Best Buy Co Inc’s (NYSE: BBY ) It has been reported that the FBI has using Geek Squad to spy on the devices of its customers and you could have been one of them.
As if you needed more reasons to stay away from Geek Squad, it now has been revealed that the FBI paid employees from the Geek Squad to unknowingly spy on your personal information and devices for illegal activity.
The EFF believes that using repair technicians to unveil evidence of criminal behavior may be in violation of people’s constitutional rights.
“We have a moral and, in more than 20 states, a legal obligation to report these findings to law enforcement,” Best Buy said in a statement. “We share this policy with our customers in writing before we begin any repair. Read more here
The EFF found that the bureau’s relationship with Geek Squad workers has existed for at least a decade as an FBI memo from 2008 describes a meeting between the Best Buy workers and the FBI’s “Cyber Working Group” at Best Buy’s Kentucky repair facility.
This isn’t a relationship that just started and customers should be very concerned about taking their computers to Best Buy for fear of any breach of personal privacy.
There “This is not something that just happened, It was known throughout the chain of command within the FBI of the Louisville office,” Clay said, “That implies, to me, this was more than an occasional happenstance, this was something that was ongoing and there was a pattern involved.” Via whas11.com
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New documents reveal FBI paid Geek Squad repair staff as informants
FBI used Best Buy’s Geek Squad as confidential informants, FOIA docs show
#FBI MADE BEST BUY'S GEEK SQUAD PAID INFORMANTS |..who routinely searched customers computers for "illegal" material https://t.co/x9VSXk1HLl pic.twitter.com/iByozldijm
— aHEMagain❌ (@aHEM_again) March 26, 2017
If you’ve ever taken your desktop computer, tablet or phone to a Best Buy outlet and have had the Geek Squad troubleshoot with you, you may be having second thoughts about their services these days. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has obtained … EFF: FBI used Best Buy Geek Squad to extract evidence for prosecutions
If the FBI paid Geek Squad employees to be informants, they should be seen as agents of the government who circumvented the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement https://t.co/PHoY79ClbU
— EFF (@EFF) March 11, 2018
In certain cases, agents would obtain a search warrant. In one case, the FBI paid a Geek Squad employee $500 for turning over child abuse images and used him as an informant in the case. EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act last year to investigate how … The FBI Paid Geek Squad Employees To Turn Over Illegal Content Found On Customers’ Devices
