It sounds like the techs were not on a fishing expedition, but came across the images in performance of their normal duties.
>The hard drive arrived at Best Buy’s Brooks, Kentucky facility on November 25, 2011, and an initial search was performed by a Best Buy employee at 9:00 p.m. on November 28, 2011, revealing that the “drive appears to have been restored, underlying data visible.” (Bates 853.) Best Buy called Rettenmaier less than thirty minutes later; he authorized “Level 2” repair and identified “[p]ictures, excel files, quicken files, text and word documents” as the most important files to recover. (Id.)
>On or about December 20, 2011, Best Buy technician John “Trey” Westphal observed what he deemed to be inappropriate content on the hard drive. (Dkt. 152 at 4.) His discovery occurred after the data recovery repair for images—“to determine that the repair was successful [Westphal] must access the files to verify that the files were recovered intact.” (Bates 823.)
The later search of Rettenmaier's home turned up child pornography on 5 separate device. Those facts lead me to stand where I do on this issue.
>The later search of Rettenmaier's home turned up child pornography on 5 separate device. Those facts lead me to stand where I do on this issue.
As abhorrent as CP is, the more important question here is whether the FBI's investigative tactics comply with our civil rights. It sounds exactly like the FBI set the Geek Squad on a fishing expedition. None of the stuff you added refutes that. Just because they found child pornography evidence independent of that discovered by the Geek Squad does not mean that we should be satisfied with their investigative tactics. You need to weigh this against the possibility that the FBI's "lists of targeted citizens" is obviously problematic. There are almost certainly people on that list who are in fact innocent of a crime. What if this list had been made public by a Best Buy employee? Simply having one's name on the list with [person recently prosecuted] for [abhorrent crime] could ruin a person's reputation.
>The hard drive arrived at Best Buy’s Brooks, Kentucky facility on November 25, 2011, and an initial search was performed by a Best Buy employee at 9:00 p.m. on November 28, 2011, revealing that the “drive appears to have been restored, underlying data visible.” (Bates 853.) Best Buy called Rettenmaier less than thirty minutes later; he authorized “Level 2” repair and identified “[p]ictures, excel files, quicken files, text and word documents” as the most important files to recover. (Id.)
>On or about December 20, 2011, Best Buy technician John “Trey” Westphal observed what he deemed to be inappropriate content on the hard drive. (Dkt. 152 at 4.) His discovery occurred after the data recovery repair for images—“to determine that the repair was successful [Westphal] must access the files to verify that the files were recovered intact.” (Bates 823.)
The later search of Rettenmaier's home turned up child pornography on 5 separate device. Those facts lead me to stand where I do on this issue.