>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 technician had a duty to notify authorities.
The technicians were classified as CHS so that the FBI could track their relationship with them.
>During 2007 and 2008, I am aware of four employees of Best Buy Geek Squad in Brooks, Kentucky, who contacted us regarding child pornography on customers' devices. To best track the relationship with these individuals and document contacts the FBI had with them, we classified these individuals as confidential human sources ("CHS's"), though they were simply employees at the Best Buy Geek Squad who happened to be in a position to report child pornography that technicians had come across on devices during the course of repair.
Further searches revealed child porn. Not the "grey-area" stuff that kicked off the investigation, if you can even call it that.
>A later search of the iPhone revealed alleged child pornography that is charged in Count 2 of the Indictment.
If best buy employees are acting as agents of the government they require a warrant and cannot search by acting as computer repair techs as a cover for an otherwise illegal search.
The search was authorized.
>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 technician had a duty to notify authorities.
The technicians were classified as CHS so that the FBI could track their relationship with them.
>During 2007 and 2008, I am aware of four employees of Best Buy Geek Squad in Brooks, Kentucky, who contacted us regarding child pornography on customers' devices. To best track the relationship with these individuals and document contacts the FBI had with them, we classified these individuals as confidential human sources ("CHS's"), though they were simply employees at the Best Buy Geek Squad who happened to be in a position to report child pornography that technicians had come across on devices during the course of repair.
Further searches revealed child porn. Not the "grey-area" stuff that kicked off the investigation, if you can even call it that.
>A later search of the iPhone revealed alleged child pornography that is charged in Count 2 of the Indictment.