Documents Said to Detail Informant Relationship Between FBI, Geek Squad

The FBI paid Best Buy Geek Squad employees to act as informants (see 1706010015) in a close relationship dating back at least 10 years, said documents released Tuesday that the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. An FBI memo said the company hosted a bureau cyber working group meeting at its Kentucky repair facility in September 2008 and worked with the agency to flag illegal material on customer computers, which EFF claims violates the Fourth Amendment. The documents detail communications between Best Buy employees and the FBI’s Louisville office over customer material believed to be child pornography and illegal material discovered through manual device searches. Best Buy said in a statement that at least four employees, three of whom no longer work there, received payment for turning over alleged child porn to the FBI. “Any decision to accept payment was in very poor judgment and inconsistent with our training and policies,” said its statement Wednesday, noting the fourth employee was reprimanded and reassigned. The company said Geek Squad repair employees discover what appears to be child porn about 100 times a year inadvertently through recovering lost customer data. “We have a moral and, in more than 20 states, a legal obligation to report these findings to law enforcement,” the retailer said. “We share this policy with our customers in writing before we begin any repair.” The company denies employees received law enforcement training, saying they do only what's “necessary” to solve customer queries. The FBI didn’t comment.