FBI, Geek Squad Had Deep Ties In Child Porn Hunt

It now appears that the FBI and Best Buy’s “Geek Squad City” technicians were more involved than previously thought in their coordinated efforts to root out purveyors of child pornography. Lawyers for a California doctor charged with possession of child porn have alleged 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 root out offending material with the agency’s guidance. In sealed documents quoted in recent court filings, a Geek Squad employee told FBI agents he “was in the process of writing a software program [that] would help identify potential images of child pornography in their computer systems” and that “FBI investigative information/techniques [were] revealed to source for operational purposes.” The current lawsuit claims that the FBI and Geek Squad techs were so simpatico, it turned the repairs into government searches, which raises a host of questions about privacy, and constitutional search and seizure rights. That would mean anything found during those sessions would be impermissible, since the Geek Squad lacked a warrant.

A recent lawsuit revealed that the FBI has developed eight “confidential human sources” inside Best Buy’s massive Geek Squad repair shop in Brooks, Ky. Over the last several years, when the technicians retrieved data from customers’ laptops, they reported instances of child pornography to the FBI. The agency paid them for the information, though some employees refused to be paid, and Best Buy says it stepped in to counsel workers on not accepting such payments. The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles denies any violations in the search. They note that, once alerted by Best Buy workers, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Dr. Mark Rettenmaier’s hard drive and home, which led to discovery of “thousands of images of child pornography,” according to U.S. attorneys Anthony Brown and Gregory Scally. The current case could throw dozens of previous convictions into question.