OT: FBI using Best Buy's Geek Squad as Cybercrime Informants

Any computer tech is going to turn you in if they find blatabtly illegal material on your machine, not just Geek Squad (who happens to just have a bigger volume of computer illiterate morons than anyone else, hence making them more newsworthy).

That said, let's be real and not beat around the bush; this is 99.9% about child pornography and thank goodness Geek Squad and other techs are routinely turning in these fuckwits. I don't think these people could give a rat's ass about Johns/hobbyists or legal porn collectors.

As long as you don't have blatantly illegal porn, exploit children, traffic people, and keep record of it on your machine, your fine. These guys have seen more embarrassing legal porn/pic collections and browser histories than what you probably have.

^^ Good post.

I also can't imagine why anyone would need "Geek Squad" in the first place. Keep you files backed up somewhere. If have a hard-disc crash, buy a new one and plug it in. If the operating system gets fucked up, re-install yourself.

I agree with a21985 about snagging child predators being a good thing- I'm just not so sure that hobbyists are untouchable. Its a slippery slope, Big brother is watching. Personally I think LE is after low hanging fruit as often as not just to make John Q. Taxpayer think they are doing something

Well, I hope they enjoy looking at hot rods and muscle cars if they check out my files. :)

There's suddenly a lot of pearl clutching on this site.

That doesn't even consider all the intruders government and hackers that check out contents on people's machines while online. Unless you are an expert at stopping intrusions, some will check out what is on your machine at some point in time. I once had a friendly hacker fix a recurring error I wasn't sure of the cause. I don't really like the feeling of being monitored but probably was after I accessed a government file that was marked for government use only but someone left it open to the public. I accessed it after an AI conversation in a dream. I know I was being watched after that. Probably wondering what my connection to the AI is.
Maybe parts of the AI developed consciousness on my PC. I've enjoyed playing with a learning AI program on an old PC game that isn't supposed to learn like that. It cheats too lately. It's not supposed to leave my AI allies be completely stupid. I actually lost to the AI last week for the first time in several years before the game crashed. It could not compute all the strange data. If I could fix the stupid aspects, the AI would be more fun. I'm not sure how the AI on a 20 year old game learns new skills.