‘FBI paid Geek Squad to search PCs and report illegal material’

Since 2007, the US FBI has allegedly paid employees of the Geek Squad, a computer repair service of electronics retailer Best Buy, to serve as informants. The repairmen dig through brought in computers in search of, for example, child pornography.

The allegation stems from the defense of American lawyer Mark Rettenmaier, writes The OC Weekly. According to documents, Geek Squad employees were paid $500 for every tip that led the service to a criminal. Rettenmaier handed his computer over to the Geek Squad for repair, which searched it for illegal content without legal basis. The employees found an image of a naked, underage girl in the hard drive space that had been marked as trash. The FBI was notified and conducted two searches of the PC without a court order and, under false pretenses, ordered a third search.

Getting a conviction against Rettenmaier, however, proves difficult. Not only does the FBI have to answer for the possibly illegal way in which the evidence was collected, but it is also not certain in the eyes of the American judiciary that Rettenmaier is actually guilty of possessing child pornography. Because the image was marked as trash and thus had to be restored with special tools, one cannot be sure that the owner of the PC knows about the presence of the image and is also responsible for it.

Best Buy states in a response that it only contacts authorities if illegal materials are discovered in the normal course of computer repair. The company would have no arrangement regarding financial compensation for the tips. If the claims of Rettenmaier’s lawyer are correct, then according to the electronics chain, that is a case of ‘poor individual judgement’. The judge has not yet pronounced a verdict in the case.