FBI Revealed To Have Paid Best Buy's Geek Squad For Info: Docs

The FBI has had a relationship with technicians that work for Best Buy's Geek Squad for at least 10 years and the bureau has at times paid the technicians as informants, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The documents were obtained by the EFF after the organization filed a lawsuit to understand how the FBI uses the Geek Squad employees. When EFF filed the lawsuit, the organization noted that the key question was when a private person's search becomes a government search that has Fourth Amendment implications.

The existence of a relationship between the two was first discovered after the case of a doctor in California who sent his computer for repair to the Mission Viejo Geek Squad in 2011.

The doctor, Mark Rettenmaier, agreed to have his computer searched for lost photos. Rettenmaier's computer was sent to the central repair facility in Kentucky where a technician discovered a thumbnail of a young girl on her knees wearing a choker-type collar in the "unallocated space" on the computer's hard drive. A warrant was written to search the doctor's personal computer and phone for additional photos.

The photo, which was in an unallocated space requires forensic software to find, according to EFF.

Rettenmaier's attorney argued that the Geek Squad technicians were working beyond standard data recovery by searching the unallocated space portion of the computer.

An FBI search warrant turned up hundreds of pornographic photos on the doctor's personal computer and iPhone but a judge later ruled that the original photo was not enough to be considered child pornography. The judge suppressed all evidence recovered from the doctor's home and the case was dismissed last year.

"This one image of child erotica is simply not sufficient to search Dr. Rettenmaier's entire home, the place where the protective force of the Fourth Amendment is the most powerful," U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney stated.

The documents obtained by EFF through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit include an FBI memo from September 2008 that shows the FBI's "cyber working group" attended a meeting at Best Buy's Kentucky repair facility, according to a summary of the documents by EFF. The same memo and another email show that Geek Squad employees gave FBI officials a tour of the Kentucky facility.

According to EFF, another document records a $500 payment from the FBI to a Geek Squad informant. A Best Buy spokeswoman said the company had learned that four employees may have received payment after turning over alleged child pornography to the FBI. The company said any decision to accept payment was "in very poor judgement and inconsistent with our training and policies." Three of the employees are no longer with Best Buy and fourth employee was reprimanded and reassigned.

Best Buy said Geek Squad employees discover what appears to be child pornography on customer's computers nearly 100 times a year.

"Our employees do not search for this material; they inadvertently discover it when attempting to confirm we have recovered lost customer data," Best Buy spokeswoman Paula Baldwin, said in an emailed statement.
"We have a moral and, in more than 20 states, a legal obligation to report these findings to law enforcement. We share this policy with our customers in writing before we begin any repair."

Baldwin said that as a company, Best Buy had neither sought or received training from law enforcement in how to search for child pornography.

"Our policies prohibit employees from doing anything other than what is necessary to solve the customer’s problem," the statement said. "In the wake of these allegations, we have redoubled our efforts to train employees on what to do — and not do — in these circumstances."

Another revelation from the documents is that FBI agents developed a process for investigating and prosecuting people who sent their devices to Geek Squad for repair. EFF also notes that documents reflect that employees only alert the FBI when they happen to find illegal materials during a manual search and the FBI does not direct employees to actively find illegal content. However, some evidence exists to show that Geek Squad employees made an affirmative effort to find illegal material as in the case of the California doctor, according to EFF. A financial reward would also likely encourage employees to actively seek out suspicious content, EFF says.

The EFF says the FBI has refused to confirm or deny whether they have similar relationships with other businesses or computer repair facilities despite their FOIA request. The organization says it will challenge the FBI's "stonewalling" in court later this year.

The documents obtained by the EFF were posted online and can be viewed here and here.

Ashley Ludwig contributed reporting.

Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images News/Getty Images