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Thursday, January 12, 2017

FBI Paid Multiple Best Buy Employees After Finding Illegal Content On Computers

As we told you last spring, lawyers for a California doctor accused of possessing child pornography claimed that the FBI had paid a Best Buy employee as an informant. Recently released court documents confirm that multiple Best Buy/Geek Squad staffers received money from the agency after telling the FBI about finding illegal content on customers’ devices. 

11 comments:

lmclain said...

So....American businesses (you think the Geek Squad is the ONLY one???) now secretly spy and investigate their paying customers?
Was there an extra charge for informing on customers?
Further, knowing the FBI, the CIA, Homeland security, ALL state police agencies, and finally, the king of all, the NSA, can access your computer at any time they like (and they really like it a lot), why do these Nazi's need citizens to offer "services" (incuding the favorite "search without warrant") that include secret searches of private property?
And no, there is no pornography on my computer. But there IS a gun next to it. Would they report that, too, and would the police be bad-ass enough to come and get it if the Geek squad told them it was there and they weren't sure if it was registered??
What else are they "reporting"?

Anonymous said...

Imclain: you are wasting your breath, these people being the citizens of the US are either to damn stupid to see and understand what you just said, or they give two shits becasue they live in a fantasy world where they still think they are not being followed or monitored or spied on... Even though, everyone tells them it is so, the own agency basically admits to it and all the surrounding evidence and they still can't see it... That is why people commit crimes in front of a camera and think nothing will happen...

You can't fix Stupid!!!!!! and these people on SBY and the USA are just that, stupid!!!!

Anonymous said...

So much for the Geek Squad..Time for them to go and Best Buy with them

Anonymous said...

They have been doing this for many years , over 2000 years , but now there are many Judas people.

Anonymous said...

Lol Geek Squad is one of the most unqualified bunch of idiots out there. Its a shame Tax payer money was spent and goes to show how bad the FBI's judgement can be if they rely on such novices.

Geek Squad "Tech" do not require any formal training and they are not allowed by Best Buy to do any real technical work. If a PC has a virus they run a program provided by Best buy (Often its the antivirus that they have a current partnership with) and if that doesn't fix it they can't go into the PC and try and remove it with other tools or just plain skill. They instead will call you and tell you your PC needs to be reformatted and reinstalled and your data must be backed up.

Really most people could run the program themselves. It doesn't take any skill to run a program from CD or a USB Flash drive. They really are not Techs and taking their advice for anything is often a bit of a risk as most of the time they know very little beyond what Best buy has to offer.

Rebel Without a Clue said...

I recommend finding a good tech guy, that you trust, who can do work for you should your computer become compromised.

I can recall over my last 20+ years in IT seeing a lot of porn (no child porn thankfully) on customer machines and never saying a word about it since what they do on their machines is their business. On one occasion I did work on a machine that I figured out was stolen because it was the same machine that I worked on for a previous employer a year before. I contacted my old boss and inquired about it and sure enough, it was never accounted for in the sales receipts. I didn't call the cops, instead, I let the old boss and the new "owner" work it out. The only reason that I remembered it was because it had an odd size partition on it and I had said something to a coworker about redoing it. Now that I think about it, that machine had porn on it too.

Anonymous said...

imclain, quit acting like a big man you 5'6 nothing. if someone has child porn on their computer, who cares how the police find out about it? good for the best buy employees for saying something! go sell some more furniture fool.

lmclain said...

11:05 (mike) You got my height wrong. And my job, too.
And stop with the Gestapo reasoning. If you can....
And use your name, little boy, when you call out someone. Otherwise, you just look like a tiny spoiled girlie boy.

Anonymous said...

Why are y'all annoyed at this? It's child pornography for God's sake! I don't care who uncovers it I'm just glad it's found so people are held accountable for their involvement. The FBI is more than welcome to search all of my electronics at any time because I'm not a criminal. I detest child predators as anyone should!

lmclain said...

So, in your tiny mind, if YOU aren't "doing anything wrong", then you are perfectly willing -- HAPPILY -- to surrender EVERYONE ELSE'S rights, huh?
The end does not justify the means. And, the means in this case is private citizens secretly spying on private citizens (and reporting to the police).
Any one of you goofs think THAT will end well???

I'll volunteer to cut the hands off anyone involved in child pornography, but having the police skirt the laws they are supposed to obey by paying citizens to spy sounds too much like China to me.
If you like the way China, Russia, & North Korea treat their citizens, then move there.
The rope that you so eagerly give them will be the same rope used to hang you.
Keep cheering. Orwell is SO PROUD of you!!

Anonymous said...

lmclain, again, youre an idiot. no ones rights were violated except the children in the photos. this piece of crap brought a computer to best buy to get serviced, and by his own stupidity, got caught. he knew there was illegal items on the computer, but he gave it to a third party to work on. Key word being willingly "gave". i do agree with you that the government often does overstep its bounds, but most of the time i just think youre a moron. and again, go sell some furniture! (ok, ill give you 5'08 or maybe 5'09, but youre still a tiny little fellow! well below the average height of a man).