According to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the United States Department of Justice systematically violated the Fourth Amendments when it allowed the FBI to recruit computer repair technicians to act as informants and turn over data to agents.
The Discovery of Invasive Forensic Searches of Computers
A 2016 investigative report by the Washington Post revealed that Geek Squad, the computer repair division of retail giant Best Buy, the FBI trained and paid technicians and their supervisors to look for certain data stored in the computers of customers who took their devices to be repaired. Geek Squad technicians developed a program to conduct a forensic search of information, which was invasive and inquisitive to the point of looking for deleted files.
A+ Plus Computers Work to Protect Your Data Privacy
At A Plus Computers, respecting data privacy is a must. Computer repair technicians know that information is very valuable for customers; to this effect, data and password recovery services are conducted with a high degree of care and respect. Unless there is an absolute need to verify data integrity in case files have become corrupted, technicians will not open files; in fact, it is not uncommon to call device owners to the shop and ask them to open their own recovered files for validation purposes.