Thanks to an FOIA lawsuit, the FBI has finally started handing over documents to the EFF detailing the federal agency's "partnership" with Best Buy Geek Squad employees. The too-cozy-to-be-Fourth-Amendment-compliant relationship was uncovered during discovery in a child porn prosecution. Produced documents showed the FBI not only paid Geek Squad members to search for child porn, but it actively engaged in recruiting efforts at Best Buy locations.

The problem with this relationship is the relationship. And the money. While tech repair personnel are expected to turn over discovered child porn to authorities, the active efforts of the FBI alter the incentives, pushing Geek Squad members towards digging through customers' computers for illicit material, rather than simply reporting what they come across during the course of their work.

The FBI wants to keep this relationship with Best Buy intact. It also wants to keep the evidence provided by Geek Squad members. While private searches can be used to predicate investigations, paying people to look for illegal material when their job is to repair devices turns this into a proxy search for federal law enforcement. That's not permitted under the Fourth Amendment and the FBI certainly knows it. The files central to this prosecution were discovered in unallocated space, making it unlikely they weren't discovered during routine repairs. It would imply a Geek Squad member went digging for illicit material, motivated by a possible payout from the FBI if anything was found.

The documents obtained by the EFF provide further evidence the FBI paid Geek Squad members to perform searches for it. They also show this relationship dates back at least a decade, with Best Buy doing its best to become an unofficial branch of the FBI.

The documents released to EFF show that Best Buy officials have enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the agency for at least 10 years. For example, an FBI memo from September 2008 details how Best Buy hosted a meeting of the agency’s “Cyber Working Group” at the company’s Kentucky repair facility.

The memo and a related email show that Geek Squad employees also gave FBI officials a tour of the facility before their meeting and makes clear that the law enforcement agency’s Louisville Division “has maintained close liaison with the Geek Squad’s management in an effort to glean case initiations and to support the division’s Computer Intrusion and Cyber Crime programs.”

This relationship has been the basis for several FBI investigations -- all predicated on actions that stray close to the edge of the Fourth Amendment, if not going past its boundaries completely.

Other documents show that over the years of working with Geek Squad employees, FBI agents developed a process for investigating and prosecuting people who sent their devices to the Geek Squad for repairs. The documents detail a series of FBI investigations in which a Geek Squad employee would call the FBI’s Louisville field office after finding what they believed was child pornography.

[...]

Some of these reports indicate that the FBI treated Geek Squad employees as informants, identifying them as “CHS,” which is shorthand for confidential human sources. In other cases, the FBI identifies the initial calls as coming from Best Buy employees, raising questions as to whether certain employees had different relationships with the FBI.

More information about this misuse of private searches will likely find its way into open court and the public domain in the next several years. The FBI is still withholding several files, which probably further corroborate the agency's incentivizing of invasive device searches. And Best Buy is likely not the only company offering both computer repairs and FBI-prompted "private searches" The EFF notes the FBI refuses to confirm or deny it has a similar relationship with other retailers.

The EFF is headed back to court to challenge the FBI's withholding of these documents, so additional documents may be produced sooner than later. But if the FBI can convince the court its payouts to tech repair staff are investigative methods that would be compromised if discussed publicly, we may see nothing at all. But it also has to convince another court its use of Best Buy employees as informants is kosher under the Fourth Amendment. And it has yet to do that.

The US government would like to be involved in the web censorship business. The anti-sex trafficking bill recently passed by the House would do just that, forcing service providers to pre-censor possibly harmless content out of fear of being sued for the criminal acts of private citizens. Much has been made recently of "fake news" and its distribution via Russian bots, with some suggesting legislation is the answer to a problem no one seems to be able to define. This too would be a form of censorship, forcing social media platforms to make snap decisions about new users and terminate accounts that seem too automated or too willing to distribute content Congressional reps feel is "fake."

For the most part, legislation isn't in the making. Instead, reps are hoping to shame, nudge, and coerce tech companies into self-censorship. This keeps the government's hands clean, but there's always the threat of a legal mandate backing legislators' suggestions.

Key critic of Russian bots and social media companies in general -- Senator Dianne Feinstein -- has signed a handful of letters asking four major tech companies to start censoring drug-related material. Her co-signers on these ridiculous letters are Chuck Grassley, Amy Klobuchar, John Kennedy, and Sheldon Whitehouse. As members of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotic Control, they apparently believe Microsoft, Yahoo (lol), Pinterest, and Google should start preventing users for searching for drug information. (h/t Tom Angell)

The letters [PDFs here: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Pinterest] all discuss the search results returned when people search for information on buying drugs. (For instance, "buy percocet online.") But the letter doesn't limit itself to asking these companies to ensure only legitimate sites show up in the search results. It actually asks the companies to censor all results for drug information.

The senators specifically urge Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Pinterest to take the following steps in helping us fight the opioid crisis:

• Directing users to legal and legitimate pharmacies that require a valid prescription as a condition of sale when users search for medicines on each platforms;
• Disabling the ability to search for illicit drugs through each platform;
• Requiring each platform to report to law enforcement when that platform receives information indicating that a company wants to advertise the use of or sale of illicit narcotics;
• Establishing a 24/7 telephone point of contact with whom law enforcement can communicate directly; and
• Incorporating training for each platform’s security reviewers to enable them to better recognize these threats when they first arise.

It's the second bullet point that's key. It simply says "disable the ability to search for illicit drugs." There's no way to comply with that directive that won't result in the disappearance of useful information needed by thousands of search engine users. As Angell points out in this tweet, this would possibly cause information about drug interactions to be delisted. On top of that, students often need to research illegal drugs for class assignments and term papers. Authors and journalists also need access to a variety of drug info, including various ways they can be purchased online. Law enforcement Googles stuff just like the rest of us and its ability to track down purveyors of illegal drugs would be harmed if it was all pushed off the open web.

Those seeking to buy illegal drugs would find other ways of accomplishing this even if the info disappears. The so-called dark web is an off-the-radar option that many are using already. A whole host of useful info is in danger of being removed simply because questionable purveyors of prescription drugs have found a way to game search engine algorithms.

All of the companies receiving letters already have policies in place to restrict the illicit sale of drugs. They also have policies in place to forward pertinent info to law enforcement agencies. So, companies are already doing much of what is asked, but these senators feel the mere existence of questionable sites in search results makes these companies "facilitators" of illegal drug sales.

If SESTA is signed into law, it will make it that much easier for the government to demand similar legislation targeting opioid distribution. It will allow the government to claw back more of the immunity granted to service providers with the passage of the Communications Decency Act. The more holes drilled into Section 230 by legislation, the easier it is to remove it entirely, and paint targets on the back of search engines and social media platforms.

It's also dangerous to suggest companies need to set up dedicated 24/7 service for law enforcement agencies. This will only encourage law enforcement to bypass legal protections set up by previous legislation and lean on companies already feeling the heat from the government's increasingly-insane reaction to opioid overdoses. Warrants will seem unnecessary when legislators in DC are saying tech companies must be more responsive to law enforcement than they already are.

A suggestion from the government to start censoring search results is exactly that: censorship. The government may not be mandating it, but this is nothing like a concerned citizens group asking for more policing of search results. There's the threat of legislation and other government action propelling it. Even if these senators aren't mandating policy changes, they're still using the weight of their position to compel alteration of search results.

For years telecom monopolies have downplayed the lack of competition in the broadband sector, and the chain reaction of problems this creates for everybody (from privacy infractions to net neutrality violations). At the same time, large ISP lobbyists (and the regulators, politicians and policy flacks paid to love them) have insisted that it's Silicon Valley companies the public really need to worry about. As a result, ISPs like Comcast and ATT routinely insist that we need new regulations governing companies like Google and Facebook, but entrenched natural monopolies should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they'd like.

This of course requires you ignore a few things. One, that the lack of competition in broadband makes the two sectors an apples to oranges comparison. Customers frustrated by Facebook's bad behavior can vote with their wallets, something most Comcast customers can't do. You're also supposed to ignore the fact that large ISPs are simply trying to saddle Google and Facebook with additional regulation because they're increasingly trying to challenge them for advertising revenue in the video and media space.

This underlying narrative is constant, whether it's FCC boss Ajit Pai weirdly demonizing Netflix, to telecom-industry funded smear campaigns that try to suggest Google is a nasty freeloader that doesn't pay for bandwidth. Speaking at a sector trade show in Ireland this week, former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Michael Powell dusted off this rhetoric and turned up the volume. He began by insisting the quest for a healthy and open internet was "irrelevant" because the real villains are Silicon Valley companies hungrily gobbling up "mindshare":

"Michael Powell, president of NCTA-The Internet Television Association, told the crowd at a Cable Congress Dublin event in Ireland Tuesday (March 6) that the network neutrality debate sucks up money, resources and "mindshare," but is increasingly an irrelevant discussion.

What isn't irrelevant, he suggested, is for governments in the U.S. and abroad to start looking at tech companies/edge providers like Facebook, their size and power, and the harm they can do to mental health by keeping consumers chasing the dopamine rush of "likes" and "streaks" as a way to glue them to devices.

Right. So again, notice how some of the most despised and least competitive companies in America aren't a problem and should be free from regulation, but Facebook and Google (which again, consumers can choose not to use) require vast expansions in regulatory oversight. Powell, whose tenure at the FCC consisted of comically denying any competition issues whatsoever, repeatedly called out Apple, Facebook and Google as the worst sort of villains; villainy that somehow, magically, makes the whole net neutrality conversation moot:

"They have the size, power and influence of a nation state. Antitrust policy has barely begun to address how to check this power to protect consumers and healthy competition."...He called the net neutrality debate "mindless trench warfare" and said that, as in the First World War, Democratic and activist cries that the battle for an open internet was a war to end all wars would prove wrong.

"Net neutrality policy does not remotely address the issues companies and consumers are facing today and likely will face in the future," Powell said. "Put simply, net neutrality is deeply rooted in engineering, consumer expectations, corporate business models and the norms of internet activity. It is firmly entrenched, and I don’t believe the open internet experience will change, whatever the outcome of the current debate."

So one, Comcast owns NBC and is considering a $31 billion acquisition of European satellite TV provider Sky, so it's not clear Powell's the guy to turn to when talking about media consolidation worries. Two, the idea that the "open internet experience" won't change if ISPs are successful in their current bid to gut FTC, FCC and state authority over natural monopolies is simply comical. History is filled with endless examples of how a lack of competition or reasonable regulatory oversight of natural monopolies results in higher prices and worse service. In telecom this lack of competition is already profound, routinely exemplified by everything from privacy violations to net neutrality infractions.

That's not to say that companies like Facebook and Google don't have their own universe of issues. Both were totally absent from the latest net neutrality fight as they slowly but surely shift from innovation and disruption to turf protection. And there's countless conversations to be had regarding their privacy practices and the country's ugly little disinformation problem.

But despised monopolists like Comcast calling for hyper-regulation of companies they're trying to compete with is pretty damn hard to take seriously. When Powell wasn't busy trying to insist that companies like Facebook were to blame for the nation's mental health issues, he was was hypocritically giving the audience lessons on anti-competitive behavior and a respect for consumer privacy:

"Our governmental authorities need to get a handle on what kind of market power and harm flow from companies that have an unassailable hold on large pools of big data, which serve as barriers to entry, allowing them to dominate industries throughout the economy," he said. "For years, big tech companies have been extinguishing competitive threats by buying or crushing promising new technologies just as they were emerging," he said. "They dominate their core business, and rarely have to foreclose competition by buying their peers. "Competition policy must scrutinize more rigorously deals that allow dominant platforms to kill competitive technologies in the cradle," he added.

If you've watched the companies Powell represents do business, that's pretty funny. As is Powell's claim that Silicon Valley giants have too much influence over government, a claim made just a few months after revolving door regulators sold out the public on net neutrality:

"We have reached a point where governments can no longer coddle and cater to tech companies," he said. "They have become too large, too influential and too indispensable to live above regulatory scrutiny. As a start, we need to reject the 'do no evil' fairytale." These companies must be brought back down to earth and regulators must recognize them for what they are: profit-maximizing corporations that have a strong incentive and ability to pursue their own self-interest over the interests of society and consumers."

Oh no! You mean just like Comcast, and Charter Spectrum? In the heads of many telecom executives, the quest for net neutrality (despite having massive support from the public) was all one mean cabal by Google designed to ruin their good time. But despite this breathless concern for consumer and market welfare, this hysteria serves only one real purpose: to saddle companies Comcast wants to challenge for advertising "mindshare" with numerous additional regulations, while leaving entrenched telecom monopolies free to run amok.