Bad policy

around lunchtime on Wednesday, the 17th of August 2005 by Chad

Service Technicians Can’t Snoop on Your Hard Drive for the Government
EFF Weighs in on Computer Privacy Case in Washington
Washington - Imagine if the law permitted the people who service your computer to share all the personal information on your hard drive with the police, without your consent and without a search warrant. A case on appeal to the Washington State Court of Appeals, State v. Westbrook, threatens to allow just that, turning your friendly neighborhood computer repair technician into a government informer.
Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the respondent, Robert Westbrook, arguing that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their computers, and that their Fourth Amendment rights don’t disappear when a computer is delivered to a technician for servicing.
When Westbrook dropped off his personal computer at a Gateway Computer store for servicing, a technician saw private files on the computer that he thought might be illegal. Gateway called the police, who searched through personal files on Westbrook’s hard drive looking for more evidence — before ever getting a warrant. The trial court found, and EFF argues in its brief to the appeals court, that this violated Westbrook’s Fourth Amendment rights.
“Customers who drop off their computers for servicing reasonably expect that their private data won’t be handed over to the police without a warrant,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kur

Sounds reasonable right? Well, change “computer” into “car” and change “possibly illegal files” into “body in the trunk.”
The car is dropped off to be fixed, and in the course of servicing the vehicle, the mechanic suspects something is wrong in the trunk and calls police.
No issue there, so what is the difference? There is nothing special about a computer that means it is special in any way.
In my career with computers I have seen many things that should not have been left on PC’s. I always personally enjoyed being the one to recover a PC of a terminated employee. Especially the one woman who left AIM chat logs of her S&M sessions right on the desktop. The entire IT support team laughed for hours on that one!