Most people who visit Best Buy do so with the intention of purchasing a brand new flat screen television. When the FBI does so, it is for child porn. That’s right; the FBI acquired an unlikely but informative ally in its fight against child abuse after a number of computers were discovered containing multiple accounts of indecent material by members of Best Buy’s tech support group, Geek Squad. 

According to documents released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization, employees were paid as informants by the FBI, rewarding them for flagging and reporting illegal content found on computers belonging to those who brought their devices in for repair. 

The organization filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the unwarranted searches of people’s devices, but not before releasing a range of records depicting the interactions that took place between Geek Squad employees and the FBI. These included “a $500 payment from the FBI to a certain Geek Squad employee, a meeting of the agency’s Cyber Working Group in one of Best Buy’s repair facilities in Kentucky and numerous calls regarding findings of suspected child pornography,” said Laurel Wamsley of NPR.

Revelations of the Geek Squad technicians sparked an integral debate following a federal judge’s decision to throw out all evidence in the case of Mark Rettenmaier, an Orange County physician who faced child pornography charges in May. This was due to alleged false and misleading statements made on an affidavit by a FBI agent to search Rettenmaier’s home. However, charges were eventually dropped on a Fourth Amendment basis, which protects a citizen or their property from unreasonable search and seizures, said Josh Hafner of USA Today. 

This also resulted in James Riddet, a California attorney, telling the Washington Post these individual employees’ actions turned the Best Buy company’s searches into federal concerns. “If they’re going to set up that network between Best Buy supervisors and FBI agents, you run the risk that Best Buy is a branch of the FBI,” he said. 

Best Buy added to this in a statement describing employee behavior to accept monetary compensation for work linked with the FBI as “very poor judgement and inconsistent with our training and policies.” Yet, in the same breath, the company defended its employees, calling their decisions to report such material “moral” and “a legal obligation” if uncovered properly while on the job.

What exactly constitutes as making this type of discovery in a correct manner in the first place? A person who willingly hands over his computer to another person to fix must at the very least assume the possibility of their privacy being invaded, and not necessarily by accident either. If not to install a new program or delete certain malware plaguing the hard drive, then definitely because some people are just nosy parasites that will dig through one’s personal files if given the opportunity, simply because they can. 

Then again, this strategy, while unconstitutional, has worked to shed light on a number of cases that otherwise would have never been considered, if not for this operation. After all, it would come as no surprise if it was later revealed that these employees quietly made an effort to seek out indecent content if it meant receiving a bonus from the FBI. This was nothing more than undercover commission work.

In the wake of the EFF’s records, all four employees have received punishment from Best Buy, and while it is unknown whether more informants are working dubiously in the shadows of other Geek Squad offices, the FBI has refused to comment on any ongoing details.