Best Buy Geek Squad Agents ‘Going Sleeper’ After Mass Layoffs

Journalism is basically beyond saving at this point...

I mean, it's basically a no name website. It's not like this is a NYTimes, AP, or The Atlantic headline.

Edit: I guess what I'm really asking is, it's a bad headline from a small publisher (it's surely happened many many times for decades), can't we leave it at that without the dramatization?

Exactly. They wanted to highlight the dumb “sleeper” line for some reason, even though it’s probably the least newsworthy part of the message. “Geek Squad faces huge layoffs, members call it ‘going sleeper’” is much clearer but still a waste of time and space.

And we all know everybody’s great at reading the article.

Headlines aren't supposed to be deep cuts to geeksquad lingo that's only explained in the body.

Babbages, Software Etc., EB Games, and Funcoland all got absorbed into what is now Gamestop, but who knows how long they'll hold on.

Game releases this year have been super light, unless there are some major announcements coming up, it's not looking great for them. :(

I remember software etc. They had a big event for the dreamcast being released. 9/9/99. I wore that free shirt with the date that I got there from playing sonic adventure for like 15 years

We had one in Minneapolis at the Mall of America when it opened. It had a great selection but I was still partial to Cheapo, Northern Lights, and Positively 4th St. Cheapo is still around and I stop in there a few times a year. The other 2 closed down a long time ago -- possibly before MOA opened in the early 90's I think,

Went to the one in LA on a trip recently. Was awesome to see that much great music on one spot again.

It's wild that we probably won't see a return to those types of stores ever again. COVID really put the final nail in the coffin.

Not to any meaningful degree. You're better off at Vintage Stock tbh

Can't think where I've seen any there, some software but not even really games since those have largely gone for distribution via Steam or similar.

They do not. But they are the best place to buy TVs IMHO.

lol yeah, in the 90s you could go in there and buy a couple resistors, a couple capacitors, and a couple (expensive, crappy) LEDs

I can see how that didn’t work out for them though

They did indeed, and the Radio Shack in my town was one the last ones I ever saw to still sell individual components although the selection did shrink rapidly in the final years. The other locations around and about seemingly all turned into basically exclusively cell phone stores, right around the time the cell phone boom was happening. The problem with that: So was every other retailer on Earth, but most of those other retailers also had other product lines to fall back on. The inevitable tanking happened shortly thereafter.

There are somehow apparently still around 500 Radio Shack stores still operating, I believe all of which are privately owned. I have seen a couple in my travels, all of them located far out into the sticks in Appalachia and the Midwest, presumably all locations that are not served well by larger competitors or the internet.

at one point in time they sold small-scale electronic components for hobbyists.

As well as the tools to go with them.

And almost every product or device you bought there had a schematic of the internal circuits printed in the manual that came in the box.

At one point it was a mecca for electronics tinkerers and hobbyists.

I still have a soldering iron and a couple spools on solder that I bought there way back in history.

It's up to you, but over here it looks like an abuse of power and a violation of trust. If they can't be trusted not to look at the data they're trying to restore (except directly in the service of restoring it) they they can't be trusted with a business PC containing accounting data or legal correspondence either.

And a violation of trust in the service of law enforcement is still a violation of trust in the public. Considering how this would poison the service for business clients, I am surprised it doesn't run contrary to Best Buy terms of employment (outside of mandated reporting, which is why mandated reporting laws exist for some cases).

On the other hand AT&T will gladly spooge your phone call records to the police if they ask for it. (No warrant necessary.) And Amazon's Ring doorbell videos are sold to law enforcement whenever they want it (without permission of the doorbell owners.) But that's finally resulted in trouble, and Amazon is rethinking this service.

It is interesting that in this economy which is intentionally managed to create a shortage of jobs and to lower wages, that employees are expected to betray the public trust and even engage in illegal activity at the behest of their employers just to stay employed, and that some of us might find this as an acceptable state of affairs. And yes, when business goes sour for the company, those employees will be discarded with no additional acknowledgment for their loyalty.

The problem isn't that the computers had CP, it's that the techs looked through the data.

Yes, if they happen to see CP while doing their normal work, they should report it. But their normal work shouldn't involve looking through pictures at all in the first place.

Are you thinking of this instance? It's an instance that could happen to any of us. The CSAM in question was found (and only found) in garbage data in unused storage. And it means our GS tech had actively scan (go out of his way), rather than just fix the machine.

It also means it's inconclusive, since that kind of stuff can end up in your webcache through malware vectored through advertising. CSAM is weaponized in malware. Heck, there are CSAM images in the Bitcoin blockchain file (or were, if they found a way to scour them). Not that innocent websurfers have not been falsely convicted due to invisible crap in their cleared webcache, but we should know better by now.

It does raise a question about what you believe regarding the limits of our civil rights. Do you believe evidence illegally obtained by law enforcement should be wholly admissible if the crime is heinous enough? SCOTUS does, and ruled that even drug possession discovered during an illegal search should be admissible. But that pretty much means you and I cannot rely on constitutional protections from unreasonable search and seizure.

Here in the States, preserving our protections and our privacy sometimes means defending the worst people. See, it's supposed to be a penalty against the state for poorly executing the law when someone can't be convicted due to inadmissible evidence. If a guilty citizen is improperly treated by law enforcement (according to the legal theory that supposed Blackstone's ratio) then they should be acquitted, and the public has only the incompetence of state actors to blame.

Law enforcement is supposed to respect your protections, and if we let them conduct illegal searches (such as buying data from brokers, or using IMSI spoofers without a warrant, or asking Google for everyone within a mile and an hour of a criminal incident) then they're going conduct those same illegal searches when you're working with your mutual aid organization or are protesting against injustice. If serial killers and child molesters aren't protected from overpolicing, then you aren't either, and if you happen to be nonwhite, LGBT+ or part of another marginalized group (Juggalos!) then you're in far more danger of illegal searches, false convictions and prison time, assuming you're just not the victim of an officer-involved homicide.

If you live in the US, it's very difficult not to commit crimes, particularly federal felonies. There but for your privacy (and / or the grace of prosecutorial discretion) goes your freedom and reputation.

That said, the FBI has been super sloppy in its pursuit to hunt down CSAM traders, even letting their high-end malware leak into the public to be dissected and used by black-hats, and interests of rival nations.

Hey man, you're kinda narrowing down the entire problem of the right to privacy being consistently shat upon by your government into "well I knew one person where it was justified so this means those who argue against it fuck kids"

I understand what you mean and if you want to carve an exception into the law for CP I'd be all for it - maybe everyone is a mandated reporter of child porn, and all suspicions MUST be reported to the FBI and the evidence handed over. But I don't wanna get swatted just because my wife and I are into BDSM and we photographed a particularly rough session. Or because I took some pics of some clear plastic bags filled with flour that I put in my trunk to prank a friend. Or a million other things a geek squad guy might misinterpret and call the police for.

An exec being able to do that without being questioned is not healthy. OP's point stands.

They’re going to get bonuses anyway.

Without having looked at any of the subscription changes, my guess is they increased subscription costs with minimal if any increases in offered services. Is that correct?