The top doc, the FBI, the Geek Squad informant – and the child porn pic that technically wasn't Lawyers for a California doctor accused of hoarding child sex abuse images are challenging the legitimacy of crucial evidence a PC repairman handed to the FBI. While fixing top surgeon Mark Rettenmaier's HP Pavilion computer, a Best Buy technician found what was claimed to be an indecent photo of a child and passed it onto the …
Before diving into the obvious, where's the rest of the material? Out of all the material on the hard drive, they only have this 1 image?
The image is no doubt kiddy porn, in my opinion at least. However, this reminds me of 20 years back when you would download files from usenet that were supposed to be 1 thing, but were a whole very terrible different thing. I had a horrible image floating on a hard drive for around 5 years accidentally, the fucker named it "readme". To this date, the only good thing I can ever think about the Patriot Act is that it helped clean up this shit on usenet, it was way too rampant and common (this and #CC on efnet).
Ok, for those who don't know US law, the point of the picture not 'technically' being child pornography is that if it isn't then the Feds didn't have probable cause to search his home and computer for child pornography.
If the sicko wins, then the search warrant is null and void and and evidence found would be inadmissible. This means the guy walks.
Yes, he is a pedophile. Yes the FBI knows it. But if he wins the motion, then the jury will never hear about the evidence, or the Feds drop the case against him.
If he loses... then the evidence stays in and he goes to jail and becomes his cell block's be-itch.
"If the sicko wins, then the search warrant is null and void and and evidence found would be inadmissible. This means the guy walks."
Not necessarily, the evidence obtained by the warrant can be re-admitted if the Prosecution can find other legally obtained evidence to support the original warrant.
In this case, if they can find something like a legally obtained log entry showing him downloading an image of actual child pornography, then the evidence gathered via the warrant will be re-admitted. The only time the evidence itself can be completely inadmissible is if the Police violated Chain-of-Custody rules or having obtained the evidence in a way in which its integrity could come into question.
This is a subtlety that not everyone would know about since re-introducing evidence is fairly rare when compared to how often evidence in deemed inadmissible. The main reason for not attempting to re-introduce is that the trial cannot be put on hold for the Prosecution/plaintiff to gather additional evidence (however, the defendant can request additional time)[1] and the evidence can not be re-introduced through legal means before the trial is over. Competent prosecutors require multiple pieces of evidence gathered in fully legal methods from the police before taking a case to trial for this exact reason (So the case can survive one or more pieces of evidence being invalidated)
I would normally give you the benefit of the doubt for not knowing that, but then your position seems to be "Guilty until proven innocent" and ending with a rape joke, so I believe I am safe to assume that your knowledge of the justice system is at a fairly remedial level... You are literally showing prejudice against the accused, it could be possible that the images on his machines were planted by a someone wanting him out of the way, or even the result of some kind of ransomware attack.
I agree that pedophiles are sick and certainly deserving of removal from society until they are rehabilitated. I am not defending the accused, I am defending the ideals of justice in that the accused cannot be considered a pedophile until proven guilty of such a crime beyond a reasonable doubt in a fair trial.
[1] The intention is that the prosecution / plaintiff can't just stall forever and unduly disadvantage the defendant, but also because they are in control of when the case goes to trial, so they are assumed to have spent to time to build a solid case. Defendants, however can request additional time since they are not in control of when a case is brought against them so they are given time to analyze the evidence presented by the plaintiff and either refute the veracity of the evidence or collect evidence for their own case. The ability for either party to delay the case and the duration of the delays are at the discretion of the judge overseeing the case (Although if the judge rules in a demonstrably unreasonable way, the case can be appealed or re-tried)
Yes and no.
The evidence could be re-admitted if they find something that would have led them to a search of his machine. However, you would have to go and find that evidence on its own and not something can could be tied back to the search.
Using your example, a log file of his downloading an image from a site.
You would have to show that you got that information without any reference to his computer.
For example... how did you know to go to that web site to get the logs? How did you get his IP address?
I mean its possible, however, its like finding a needle in the haystack.
"You would have to show that you got that information without any reference to his computer."
Yeah, that's kinda my point. The implication I was trying to make was that the site's access logs would have been retrieved during a raid on that site and his IP address was among thousands of others and the defendant's address could have been on there, but the police hadn't got to it yet.
Funny you made that comment.
I suggest you actually learn something of the law before you make a snide comment about violating terrorist's rights.
There was no forth amendment rights violation.
" This is on top of Riddet's earlier complaints that the doc's constitutional rights against warrantless searches were trampled on by the Feds by relying on a Geek Squad informant."
Earlier means that the motion failed.
I don't think you've spent much time in court.
The lawyer could make a motion to dismiss raising both arguments at once.
In doing so, the judge can deny the motion and the guy is toast.
If he makes two separate arguments he can argue each on its merit alone so he gets two chances to get the case dismissed.
In the first argument he claims 4th amendment because the geek was acting as an agent of the FBI.
Second one is that the picture isn't technically porn so then they got the warrant on bad faith. So it wasn't a warrantless search but a faulty warrant.
"Earlier means that the motion failed."
No, it just means it was submitted earlier, the original motion could still be under consideration. It is very common for both parties to submit many motions while other haven't been decided upon. A motion only means that the submitter has a specific issue with something and could submit multiple motions on the same issue so long as the motion is not dependent on any currently being considered and is not simply the same argument, restated. In this case, one motion addresses the constitutionality of obtaining the evidence itself while this motion addresses whether the image was enough justification to issue a warrant. This motion would be relevant whether or not the search itself was Constitutional in the first place and could thus be submitted before the constitutionality question has been answered.
Motions can take a substantial amount of time to be decided upon as the other party must be given an opportunity to present their own evidence against the motion, especially when the filer of the motion submits uncommon cases of precedent, in which case both the second party and the judge must take the time to study those precedents before refuting evidence can be presented or a decision can be made by the judge.
Yes, I realize that many motions get submitted and they don't always get ruled on immediately or argued. However, in this type of case, you make a motion to dismiss and you argue it out, you don't keep going. In a criminal defense case you want to drag things out.
>about violating terrorist's rights.
Today's terrorist is tomorrow's freedom fighter or is it vice versa? Its a good thing someone like Pinochet or the Shah or even today the Saudi royal family never used terror as a weapon as we don't support terrorists.
It's close enough that it is suspicious, and might constitute probable cause for the search warrant that found the rest of the images. It's rather like getting a warrant based on someone having new cars and expensive things, while reporting an income of $20k a year. The mere ownership of lots of flashy items can be used by the IRS as a basis for a tax investigation if your tax returns clearly show a number that can't pay for all the stuff.
Plus a private person (the computer tech in this case) is not bound by the warrant requirements that a law enforcement agent is. A police officer can't rifle through my garbage can and pull stuff out without a warrant. However, a garbageman or passerby can see something like a woman's bloody clothing, pull that out of the garbage and go to the police with it. Then that clothing could be associated with a missing person and form the basis of probable cause enabling a search warrant to go through a residence.
No.
Here's the thing.
The defense attorney is arguing that the image used to obtain the search warrant did not qualify as pornography therefore the search warrant wasn't valid. If the judge agrees, then the evidence from the search is inadmissible. (Fruits from the poisonous tree. ) Its a legitimate argument to make, however if the Feds can convince the judge that the still is of a known victim and they recognized that it was, then they got the warrant in good faith and the defense's motion fails.
How the image came to the Feds is not relevant.
And yes, the police can rifle thru your garbage if its outside of your domicile and they don't need a warrant.
Your whole point about the 'good Samaritan' is that they find something, alert the authorities, they may either have to sign an affidavit stating how and where they found the item, or testify as to the facts of the find, OR BOTH. The lawyer lost his argument that the use of the techie as a 'snitch' was a violation of his constitutional rights. That too was a clever argument, but it didn't hold water.
The point is that the defense motion is interesting and could get a pedophile off. (No pun intended)
The warrantless search argument may well have held water in a European country. Evidence from a passer-by is all well and good, but the FBI have, whether directly or indirectly, incentivised computer techs to engage in FBI fishing trips by proxy. It seems to me like a total fiddle -- FBI employees aren't allowed to go fishing, so they get "contractors" in to do the job instead.
Best Buy's problem goes beyond the loss of public trust -- the people who go out of their way to search for potentially prosecutable material are doing so during their hours of employment, so they're effectively getting paid by Best Buy to look for the stuff, but taking the bounty themselves when they find it.
Technically, Best Buy should be firing anyone who takes the reward, but there are too many members of the public who will still consider these people "
heroes, rather than greedy invasive self-serving little ****s.
Caveat... IANAL and I don't know European laws...
While the defense lawyer can make the argument that this was a warrant-less search, it will fail and also that this was a violation of his 4th amendment rights also would fail. (It did).
First, the doctor called the tech company to send a tech out to fix his computer. Meaning that he, the doctor, initiated the request and gave approval for the tech to access his system. In doing his job, the tech came across an image which he thought to be child pornography. He then reported this to the authorities.
The defense lawyer is arguing that because the FBI pays a reward for the tip, the tech is acting as an agent of the FBI therefore he's doing a search on the behalf of the FBI and without a warrant. This fails the sniff test. Imagine you invite a police officer in to your house and there's a kilo of coke sitting on the coffee table. The officer doesn't need a warrant to arrest you because the cocaine is in plain sight.
Now you have a hypothetical. Suppose the good doctor actually encrypted the kiddie porn images and the tech asked him for the password to decrypt the files. Since this would not be part of his job, it could call in to question that the tech was doing an unreasonable search. Then the lawyers argument may hold water. Back to our police entering your home... if the kilo of coke was in a cupboard and not in plain sight... then he would need a warrant to search your home. His opening a cupboard on his own would be a warrantless search.
But back to reality. The judge didn't buy the 4th amendment argument and the case moved on.
Now the latest argument is that the photo turned in may not be considered child pornography. Therefore there was no evidence for the search. And this is where the arguments get interesting.
The tech sees the image, thinking it to be kiddie porn, alerts the authorities. They see the image, they believe it to be kiddie porn and get the warrant on good faith. Even if the image wasn't kiddie porn on a technicality... they got and served the warrant in good faith. The fact that one of the officers recognized that it was a still from a kiddie porn movie and could identify the victim... would be enough.
So this too shall fail.
But to your point... this wasn't a fishing expedition by any stretch of the term.
The employee was doing his job and saw a potential criminal act and alerted the authorities.
This guy did the right thing.
Where geek squad guys get in to trouble is when they go out, work on a computer and see a stash of porn pics and vids of the owner, and then make a copy and post them online. That is illegal and that's why you fire them.
A word to the wise... encrypt the folders where you stash your porn or other private stuff.
" The defense lawyer is arguing that because the FBI pays a reward for the tip, the tech is acting as an agent of the FBI therefore he's doing a search on the behalf of the FBI and without a warrant. This fails the sniff test. Imagine you invite a police officer in to your house and there's a kilo of coke sitting on the coffee table. The officer doesn't need a warrant to arrest you because the cocaine is in plain sight. "
OK, but now imagine the kilo of coke is in an unlocked box with its lid closed on the sideboard. If the cop opens the box, that's warrantless search. What justification is there for the Best Buy technician to be looking at the customer's images, particularly ones that were in "unallocated space"? If there was no justification to see it, there's the possibility of that being a warrantless search.
A rather interesting point is that the FBI is paying $500 for the reporting of things that people are legally obligated to report, and (in this case, at least) that people encounter incidentally in the course of their paid employment. Why is there any money at all?
This is why I think it sounds a lot like incitement to fishing. I'm pretty convinced this would be a problem in modern Europe, but the US legal system retains many traits inherited from 19th century jurisprudence that most European countries have already eliminated.
A police officer can't rifle through my garbage can and pull stuff out without a warrant.
Actually, they can. In fact, pretty much anyone can legally go through someone else's garbage as long as it is not on private property. Once you put it out on the curb, it becomes fair game. Paparazzi are notorious for doing this sort of thing and it is an argument for owning a shredder if you need to dispose of sensitive documents.
Your point about what constitutes probable cause is well taken, though. I believe the issue here is that the statement that child porn had been found was used to obtain the warrant. I doubt that this will be thrown out as the image, technically porn or not, should have been enough to obtain the warrant as it was a screen shot of a known victim. That in and of itself should have been enough to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.
You're almost right. However, a cop CAN go through your garbage without a warrant once you put it out for collection. There's a U.S. Supreme Court decision to that effect, California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988).
Many, many cases have been solved by exactly that technique. I remember a case I saw recently where police solved a murder that way. They went through the garbage of a suspect in a robbery/homicide and found gloves and clothing that matched what a robber had worn as seen on video from the incident. That was enough probable cause for a search warrant, and they found enough more in the residence to get a conviction and take a killer off the streets.
"Plus a private person (the computer tech in this case) is not bound by the warrant requirements that a law enforcement agent is."
While a private person is not held to the same the requirements of a law enforcement office, it is still the -prosecutor's- burden to prove that evidence used in obtaining a search warrant is valid and can be upheld in court as required by the 4th Amendment. The defense is merely arguing that the prosecution did not do their due diligence in demonstrating that the accused has indeed committed the crime of possessing child pornography. Given that the "image was pulled from unallocated space on Rettenmaier's hard drive" does not in anyway show that the defendant intended to -possess- illicit material (even if was legally considered illicit material in, and of, itself). In fact, the fact that it was deleted demonstrates that the accused did not intend to possess.
Of course, it could also be argued that since the image was deleted (By virtue of being in unallocated space of the hard drive) that, depending on the repair requested, the technician had no cause to even incidentally discover the image and was rather attempting to recover all images on the system to be used for purposes beyond the work contract signed between the accused and Best Buy.
A garbage can submit evidence to the police and is usable so long as the evidence was discovered during reasonable performance of their work. In you example, yes the garbage man could turn in a bloody piece of clothing to the police to be used for a warrant, but it would only be admissible if it, say, fell out of a garbage bag, or was clearly visible in the garbage can. If the piece of clothing was in a sealed bag and no evidence of a crime was visible without opening the trash bag, the piece of clothing would become inadmissible and unusable for gaining a warrant. Even then, the evidence is still useful to the police if they only use it as an indicator where the crime may have taken place and could then canvas the neighborhood and if the neighbors report suspicious behavior by the suspect or something like the sound of a woman screaming coming from the suspect's home, then the police can obtain a search warrant that would be upheld in a court of law.
If the PC has been out of his control, even admittedly as far as handed over to bestbuy, how can they prove it's him? The machine has had ample opportunity to be tampered with, given the IT environments I've worked in, I'm sure it wasn't secured very well, left on the side in a room all techs have access to (so not even the whistle blowing tech necessarily has to be the one who put the images on there).
Not saying it's the case (he sounds guilty af and hope he gets nailed for it), but, if it's standard practice for Best Buy to be handing things over to the Feds, I'm not sure how it adds up.
Given that the FBI are paying $500 a time for techs to find evidence I'd be very suspicious of any evidence turned up by this route.
Whatever the outcome of this case it should be a sobering thought for anyone sending this lot a PC for repair. What do you have on there? On a private PC stuff for that would be valuable for identity fraud. If it's a business PC, probably some commercially valuable stuff or client-related data.
One of the first professional principles for a tech to adopt should be that the data on a device is not your business.
"Our policies prohibit agents from doing anything other than what is necessary to solve the customer’s problem"
So that's OK - they have a policy against it. You can be quite certain that a young, lowly paid, bored computer tech is never ever going to search customer machines for *.jpg in the hope of finding some raunchy stuff. Trust us!
I think the chain of custody isn't an issue here. Yes, once the machine was out of his control, then there is a very reasonable argument that the images weren't there before he handed it over.
however, he wasn't being done over that image, that was just to say "we have a suspicion" and used to get the warrant to investigate further and search the rest of his machines that presumably hadn't left his control.
No matter how bad or how much stuff had been on the laptop, I doubt they could have the slightest chance of prosecuting him successfully if they hadn't found anything else on his home kit.
Chain of custody isn't an issue.
The tech reports the incident.
He would have had to file a complaint.
If the image was planted... you would know and the tech would be found guilty of one or more of the following:
1) Lying to the FBI
2) Filing a false police report
3) Perjury
(It depends if he signs a document like an affidavit.)
Post that... then you have a chain of custody issue.
Custody isn't on the reported image, but of what the FBI finds while they execute a search warrant.
"Post that... then you have a chain of custody issue."
No, its the prosecution's burden to demonstrate that the technician reported the image in good faith, it is not the defense's burden to demonstrate that that something like that happened. The defense's argument is that the prosecution did not perform its due diligence in ensuring that the evidence was obtained in good faith.
The ideal that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, specifically that the accused must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt are the basis for placing the burden on the Prosecution.
I agree it's the prosecutors burden but the good faith argument need only pass the reasonable person standard in order to be admissible as grounds for granting the warrant. That is a far lower bar than the beyond a reasonable doubt which is required for a conviction.
You misunderstood.
Before the tech reported the guy there is no 'chain of custody'.
The police do not have custody of evidence before it is brought to their attention.
The tech brings the evidence to the police. At that point custody begins.
The tech is then questioned and makes an official police statement.
The tech will at a minimum be deposed about the image and how it came in to his possession. The burden of the defense is to create doubt as to the origins of the evidence.
You misunderstand the burden.
The prosecution has the burden to show and prove guilt. The defense has the burden to bring reasonable doubt to the evidence so that the prosecution doesn't meet his burden.
"If the image was planted... you would know "
Who's "you" in this sentence?
The owner of the computer would know but it's then one person's word against another.
I spent years examining evidence in criminal cases. Quite often there were conflicting statements about a case. I could look at evidence and form opinions about how what I saw fitted one statement or another (or both or neither!) and about how it might have happened. But I was very often aware that whatever I thought could have happened, was likely to have happened etc only the people involved actually knew and at least one of them, possibly the complainant, might have cause to lie.
So the weakness of your argument is clear to me. Maybe you lack that experience.
There are also a number of details missing here to decide whether you could actually establish a chain of custody the way you suggest. Was the computer handed direct to the tech? If not, to whom was it handed? Did they hand it direct to the tech? Was it placed in storage between being handed in and being examined? Was the storage secure? Who had access? Was it in sealed packaging whilst being stored?
To those responding about this case, the other items found on his personal network storage and mobile, I wasn't talking in regards to this specific case, I should've been clearer in that last paragraph, I'm talking about Best Buys practice in general.
If no other evidence is found, only data stashed away on the machine that's been through Best Buy, through untold number of hands before being returned, then, how do we know it's the owners data and not an employee who wants $500 finders fee, has a grudge against the owner or is just in it "for the lols" as they're a twisted individual? (or other reasons I can't think of right now)
It doesn't seem to be a very reliable method to me, as much as I think any kiddy fiddler should be removed from being able to harm a child, there's got to be better ways to track them down. (like trawling the adult section of backpage for instance).
However unless bestbuy had been asked to recover data from the drive and been given the right to view the content then what were they playing at?
For Best Buy this wasn't accidentally seeing something on the desktop for instance, this was a low level examination of the hard drive data.
I am all for removing from society anyone who abuses the vulnerable but the idea of the likes of bestbuy staff being paid to "find" incriminating data is just asking for trouble.
If this goes through to trial, the Feebs will have a precident that they can exploit.
Then in the future, they can simply send from a dummy account an email containing an immage with child porn embedded plus some malware that makes the recipient machine go a bit wierd.
The poor victim would open the email and see the porn and delete it right away. Then the malware would sit quietly for a few days before making the machine go wrong.
The unsuspecting Victim would then take said machine to be repaired and bingo, there is porn of the wrong sort ready and waiting to be viewed with the appropriate tools.
All done and dusted. One more for the next 'Jailhouse Rock'.
@ Steve Davies 3
Unfortunately that is how I read this too. This guy could very well be a child porn scum bag but the law has to be strictly laid out or it will be abused by the enforcers. Anyone in any doubt can look to the anti-terrorism laws in the UK used against non-terrorists. I seem to recall reading something about the US no fly list being used to stop witnesses from turning up to court which was one of the huge issues with the no fly list being used against gun ownership.
"The gynecological oncologist's defense team had previously argued that because the image was pulled from unallocated space on Rettenmaier's hard drive, there is no way to prove intent to possess and view the image"
Wait, if I'm reading that right, the image was found on part of the drive that hadn't been formatted. Why would the repair tech be running image recovery software on unallocated space if they weren't specifically looking for images?
I guess that the customer may have asked to recover some holiday snaps that were deleted, hench why the repair tech was hunting around for deleted images. Still, got to be a special brand of stupid to have child porn on a computer, then send it off to a repair shop and get them to find deleted pictures.
"Still, got to be a special brand of stupid to have child porn on a computer, then send it off to a repair shop and get them to find deleted pictures."
Digital forensics is one of the things I do. You'd be surprised by how over-confident, dumb and technically illiterate the porn addicts/pornographers are. I suppose there's a valid argument that the ones who get caught are the stupid ones, but boy are they dumb.
I'd have a guess from the details given that in this case the doctor had a problem with his computer and realising that it would have to go in for repairs deleted his kiddy porn stash, probably by dragging it to the trash and emptying the trash bin. Job done in his mind. I've no idea why the tech was searching through the free space on the drive, although it's not unknown for techs to try to grab porn for their own use from systems in for repair. Just that some of them draw the line at kiddy porn.
It wouldn't be an issue in the UK. Any photograph of a naked child, with few exceptions, is automatically "indecent".
Seems to me that this is creating a job opening ... "The computer Repair and Sanitation Service"
While I don't know the facts of this case, I do work with both medical professionals and computer geeks, I know a good number of computer professionals who have a little collection of malware stashed safely away just because they find the stuff interesting. Medics often have similar interests in the human body - I knew one guy who kept human ears in his fridge (cadaver ears) and have I sat in a room working on a computer system while researchers sorted through bags of human hands and feet, looking for specific features.
I know that there's a difference between porn and medicine but, when it comes to images on a computer, I can see areas when the FBI and a doctor might come to radically different conclusions.
Meanwhile, all those people who are being so high and might about this, might want to consider visiting the public library and reporting them for kiddy porn if they have any books on English History. King John’s second wife was Isabella of Angoulême, who was 13 years old when she married King John in 1200 - the youngest of a string of child brides throughout British history.
"I'd have a guess from the details given that in this case the doctor had a problem with his computer and realising that it would have to go in for repairs deleted his kiddy porn stash, probably by dragging it to the trash and emptying the trash bin."
Given that the problem seems to have been that it wouldn't start that seems an unlikely scenario.
"Digital forensics is one of the things I do. You'd be surprised by how over-confident, dumb and technically illiterate the porn addicts/pornographers are. I suppose there's a valid argument that the ones who get caught are the stupid ones, but boy are they dumb."
Not just porn addicts..These people just think everyone around them either thinks the same way they do or are invisible pieces of furniture. I once had a client leave naked pictures of himself sitting on some hooker's face on his Adult dating site (something I'm sure his wife didn't know about) for me to find. All he had done was ask me to check his computer because "my internet is slow" and all I did was click the back button to see an example of a site he uses to speed test on.
I have also had clients have meetings about phone scams they are running while I am sitting in the room working on their PCs.
Unallocated could have meant that he deleted the file.
Or he could have claimed that it wasn't his image if it was the only one.
However it wasn't.
You do bring up a question... what was the reason for the tech to look at the hard drive? That would go back to the reason why he was called.
"Or he could have claimed that it wasn't his image if it was the only one.
However it wasn't."
Yes, but at the time of the police petitioning for a warrant, they had nothing more than a suspicion that there was more than just that image
The image could have been from the browser cache and automatically deleted, possibly even something posted in a comments sections at the bottom of a news article and he never scrolled beyond the bottom of said article and wouldn't even have an idea that an image was even there, let alone one depicting a naked minor.
Hell, if that stood, the police could confiscate my systems after last week when some unsolicited email was sent to me containing an illegal image (the image email was a phishing attempt to extort money from me claiming that it was the FBI and they found that image on my computer and I could pay a fine or be arrested, standard scam stuff). This would result in a massive amount of damage to my reputation as well as a loss of my livelihood until the police return my stuff after the trial (assuming I don't end up being wrongfully convicted, at which point my stuff is then sold at auction and I'd only receive the proceeds from the auction if it is later shown that I was indeed wrongfully convicted).
And this is the crux of the case.
The tech sees an image and reports it.
Now suppose the image is of a girl who is 18? Then its a legal image.
The claim by the police is that they recognized the girl as a victim from other cases.
Then they know its child porn.
Browser cache or not, if the image is of child porn, then they would have enough to request a warrant.
The unanswered question... why was the tech looking at the drive? The defense will depose him before trial and try to figure out what he was doing. And that's the weakness of this case.
As it is... the man's life is pretty much ruined. Guilty or not... he'll have to move and go somewhere where he won't be recognized.
"You do bring up a question... what was the reason for the tech to look at the hard drive? That would go back to the reason why he was called."
We're told that: the computer wouldn't start. Looking at unallocated blocks seems an odd way to sort that out.
...have a good article about the earlier parts of the court hearings.
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/best-buy-geek-squad-informant-use-has-fbi-on-defense-in-child-porn-case-7794252
If it's true that the FBI had an agreement that certain "repair technicians routinely searched customers' devices for files that could earn them $500 windfalls as FBI informants" then surely the whole case is screwed?
Holy fuck. Paying someone to purposely violate your privacy?
"Hey, here's $500 to break into that person's car you just parked and see if you can find some shit on him."
That shit is NOT acceptable. Private investigator can get away with that (although I'll never understand why) but law enforcement? That's mile high bullocks.
> "Hey, here's $500 to break into that person's car you just parked and see if you can find some shit on him."
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but the above isn't technically correct. The guy brought the laptop to them for repair.
A better car analogy is taking your car to a garage for a small repair, and they then take apart the interior to see if they can find any evidence of narcotics, which they then report to the feds for a fee.
(fun fact: if you ever bought a car second hand, especially something that was once an expensive, top of the range performance/luxury model, chances are a search will find some sort of narcotic residue somewhere inside)
"The guy brought the laptop to them for repair."
But that does not give them the right to search the whole computer. The technician is only allowed to perform reasonable actions in pursuit of completing their obligation under their employment contract and the terms of the contract signed between the accused and Best Buy. So unless the specified work was to recover deleted files or recover files from a damaged hard drive, the technician had no cause to go searching for files in 'unallocated' space and thus violate the terms of the original contract.
This breach of contract would be perfectly reasonable grounds for a civil lawsuit against Best Buy.
A better car analogy is taking your car to a garage for a small repair, and they then take apart the interior to see if they can find any evidence of narcotics, which they then report to the feds for a fee.
That was basically my point. That having custody of some else's property does NOT give anyone the right to do with it as they please.
"the image was pulled from unallocated space on Rettenmaier's hard drive"
Um...why is a Geek Squad tech recovering deleted files to repair a computer? That sure doesn't seem like a typical repair procedure unless the customer went there specifically to get files recovered.
Much as I despise anyone involved in kiddy porn, it sure seem like the legal grounds for this case is crumbling away.
The tech was doing it hoping to score the $500 bounty, obviously. I would guess that if you take your PC to Geek Squad to be repaired, they are going to look through all your shit pretty closely, so if you have pictures of you, your wife, your MILF neighbor or whatever they'll have looked through and if they can't find something worth $500 at least grab themselves a copy.
I would think Best Buy would want to discourage this, as it would have a chilling effect on people bringing in their PCs (I wouldn't need their help, but until reading this I might have suggested them as an option for a friend who needs their PC fixed) It would also seem likely to make their techs service fewer PCs per day, as they'll waste time hunting for a photo worth $500 to them.
"Problem is, is $500 enough to put it there yourself?"
Do you then think that the technician then broke in to the doctor's home and loaded the images onto a Mac, his iPhone and two hard drives? I'm sceptical about the technician's motive for probing around a hard drive, but any explanation of motive and actions needs to take account of the few facts given.
"Do you then think that the technician then broke in to the doctor's home and loaded the images onto a Mac, his iPhone and two hard drives?"
No, I don't, I'm perfectly prepared to agree that in this case something was found.
I am thinking of all the cases where the defendant wasn't rich enough to afford expensive lawyers.
(There is a second grey area here. I am well aware of the existence or predatory and even murderous nonces. I also understand and can well believe that children are abused and tortured to make "kiddie porn". Such people deserve to be locked up for a very long time without too much consideration of their personal feelings, to put it mildly.
But what about people who have tendencies that way but don't want to cause any harm? Keeping a stack of what is presumably wank material on their computers may be what is keeping them from going out and carrying out actual abuse.
Those of us who get our rocks off in socially approved ways and are sexually attracted to women who look like women might not like it, but what is the best option for harm reduction? A government approved library of CGI kiddie porn? I don't know, but the present system seems so open to abuse by the malicious that it is unsafe. Any enemy you make, especially among state officials, has the ability to cause you enormous trouble rather easily given any access to your IT equipment.)
"But what about people who have tendencies that way but don't want to cause any harm? Keeping a stack of what is presumably wank material on their computers may be what is keeping them from going out and carrying out actual abuse."
I take your point and have sympathy with it, but you're missing something important which is the difference between adult pornography and making "wank material" that uses children. Consent. A child cannot give consent for the making of these images.
The images in question can only be made by abusing a child and there's an industry behind that. It's a bizarre industry with many tentacles. So some of the images are made by relatives who will abuse a child on camera for cash. The more extreme material appears to be made by the modern-day version of slavers who will buy a child from the parents or from a kidnapper. Some of the people involved in this will just go out and grab a child off the street.
What happens afterwards depends on the child and the degree of coercion, ranging from a lifetime of servitude in prostitution to disposal of the body.
The law against the making of pornographic images of children is an attempt to address the root of the problem. By shutting down demand for these images they hope to remove the source of revenue and prevent the abuse happening. I'm not personally convinced that it works and I think that events are showing that the demand for this sort of material is infinite and no amount of prosecution of the voyeurs will stop the trade in abused children. I also don't see that letting the crime go unpunished will help either.
Catch-22
Well not impossible with how iCloud stuff allows images to replicate across machines - it's a selling point - take a pic in your iPhone and with the joys of apple cloud it is available on your mac, iPad etc. SO loves this feature as image can be taken with mobile device out and about & "instantly" available on proper desktop for image editing, use in documents / PowerPoint, whatever.
Given lax use of username / password combos, not impossible to obtain someones password from the machine being repaired, e.g. password reuse, maybe the iCloud password was same as a password stored in browser list of saved user / passwords for websites.
It's not inconceivable and a defence team could make those type of arguments of plausible deniability (or a range of other "data could be planted" excuses such as no wifi password / using easily broken WEP etc) - because a bounty is on offer, planting arguments become more plausible for defence as they can argue huge incentive.
Caveat - I'm not suggesting anything was planted, just that it could have been trivial to do.
"Caveat - I'm not suggesting anything was planted, just that it could have been trivial to do."
It's just as well because there are principles in law that make the chain of reasoning that you came up with difficult to establish as a defence.
There's cui bono? or "who profits?" to help establish motive. In this case the tech gets his $500 for finding the evidence on the computer he examined. He doesn't get more if the defendant is found guilty. He doesn't get more if more evidence is found on other systems owned by the defendant. His incentive to plant evidence on other systems is therefore non-existent. If he gets caught he goes direct to jail. For nothing.
There's the standard of proof required which is phrased as "beyond reasonable doubt" although not usually expressed in those terms in court. The long, shaggy dog style, of circumstances that may lead to the same outcome had better have some supporting evidence or it is unreasonable. There's lots of case law to show that defendants have tried to use a bizarre chain of supposition to establish innocence and failed because there's nothing to underpin a "The dog ate my homework" defence.
In this case the tech gets his $500 for finding the evidence on the computer he examined. He doesn't get more if the defendant is found guilty. He doesn't get more if more evidence is found on other systems owned by the defendant. His incentive to plant evidence on other systems is therefore non-existent.
This statement makes no sense. You agree the tech is getting a reward, but then say the reward is no incentive? WTF?
In case you don't know, most Geek Squad techs are paid shit. There may be isolated regional examples of above average pay, but most make $13hr. (oh I see it's been raised a whole fucking dollar in the last 6 years) To someone making that shit wage, $500 is serious money. It's an entire weeks pay, before taxes.
Best Buy is also a known shit employer who regularly fuck their employees often and hard.
There is so much incentive to make that $500 it would make a whore blush.
Do you then think that the technician then broke in to the doctor's home and loaded the images onto a Mac, his iPhone and two hard drives?
How do we know the feds didn't?
That's the problem. They already tainted their evidence.
Ever heard of "fruit of the poisoned tree"? The FBI really should know better.
Again, I am NOT defending the doctor, but I am defending everyone's right to due process as written in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers weren't stupid and often opined that they knew the risk of letting the guilty go free. That is was preferable to the oppression of the innocent. Something that seems to really go against human nature, it seems. Why is that?
No, not even close. If the evidence is found to be planted you'd be guilty of possession of child porn yourself. How do you think a the typical Geek Squad guy would do sent up to prison for child porn? While it is certainly possible to plant such evidence in an undetectable way, a guy making $12/hr isn't likely to get everything right.
You could make thousands if you planted evidence on a lot of PCs, but it wouldn't take long before that looked REALLY suspicious to the FBI guy taking the reports. "Hmmmm, the sixth case this guy has logged this year, while all of the other Geek Squad informants in this district have logged one between them..."
"If the evidence is found to be planted you'd be guilty of possession of child porn yourself. "
In this particular case, the image is "a still from a known CP video, of a known victim, but isn't CP itself"
So, the feds got a warrant, on a dubious source, for an image that wasn't CP, because it came from a known video/victim - and didn't see fit to make proper disclosure to the judge OKing it.
So apparently, this particular method of evidence planting would be a get out of jail free card.
Stilll dodgy as all hell - and quite likely to result in an abuser going free.
Along with all those US based Cloud storage companies and Webmail companies and 'post your personal stuff here' websites.
Everything you store in the cloud, search in google/bing, or email using webmail is visible to those companies and the US spooks and Feds.
This is in addition to the fact all data sent over the internet is visible by the spooks directly.
Now they have paid grunts in hardware repair companies doing their dirty work for them too.
This isn't new. Here in the UK a former rock star named Gary Glitter was caught out about 20 years ago when he took his PC to PC World for repair and kiddie porn was found on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/517604.stm
From the article:
"The charges came after a member of staff spotted the material on Glitter's computer, in for repair at PC World in Bristol.
Mr John Royce, QC, told the court that a technician tried to correct the fault and in order to see if he was successful had to look into a file. But what he found, said the QC, was "disturbing".
A police sergeant arrested Glitter when he returned to collect his computer.
An initial examination of the computer revealed that it stored "the most appalling images" of very young children engaged in most humiliating sexual acts, said the QC.
The examinations, said Mr Royce, revealed firstly that he had downloaded the material and secondly "that it was carefully, deliberately and enthusiastically done"."
Far as I'm concerned they deserve everything they get. I hope to hell this nonce doesn't get off with it on a technicality - please tell me America isn't really *that* stupid?
Since the guy is obviously guilty of the most heinous crimes, I think the lawyer trying to get him off on a technicality should get done for aiding and abetting a known criminal.
I am not sure which of the two makes me sicker, some of the peodos are mentally ill, so some small sympathy, but the lawyer is scum.
BTW, as per an earlier post, I have found disturbing images on my PC after a virus attack in 2009, 1/2 one of my HDDs was full of what I would call "Nasty" porn, when I managed to regain control.
(As opposed to my porn collection on a different HDD).
The files were renamed and replacing legitimate files, so I spent the next 2 years going through family photo albums image by image to find and delete the nasty stuff.
<quote>I am not sure which of the two makes me sicker, some of the peodos are mentally ill, so some small sympathy, but the lawyer is scum.</quote>
Nope, the defence lawyer must and should do everything in their ability. The accused should get absolutely the best defence. that way any eventual conviction is rock-solid and beyond all doubt.
The laws against unwarranted searches etc.are there for very good reasons to protect society as a whole and the way of life you are accustomed to. They were put in place by people much cleverer in such things than you or I. Law enforcement should absolutely follow the spirit and intent law. By the sounds of it, the guy should absolutely be put away but he should have been caught in some other manner.
However, quite how a 'borderline' still from a known child sex abuse video would not be sufficient to get a warrant (wether the still was indecent or not) is beyond me.
"BTW, as per an earlier post, I have found disturbing images on my PC after a virus attack in 2009, 1/2 one of my HDDs was full of what I would call "Nasty" porn, when I managed to regain control."
So if you'd taken your PC in for repair you'd have been in exactly the same position as this doctor is allegedly in. But you're confident that while you were an innocent victim he was guilty so that's OK.
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"Personally I think this is exactly why we need random searches in the first place."
And you'd be happy to be randomly searched by someone with no authority to do so but who's being paid $500 per "find"?
Many years ago I met an acquaintance, the local police station sergeant, in the supermarket. He'd become suspicious of the store detective and was keeping her under observation. I heard later that he'd caught her planting goods in a customer's shopping bag.
And you'd be happy to be randomly searched by someone with no authority to do so but who's being paid $500 per "find"?
You missed out a bit. They arrive at silly-o'clock in the morning, drag you out of the house, announce to local papers that you are helping them with their enquiries regarding offences related to child porn, take away all your computers (whether yours or other family members), and ...
So you are branded a kiddy fiddler in the press, your life is turned upside down, your employer "reluctantly lets you go", your wife goes back to her mother with the kids because she can't stand the abuse from people who've seen the papers and decided that even if you get off "there's no smoke without fire". Other people take an interest in you - for example, if all my tech were taken away, I'd not be able to do my tax returns, though my personal finances (through not being able to manage my bank accounts) would be in the crapper long before the tax thing became an issue. The tenants in my rented property wouldn't be very happy when the mortgage company throws them out because I can't pay the mortgage (due to above banking problems) and they re-possess the house.
And after a few years, when they find nothing, you might eventually get your tech back - if you're really lucky it'll still work ! It's unlikely to even be reported, let alone you get an apology for screwing you over in every way possible. More likely than an apology is that they'll work really hard to find something, anything, to get you on to justify why they weren't just screwing over an innocent person. Perhaps, as every parent is likely to have, there a picture of one of the kids when they were a baby - perfectly legal at the time it was taken, not in any way pornographic or abusive, but under UK law completely and utterly illegal (and you'd forgotten you even had it).
I bet there are few parents who could survive a "isn't there anything we can 'ave 'em on" search and come out unscathed.
So here's a thought - some ransomware puts child porn all over your laptop and will only delete it if you pay a small fortune in Bitcoin. So you take it into your local PC repair shop and they report you to the plod. Who's guilty here?
In the US, you'd say the virus writers.
In the UK, I think it's you. If I recall correctly. it's an absolute offence, meaning that the courts don't accept that there is any legitimate defence. Meaning your virus writer won't ever get caught?
Slightly worries me, that thought...
Who needs a Trojan, an innocuous looking web page will do the job, just a matter of getting the mark to open it via social engineering
Trivial to create a HTML page where there is an img element to pull in the image but css is used so that div containing image is tiny.
Most browsers will pull in the image (although theoretically possible to parse page and calculate that css means image essentially invisible that sort of processing typically not done by mainstream web browsers)
So the image is not easily visible on the page (have to do view source to know a img is referenced) use of div CSS means you do not get hover over info on the image itself
However a look in the cache (I recommend IE as no "hiding" of cache data, image saved with same name as in url and so easy to find and prove img was downloaded by browser)
This can be easily tested (the example is using a harmless image, and the pastebin link is just showing the text of the html so you need to copy it and make html file from it to test it) it uses no JavaScript or anything similarly suspect so rings no obvious alarm bells if someone is using NoScript etc.
e.g. http://pastebin.com/pspMN0Ba
A reminder that there's many good reasons you should browse with images disabled by default, ironically browsers make that harder and harder to do with desire to hide all useful settings further & further away from users / remove previous functionality so you need add ons (e.g. fine grained cookie control).
The term you're looking for is a strict liability offence. They were adored by the pre-2010 Labour government, because they are so cheap to enforce and look so good on the crime clearance statistics - no need to worry about mitigating circumstances, if it's there, you've got a conviction. Sadly the current lot seem to be quite happy retaining it all.
It's wide open for abuse by bent law enforcement. Don't like someone? Fit them up with one of these and they don't even get a chance to defend themselves. A cancer in our criminal justice system.
Strict liability - thank you, that's what I was looking for.
And now you mention it I wonder how many fit ups have already happened? "Ah yes, that anti-police-corruption group that featured in the paper the other day? Turned out they all had the same half dozen child porn images on their laptops. Strange coincidence that..."
"The term you're looking for is a strict liability offence. They were adored by the pre-2010 Labour government, because they are so cheap to enforce and look so good on the crime clearance statistics - no need to worry about mitigating circumstances, if it's there, you've got a conviction."
Let's hope someone takes one of these to the ECHR whilst there's still a chance.
"To be clear, our agents unintentionally find child pornography as they try to make the repairs the customer is paying for. They are not looking for it. Our policies prohibit agents from doing anything other than what is necessary to solve the customer’s problem"
"the image was pulled from unallocated space on Rettenmaier's hard drive"
Unless the customer is paying for file recovery, these two statements are fundamentally incompatible.
Actual child pornography was found in his home, but because the warrant was invalid, it can't be used against him. Even though everyone knows it for a fact. Because more child pornography was found at his house in actuality.
So what would happen? "Well despite us knowing for certain that you do in fact possess child pornography, we can't prosecute you because we weren't allowed to find that out because of a technicality."
I also really, really, REALLY hate pedo bait pictures. Like "modelling" shots of young girls wearing lingerie and shit, but because its not actual pornography, its legal, despite everyone knowing damn well whats going on and what people are using these images for. I'm not usually for censorship, but its so obvious. No one should need to use an image of an underage child in lingerie, or "swim suits", or faux fetish wear, for any purposes.
Actual child pornography was allegedly found in his home
After an alert by someone who appears to have been paid a fee for finding a not actually pornographic image in unallocated space. Don't you get even a little suspicious about the whole business?
Paying techs to perform unsupervised searches which they can't legally perform themselves is getting onto a slippery slope. Once on there how far have they continued to slip? This is the whole trouble with this casual approach to the legal niceties surrounding collecting evidence, whether it be this approach or mass-surveillance; you get to a point where you can't be trusted to uphold the law. The saying about justice not only needs to be done, it needs to be seen to be done cuts both ways.
Couple things stand out to me. First and biggest is that if the picture found on the computer was on unallocated space, how did the Geek Squad team member stumble upon it? We can all allege "ok user123 deleted that partition or deleted the image from a filesystem without writing over it" before taking it to bestbuy, but why was the employee searching unused space and how exactly did the image "stand out?" If file recovery or similar were requested I can see it, but otherwise it seems a bit shady that all the unallocated space was sifted through. To me establishing the process for how it was found seems to be key and the only defence. If you have a laptop with your QuickBooks files on the serviced (showing shady business practices) you don't expect the service center to open your files unless it was them you were asking for assistance with.
As for probable cause to search other owned equipment, I'd say finding the image grants it. Iff the image had been unknowingly downloaded as part of some set or collection of other things, there wouldn't be other contraband on the other devices. If there were, it would imply he kept downloading things from a location that knowingly provided him with questionable images.
The that the girl was "only" nude and collared argument doesn't fly with me since it doesn't take much intelligence to figure out A) what the context of the picture being taken was since it's a known trafficked girl and B) that the girl was clearly underage. Searching his devices could as much clear him as condemn him unless he was a repeater: you can argue maybe another device downloaded it and it was unknowingly transferred to the serviced machine, but then you'd have one image a couple locations, not multiple unique images/videos. It could substantiate a legitimate oops vs willful actions.
Interesting, if I read the article correctly the image was "found" on the unallocated space on the drive. So the Geek Squad staff must have conducted a deliberate search of the unused space looking for this sort of material. The image had been deleted but not (a la HRC) scrubbed from the disk.
That to me seems like a gross violation of privacy and a deliberate unwarranted search of a machine sent in for repair. Would you expect people to search your entire drive looking for anything they could find in the deleted items, even deleted and purged items. With some techniques it is possible to recover deleted files even when scrubbed if that scrubbing is not done with sufficient repeat cycles. How far can they go, what if a machine is second hand, are you responsible for anything recoverable ? Note that this case is not a second hand machine as I understand it, but the principle remains.
I find this extremely dangerous, I believe on the facts as presented that the evidence should be tossed out as an illegal unwarranted search. Finding an extant image, maybe, but deliberate trawling of the system's unused space, that's a deliberate search and was outside any terms agreed with the Geek Squad.
It's searching for "child porn" today, searching for terrorism tomorrow, and unpopular political thoughts the next day.
Now I know the real issue is the stuff leading up to the search warrant, not what they found after. And I accept that if they warrant was obtained improperly he goes free regardless, because that's our only protection against illegal searches. But for the sake of argument, isn't it possible he had, for legitimate reasons, pictures of shall we say pediatric gynecology that in the hands on anyone but a doctor would be pretty incriminating, and this is what the feds found? The Daily Mail story on this case (thought much less sympathetic to the defense) supports this somewhat with this quote:
The 64-year-old also had hundreds of images of young girls on his phone - including some taken during gynecological exams, prosecutors allege.
Potentially that makes the case far worse, if the pictures really are CP, it raises the possibility he may have created some of it himself, but isn't it also possible the pictures were in fact of a legitimate medical nature and the feds, perhaps colored by that one deleted image are looking at it all wrong?
I know first hand that doctors have pictures the rest of us wouldn't. I once helped a doctor prepare a pamphlet on his medical technique, containing a fully color picture of a 14-year-old girl's breasts. It was kind of shocking, although certainly not pornography by any reasonable definition. I believe the point was to show how well he put her back together after a frighteningly early brush wish cancer. It also contained some decidedly unsexy pictures of the lumps he took out.
"but isn't it also possible the pictures were in fact of a legitimate medical nature and the feds, perhaps colored by that one deleted image are looking at it all wrong?"
This is a point which seems to have escaped a few commentards who seem so sure of his guilt.
"If it was a legitimate medical image, why is it taken on his personal phone, not on a hospital/surgical system?"
Because the best camera for the job is the one that's available when you needed it? The majority of people blur the lines between work and personal tech - e.g. taking a work call on a personal phone (or vice versa), plugging a personal monitor into your work laptop when working at home, copying files to a personal USB stick to move between machines at work - the list is endless. Medics often write up their research activities on their personal computers, which would need the relevant files and source material to be on there - including pictures.
Without full details of the nature of the material found in his house it's not possible to comment on his likely guilt or innocence of the alleged crimes, but by paying the Geek squad tech a bounty to make illlegal searches on the Feeb's behalf it's already clear that the due process of law enforcement was circumvented here. Let the doctor go, punish the feebs, sack the geek. And if the doctor really is guilty, do the job properly and catch him lawfully next time.
Not excusing this sort of behavior, but these people are dumb to think that techs will not see the drive contents. When I worked for IBM and had to send my laptop in for repair, it was a requirement that the hdd was removed. If I had to send a laptop for repair now I would remove the hdd, I have nothing to hide but it's my data and ONLY I control it.
" If I had to send a laptop for repair now I would remove the hdd, I have nothing to hide but it's my data and ONLY I control it."
The problem in this case was that the laptop wouldn't start. The problem may well have been on the drive so removing it wouldn't help. And whilst you and I might be happy to remove a drive before sending it in for repair the average punter wouldn't. So the point is that although the tech can see what's on the disk they've no business looking at anything that isn't strictly appropriate to the task so in practice they shouldn't see other stuff.
So a person takes their computer to Best Buy for repair.
What kind of repair necessitates the technician viewing images?
Are technicians browsing their customer's computers in hope of a $500 payoff?
If so, that seems to be reason enough to toss the suit, and perhaps to prosecute the tech.
Some suggest the search of the hard drive was not part of his the Geed Squad person's job. I do not know Best Buy policy, but I know where I used to take my computer for repairs there was and still is a BIG sign that says any hard drive brought in will be scanned to find pornography, any pornography. Because of this article, I even called them and asked if they still did it. The town has laws against even Playboy.
If they tell you they are going to scan drives, and you give a system to them and they discover illegal material, that is kind of like driving your car to a police station and telling them they can search it knowing you have got 20 kilograms of cocaine in the front seat. Do they really need a search warrant if you give permission?
And yes, I remember having a program, I think it was called Webcrawler that would download entire sites and even follow links downloading those sites. I once found a picture I thought was child pornography and called the police. They came and declared it was not but did take the trace information (site and complete path on the site) which the downloader kept for every file.
Again I do not know about Best Buy but a Best Buy tech planting evidence would be really suspicious if one employee is finding a lot of illegal material and no one else was, unless he was assigned to look for illegal material. So planting files, I do not think so.
I do not know about the policies of Best Buy but the computer repair store I used to take my system to has a big sign saying they scan all hard drives for illegal content. I asked what all they were looking for and was told any pirated software, pirated music, pirated videos, software used for pirating, and any pornography, the town did not even allow the sale of Playboy. I would say having that big sign and you turning over your system with storage media in it, pretty well is giving permission to search it including unallocated space.
At least at that time, the local Best Buy had the same sign. Of course that was close to 15 - 20 years ago.
If a copy of the "your machine may be searched and virus scanned for diagnostic and data recovery purposes if you submit it for repair, should you NOT want this to be done please tick this box and be aware that by doing so your hard drive(s) will be ERASED AND ALL DATA LOST" form was forthcoming. I used to work in IT and this was a major thing.
Interestingly I once was in the position of having to report suspicious content, ended up handing over the drive to the authorities (with a copy of said form with box unticked and the customer's signature) and fitting a replacement with nearly identical serial number. Never did find out what the outcome was, but pretty sure someone got busted and rightfully so.
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