Evidence uncovered by retail store technicians (i.e. kiddie porn), is legally admissible as evidence in court because, “If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents…,” the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled December 5th. The case hinged on the question of whether kiddie porn a Circuit City tech found could be admitted as evidence, overturning a lower court’s decision. The Superior Court of PA also referred to codecs, computer video compression and decompression software, as “code X.”
Police Blotter: Can Circuit City techs legally peruse files? [ZDNET]
(Photo: jadakatt)
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If I’m understanding this right, the reason they can turn you in is because you give up expectations of privacy. Couldn’t this be circumvented by just saying “While your fixing my computer, could you not look in folder X, it has sensitive information that I want to remain private?” Of course a GS or FD employee would then immediately open that folder, but since you requested it to remain private (and they presumably agreed) they shouldn’t be able to use anything in it against your, right? I guess they could call the police and let them get a warrant because of your “suspicious” activities, but I doubt the police will be happy if it just turns out to be last year’s tax returns.
I have been repairing computers since the BBS days and am appalled at this decision. Plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen do not have the same access to private information. While they can be put into an uncomfortable position when confronted with pop plants growing along side the water heater, this is not the case with computer repairs. Whatever I find on a customer’s computer stays private – very similar to attorney/client and doctor/patient. Many of my customers are in very competitive fields and their private information needs to remain private. Furthermore, a hard drive crash or circuit board failure is not a “planned” repair and the individual has no chance of protecting what is or is not on their computer at the instant of failure…
@macshasta: I’ve been repairing them as long as you have.
and i agree that private information remains private when I’m dealing with customer data.
But the decision comes as no surprise and doesn’t bother me at all.
In the past 20+ years multiple employers have instructed me, as i now instruct my employees that if child pornography is found in the course of servicing the computer to stop immediately and call the police.
This direction came not from sense of moral obligation but from legal counsel.
There is a level of trust and privacy that must be maintained between the repair person and the client.
If i were to find and take any data from a customers computer and use it for personal gain (selling trade secrets, spanking to nekkid pictures of his wife, blackmail) then I would be legally liable and and subject to prosecution or civil suit.
But since the law says that criminal activity such as possession of child porn must be reported, I’m under no legal or moral obligation to keep things quiet out of concern for the privacy of the customer.
That being said, most repairs do not even warrant searching a hard drive for anything.
the only think in my experience that you might see a filename that would cause concern would be a virus scan or a data transfer.
And though I’ve never done it with a new drive, I’ve verified a CD burner works by searching for files and burning them to the CD.
When testing an existing burner for operation, or even to test tape backups, i usually just search for *.txt files and use those since they are abundant on any system.
But the decision i believe is accurate.
It’s funny how people are stoked when the child pornographer is caught but pissed when they find out someone’s copying their own porn…
@macshasta:
Roger that.
If your porn isn’t covered by a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy,’ what’s next? Can you suddenly not sue someone for taking your company’s trade secrets because you checked your PC in for repair?
And with regard to legal documents, is attorney/client privilege suddenly thrown out the window because a lawyer had to have his PC repaired?
@Blackneto:
And when you take my strangely named “XXX Underage 14yr old XXX.AVI” and turn it in, and it turns out to just be a video of my grandmother’s birthday party, I get to sue your ass off for all of the legal fees, damage to my reputation, and psychological trauma of having people think I’m a kiddie porn peddler.
Sounds like a good idea, I need to start a campaign of entrapping you tools who insist on sticking your noses where it doesn’t belong.
If there’s a human life involved, if you find something that clearly implicates the owner in a kidnapping, for example, there may be call for extraordinary action. But short of extraordinarily off-the-wall situations like that, you are not a super-spy, and you need to keep your little weasel mouth shut.
@RvLeshrac:
Go right ahead and sue.
I’d rather lose the business than break the law by not reporting obvious child pornography.
In civil court you would have to prove that i acted maliciously to defame you.
You would also have to prove that I was out of bounds in the way i found the file because it wouldn’t just be the file i turn in. Procedure is to leave the computer alone and call the cops when something like this is found. Then they decide what to do from there according to their procedure’s.
And normally this includes me giving a sworn statement for the criminal case that is to follow stating why i had the computer, what procedure was i performing and how i came across that file.
My attorney would have this statement admitted in the civil suit as evidence for my defense.
On the flip side, say i don’t report it and a weasel like you gets busted later for diddling little kids. They find kiddy porn on your computer and you say i put it there when you brought your computer in for service.
Now my business is shut down while it’s investigated and my customers are inconvieniced or outraged and my reputation is on the line for breaking the law.
I think I’ll just stick to my standards.
I just finished reading the ruling [www.superior.court.state.pa.us]
While I agree with the court they just went way around the horn to get there.
The guy has no expectation of privacy on the videos because burning a video off of the hard drive is a reasonable way to test the burner. If the tech had opened a word document instead, Mr. Pervert may have a case against Circuit City and/or the employee but not the police.
Based on what the tech showed and told the police, they had probable cause to seize the computer based on well established rulings. A police officer can seize property if there is a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed and the evidence can be destroyed or hidden before a warrant can be issued.
Just to reiterate what others have mentioned: does this mean they can just take credit card numbers from your computer and post them on the web?
@Blackneto:
And if the tech ‘turns in’ someone after planting a file, how exactly do you propose the innocent individual defends themselves? It is perfectly easy to turn the date back on the machine to generate a false time/date-stamp.
How do you propose that an innocent person who is the victim of a botnet of some sort defend themselves? Hiring a security consultant can take far more money than most people (or government-provided indigent services) have.
What if that person is the victim of a third-party who planted the images for just such an opportunity? All you need to do now is plant a few bad images and then cause a problem with the machine (many, many ways to cause a machine to stop booting, most people will take it to a repair shop rather than do a simple restore themselves, or perhaps they need the data on the machine).
Haven’t exactly hit the article, but if this is the one I remember, the guy threw in a guilty plea. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until someone innocent is tossed in jail and has their life utterly and completely ruined by a sex-offender registry before people like you give a damn.
@RvLeshrac: I think you are missing the point.
I don’t care how the heck the files get on their computer.
It’s not my responsibility to decide.
I’m not going to plant a file. None of my colleagues that I’ve worked with over the years is going to. The assertion that some random tech is going to waste their time hunting up nasty pictures of little kids just to frame somebody is really a stretch.
What is my responsibility, and my duty under law, is to report to the authorities if i find CP on a computer and let them handle it.
Truthfully, I don’t care what happens to the owner of the computer.
It won’t be me that is wrongfully accusing them if the charges brought by the authorities are false.
In a situation like this, My company, my reputation, my children’s right to have their father around is more important than someone else.
And all the claims about somebody possibly planting evidence are ridiculous.
The forensics that the folks who investigate these things with can reasonably determine the source of them material in question.
As I indicated before I’d rather lose my business due to a decision to do what’s right than try to protect it out of fear.
This is why I’m so glad my laptop has an easily removable hard drive.
Also I sense a Lawsuit against the techs brewing.
@Valhawk:
One can only hope…
Of course, with people like Blackneto around, we’re just going to sink further and further into a fascist state.
Maybe McCarthy was right, and it was just his methods that were horrible. Maybe we’re turning into a Soviet country, where everyone is expected to report their neighbors for any offense, real or imagined, to the state.
Maybe we’ll wind up with new programs in place to encourage it, just like Soviet Russia! Turn in your neighbor, you get to keep their house!