The FBI Paid Geek Squad Employees as Informants

The FBI has been in cahoots with Best Buy’s Geek Squad for at least the past decade, new documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit reveal.

An FBI memo obtained by the nonprofit digital rights group reveals that Best Buy in September 2008 hosted a meeting of the law enforcement agency’s Cyber Working Group at a Geek Squad repair facility in Kentucky. The memo indicates that the local FBI division “has maintained close liaison with the Geek Squad’s management in an effort to glean case initiations and to support the division’s Computer Intrusion and Cyber Crime programs.”

Revelations about the FBI’s relationship with Best Buy first surfaced last year during the prosecution of Mark Rettenmaier, a California doctor who was charged with possession of child porn after bringing his computer to Geek Squad for a repair. The relationship, according to the EFF, “potentially circumvents computer owners’ Fourth Amendment rights.”

In a Wednesday statement to PCMag, Best Buy said that four of its Geek Squad employees “may have” received payment by the FBI after turning over alleged child porn to the agency.

“Any decision to accept payment was in very poor judgement and inconsistent with our training and policies,” Best Buy wrote. “Three of these employees are no longer with the company and the fourth has been reprimanded and reassigned.”

The FBI declined to comment when contacted by PCMag.

Best Buy said its Geek Squad repair employees don’t specifically search for child porn on people’s machines, but “inadvertently discover it” nearly 100 times a year.

“We have a moral and, in more than 20 states, a legal obligation to report these findings to law enforcement,” the company wrote. “We share this policy with our customers in writing before we begin any repair.”

Best Buy went on to say that it has “not 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 company wrote. “In the wake of these allegations, we have redoubled our efforts to train employees on what to do — and not do — in these circumstances.”

Documents obtained by the EFF, however, indicate that “Geek Squad employees did make an affirmative effort to identify illegal material,” the EFF wrote in a blog post.

“For example, the image found on Rettenmaier’s hard drive was in an unallocated space, which typically requires forensic software to find,” the EFF wrote. “Geek Squad employees were financially rewarded for finding child pornography. Such a bounty would likely encourage Geek Squad employees to actively sweep for suspicious content.”

The EFF is currently seeking additional documents from the FBI to find out whether the agency has similar relationships with other computer repair businesses.