to look at to do their job. Nothing more, nothing less.
Justin
While some Geek Squad employees may look on purpose, the vast majority I assume would indeed be during the normal line of work. When I worked there years ago our store noticed questionable (child porn) file names while doing a data transfer for a customer. That was all that was needed to alert the authorities and for us to immediately cease work on the computer.
We found this doing what the customer paid us to do.
The difference is that this article is referencing Geek Squad City facilities, and not the Geek Squad stores you would find inside a local Best Buy. These are places that local stores send items to that are beyond the capability of the store to handle (mostly some warranty work and data recovery, from what I can remember – though the Geek Squad City thing was just starting by the time I was out of that job in general). The Geek Squad City locations are the ones that were apparently working with the FBI to have these specialized tools.
Mahhn
I find it disturbing on another front, that since (according to web sites) $10/hr is average pay for GS, that there may be financial motivation by the FBI to plant evidence.
Elliot Alderson
best buy or any tech, other than myself, are not ever an option to a need for data retrieval.
trust no one with your devices, trust no one period!
Dan R.
As a Cyber Security expert, I find the lack of ethics involved in Geek Squad and Best Buy Employees. These employees should have said no, and quit if the FBI Threatened them in away and if Best Buy failed to protect them. So, I agree with Mahhn on the financial motivation here to help with the FBI. Its just appalling. I am reconsidering my dealings with Best Buy now, and will likely not buy anything from them again in regards to these allegations if proven true in court. If these allegations are proven true this person should have his record clean, because his conviction was based upon tainted evidence. These FBI Agents should have their badges stripped and their employment terminated and banished from working in any law enforcement capability.
Anonymous
Geek squad agents actually use specialized tools when transferring data that prevent them from accidentally viewing the contents of the data that they are backing up. In most cases when material is identified as potentially being child pornography it is done so because of the file name.
Additionally, hard drives are only sent to geek squad city when there is a repair that can’t be done in store. One such service is data recovery. If you take all of this into consideration it becomes more obvious that it would be in the course of the service requested by the pedophiles in question that these images or videos are discovered.
Brandon
Here’s a thought… Don’t have child porn on your pc!!! I applaud the Geek Squad employees. Regardless of how the photos were found, these pedophiles are sick and need to face justice. In relation to the above post, I’ll be making more purchases from Best Buy because of this to help offset your lost business.
Steve
Here’s another thought, he’s a gynecologist, how do you know the picture wasn’t from an investigation he was involved in previously? Maybe they were legit pictures of a client that he interacted with and used as documentation for something? Given his line of work I can see specific instances where possession of these kinds of material may happen and shouldn’t be illegal. Now if he was a cross country truck driver in possession of these images, that’s different …