@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!

This is why I’m so glad my laptop has an easily removable hard drive.

Also I sense a Lawsuit against the techs brewing.

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

@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?