You’re a naive European! GTF outta here! J/K. Wish I lived in Europe.
Happy that pedo-creeps are getting nabbed… but it’s hard for me to believe that a reasonably intelligent lawyer couldn’t make the argument that, when a law enforcement agency urges and pays a civilian for surreptitious support, that civilian becomes an agent for the agency and, therefore, a search warrant was required. What if a conservative-leaning law entity did the same thing with the goal being to identify left-leaning thinkers?
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Nah, nah, nah. They_love_ the bill of rights. Love it to pieces. The trick, you see, is not to read it, but keep a sort of wiki version in your head that gets edited as needed.
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Everyone has an obligation to report any felony:
Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
– 18 USC 4
That said, the courts have interpreted the statute as requiring that ‘conceals and does not report’ not be redundant; some active act of concealment (which may be as simple as accepting ‘hush money’ or harbouring the fleeing felon) is required to convict of the offence; mere silence or neglect in reporting does not suffice.
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Gout Squad? What’s the FBI care about my urice acid levels?
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A legal obligation. Which is a very different thing from an ethical obligation, with which it is frequently in conflict. Particularly in the current circumstances.
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It’s quite bad that technicians purposefully search around on their customers computers. OTOH you are quit naive if you think they won’t. I’ve lost track of number of times I’ve read about computer technicians getting caught illegally copying movies/music/porn from their customers computers.
I’m glad I know how computers work. If I need to get my device serviced it will have the stock OS on it and nothing more :-). Those warranty void stickers are easily replaced most of the time :-).
Not that there’s anything illegal on it, but I prefer to keep my family holiday pictures private.
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Right you are. The law is an ass.
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I have reported this administration’s crimes to my local officials many times, but they have been very slow to act. (slow, as in giving me a shrug and saying “meh…”)
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Good for you! You wouldn’t want to be guilty of misprision of treason! (It’s a more heinous crime than misprision of felony.)
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An afterthought. GS may have a legal duty to report what they find on customers’ computers. They do not have a legal duty to search, and in fact may have a legal duty not to. There has to be a Fourth Amendment case somewhere in the government’s using a bounty system to buy the fruit of the poisoned tree - conduct searches that the government, itself, could not conduct lawfully.
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Why not trust them? They have badges and everything. (The guy on the right is obviously thinking of his FBI bonus.)
My question is, do they have similar arrangements in other countries? “The Five-Eyes Squad”?
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Does anyone think this was limited to Geek Squad?
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Are you saying that the Windows Security people in India might not be legit?
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Engaging in parallel construction to hide the source of knowledge is an admission of guilt. Fruit of the poisonous tree…
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More likely I’m suggesting that U.S. based tech companies have been a great source for information on their customers and most of them are very good at not mentioning how often they do so.
Sorry, forgot the 
I agree that if Geek Squad is doing it, then everyone else is suspect too. I also wonder how far it goes: not just search and report on the computers that come through, but placing spyware on those occasional special customers from a list that the FBI gives them?
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It’s been written elsewhere, and I agree - it’s not pornography. It’s abuse. Child abusers should be arrested, prosecuted and thrown in jail.
But I don’t know that we should be cool with Geek Squad or any other ‘trusted’ entity rifling through our data. How can we be sure the tech didn’t insert the data for the payoff? What else are they doing with the information we provide?
I work with people’s phones all the time. I NEVER open photo galleries. Even if they say it’s okay. I set the phone down and let them drive, and if I ever see anything illegal (well, except for marijuana use, obviously), I’ll report it. The gross things I’ve seen definitely outweigh the sweet things.
I’ve also learned that most people don’t clear search history in their browsers or use private/incognito browsing. Ick.
