FBI Infiltrated BestBuy GeekSquad to Infiltrate YOU

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Mar 12 14:49:40 PDT 2017


http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-used-best-buys-geek-squad-to-increase-secret-public-surveillance-7950030
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/if-a-best-buy-technician-is-a-paid-fbi-informant-are-his-computer-searches-legal/2017/01/09/f56028b4-d442-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841504
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13363669

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. 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...
Other records show how [Geek Squad supervisor Justin] 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"... 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."
"The end-run around the Constitution can be summed up in one
terrifying word: Outsourcing. ... When the government trains,
directs, and pays a "private citizen", that person becomes an agent
of the government.  This makes those persons subject to the same
rules; probable cause, warrants, oath or affirmation. ... The
admissibility of evidence found by a private citizen usually turns
on the governments share of the search. In other words, how involved
was the government? While cases where the government ordered or
paid a citizen to conduct the search are fairly straightforward,
others aren’t. In determining whether to admit the evidence in
question, courts consider questions like: whether the government
initiated the search how much control the government had over the
private citizen who conducted the search, and what the private
citizen’s purpose was in conducting the search. And what was the
FBI doing? Oh yeah... paying them..training them...giving them lists
of people to search"


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