"Geek Squad" and the FBI

According to a March 6, 2018 article by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Best Buy's "Geek Squad" employees are working as paid informants for the FBI.

The FBI uses Geek Squad employees to flag illegal material when people pay Best Buy to repair their computers. According to documents obtained by the EFF as part of a FOIA request "Best Buy officials have enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the agency for at least 10 years."

While Best Buy insists their employees are prohibited from searching customer devices beyond "what is necessary to solve the customer’s problem," EFF points that some Geek Squad workers were incentivized [paid] by law enforcement to gather further information.

FBI agents would come and confiscate any device on which technicians found illegal content, take it to a field office, and, in some cases, obtain a warrant to search the device. Several informants received payments from $500 to $1000 for their cooperation.

Critics have raised possible Fourth Amendment issues with this unusual practice. Best Buy is paid to search a customer's devices for the purpose of repair, but the FBI is supposed to obtain a warrant to do so. Providing a monetary incentive to employees would likely encourage them to perform searches that are unnecessary to the repair.  The FBI has been paying the Best Buy Geek Squad technicians to conduct warrantless searches of customer's computers, and then to notify the FBI if potential illegal content is found.

Fox News Digital - The FBI paid Geek Squad employees as informants (YouTube Video)


* Added in response to a comment: Computer technicians are specifically named as mandatory reporters in many states. This is no surprise to anyone, and it has been this way for many years (here is an article from 2008 that talks about this requirement). Everyone would agree that if you come across crimes against children during the course of your job, you should report it. What the EFF's (and many others') concern seems to be isn't that Geek Squad technicians found child pornography and reported it - they are required to do so - rather that the FBI recruited these technicians to conduct warrantless searches of computers brought to them for repair in an effort to find evidence of illegal activity. The question is whether the FBI can recruit confidential human sources (CHS) to conduct searches that they cannot do themselves without a warrant.