FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad To Spy on Computer Repair Customers - Trained technicians, shared target lists..
FBI Used Best Buy's Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public
Surveillance
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2017 AT 9:25 A.M. BY R. SCOTT MOXLEY
Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive
secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy's Geek
Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement
operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly
increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when
unrelated to a customer's request for repairs.
To sidestep the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against
warrantless invasions of private property, federal prosecutors and FBI
officials have argued that Geek Squad employees accidentally find and report,
for example, potential child pornography on customers' computers without any
prodding by the government. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown
last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as "wild
speculation." But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed
inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v.
Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line.
One agency communication about Geek Squad supervisor
Justin Meade noted, "Agent assignments have been reviewed and are
appropriate for operation of this source," that the paid informant
"continues to provide valuable information on [child pornography]
matters" and has "value due to his unique or potential access to FBI
priority targets or intelligence responsive to FBI national and/or local
collection."
Other records show how Meade's job gave him
"excellent and frequent" access for "several years" to
computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered
him "underutilized" and wanted him "tasked" to search
devices "on a more consistent basis."
To enhance the Geek Squad role as a "tripwire"
for the agency, another FBI record voiced the opinion that agents should
"schedule regular meetings" with Meade "to ensure he is
reporting."
A Feb. 27, 2008, agency document memorialized plans
"seeking the training of the Geek Squad Facility technicians designed to
help them identify what type of files and/or images would necessitate a call to
the FBI."
Jeff Haydock, a Best Buy vice president, told OC Weekly
in January there has been no arrangement with the FBI. "If we discover
child pornography in the normal course of serving a computer, phone or tablet,
we have an obligation to contact law enforcement," he said, calling such
policy "the right thing to do."
But evidence demonstrates company employees routinely
snooped for the agency, contemplated "writing a software program"
specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers' computers without
probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were "under the
direction and control of the FBI."
Multiple agency memoranda underscore the coziness with
Best Buy, including one that stated, "The Louisville Division has
maintained [a] close liaison with the Greek Squad management in an effort to
glean case initiations and to support the division's Computer Intrusion and
Cyber Crime programs."
These latest revelations are the result of the work of
James D. Riddet, the San Clemente-based defense attorney representing
Rettenmaier. The doctor, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, is
fighting allegations he knowingly possessed child pornography after the Geek
Squad claimed it found an illicit image on a Hewlett Packard computer he left
with the company for repair in 2011. U.S. Department of Justice officials filed
criminal charges the following year. But the case has been in legal limbo while
U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney considers Riddet's contentions of
outrageous government conduct.
In 2016, the defense lawyer claimed the FBI made Best Buy
an unofficial wing of the agency by incentivizing Geek Squad employees to dig
through customers' computers, paying $500 each time they found evidence that
could launch criminal cases.
There are also technical weaknesses in the agency's
pursuit of Rettenmaier. Just weeks before his arrest, federal judges ruled in a
notable separate matter that child porn found on a computer's unallocated space
couldn't be used to win a possession conviction because there is almost no way
to learn who placed it there, who viewed it, or when or why it was deleted.
Cynthia Kayle, a lead agent working against Rettenmaier, knew Geek Squad
informants had found the image in unallocated space, which is only accessible
via highly specialized computer-intrusion tools the doctor didn't possess.
Agents won a magistrate judge's permission to advance the case by failing to
advise him of those facts and falsified an official time line to hide
warrantless searches, according to the defense lawyer. Brown disputes any
law-enforcement wrongdoing.
But the government's case took more blows in January.
During a pretrial hearing with obnoxious FBI agents visibly angered that I'd
alerted the public about their heavy-handed tactics, Riddet asked Carney to
take his first look at the image found on his client's device, pointing out the
picture does not depict sex or show genitals. The lawyer then questioned agent
Tracey L. Riley, who retreated from her original, case-launching stance that
the image—known as "9yoJenny"—was definitely child pornography to
"not exactly" child porn. Under questioning, experts for both the
defense and the government testified that it's not only possible for files from
the internet to land on a computer without the owner's knowledge, but that it
also frequently happens.
Riddet wants Carney to suppress the evidence and dismiss
the case. "The FBI's internal documentation of its relationship with its
informants and the correspondence between the FBI and its informants suggest a
joint venture to ferret out child porn," he told the judge on March 1.
"Accordingly, Geek Squad City (GSC) is a government entity and its
employees' searches are warrantless government searches in violation of the
Fourth Amendment. . . . There was a total of eight FBI informants in GSC's
data-recovery department at various times."
Carney faces what could be a monumental ruling with
nationwide implications. This Republican judge and former UCLA football player
has been known to ridicule law-enforcement tactics when he considers them
unethical. If he doesn't accept Riddet's stance and tolerates the government's
already documented abuses, a trial is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 6
in Santa Ana.
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