http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2324210,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532


A recently passed law requires that Texas computer-repair technicians have a private-investigator license, according to a story posted by a Dallas-Fort Worth CW affiliate.

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Why?so Big Brother can legally make Computer Techs accessory to Staats Securitat?

And granted immunity.

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Sharing my partner's 2012 Forte 5dr SX til I find my next 123 or 126..
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Do I miss being a service advisor ???

Sounds like some politico got caught doing something he shouldn't have (on his HD) when he took it in for repair and the technician turned it over to the authorities...

Laws, IMHO, are written to protect the guilty and to punish the good and innocent...

Ever read any tax laws...recently?

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M. G. Burg
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Posted at Slashdot a couple days ago.

In short - the reports are incredibly misleading. Read the comments in the link above for a more rational review of the new law, and why an argument can be made that it actually makes sense.

Point is that if a good talented techie doesn't have any desire to get a PI license or fails it then the industry looses an opportunity to have a talented hardware guy who are already in a short number.

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99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

Apparently not.

Did you read the link posted by DaNag?

In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be forced to shut down. Violators of the new law can be hit with a $4,000 dollar fine and up to a year in jail, penalties that apply to customers who seek out their services.

This is what the link shows. Unless we are reading something else.

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99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

Read the entire law. .

Sec. 1702.104 defines an "investigations company". A person acts as an investigations company if he engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employement to obtain or furnish information related to crimes or activity of a person, or location of stolen property, or cause for a fire, libel, etc.

A computer repair business in not in the business of doing any of that. They aren't in the business of obtaining information regarding crimes, they are in the computer repair business. The information they gather is "what doesn't work".

It is 1702.104(b) that seems to be troublesome because it talks about "computer-based data not available to the public."

The fact that 1702.104(b) defines what obtaining information means is irrelevant, since (a)(1) doesn't apply to a computer repair business to start with. Defining what obtaining data means doesn't change the limitations on who 1702.104(a)(1) applies to. It expands the activities of the people who are covered by (a)(1) to include computer searches.

If you start a business tailored specifically to PI's and forensic analysis, say fixing broken computers with the explicit intent of getting the data off of them to determine crimes, cause of fires, etc, then yes, you need a PI license. If you are just replacing a defective CPU or disk, no. You are not in the business of obtaining information listed in (a)(1).

In short, it all revolves around the phrase "in the business of".

This law is a good thing. It may be possible to sue a "computer repair company" that does, as a matter of regular business, "investigate" the content of your computer when you take it in for repair. They've made themselves "in the business of" by looking for information related to crimes. But Joe Technician who sticks to finding the bad bits and replacing them has nothing to worry about. And if you are stupid enough to make kiddie porn the splash logo on your boot screen, or background image after an auto-login, Joe is still able to call the cops, since his job isn't obtaining the information, YOU gave it to him by your actions.

LOL!

Sixto
87 300D

There is a gray area here, most PC repair shops get work to retrieve data from hdds gone bad or to recover data accidentally deleted by the client. I see some reason to snoop around in this case.

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99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

There is no GD reason to snoop around. You're being paid to repair the computer.........that's it.

If you want to snoop around and attempt to discover a violation of a law..........for reasons that are totally unknown..........then you need a PI license.

Cut and dried........

Taken a step further - I have my PC serviced at shop A and I doubt the quality of the work done. I take it to shop B to have them verify that shop A did what they say they did. Does shop B need a PI license since it is essentially a fraud investigation?

I don't mean an "It's still broken, please fix it" request. I mean a purposeful request to determine if someone else was fraudulent. I know this happens in other arenas where techs don't have PI licenses.

Sixto
87 300D

We're not talking the quality of a paint job here. With a PC........essentially, it works or it doesn't. There isn't any "quality" to measure.

Now, if you asked for specific hardware to be installed and it wasn't done.........that's quite easy to determine by any shop.........and a PI license certainly isn't applicable the way I read it.

I disagree. If you take a PC into a shop and say "this machine is really slow, I must have a virus or something on it. Please remove the bugs", they work on it, return it to you and it is still slow, and you take it to another shop to see if they reaslly did anything, they will be looking quite intently at what is on hte machine. Further, I believe in some areas, techs are required by law to reportr any SUSPECTED child porn.
Sounds more to me like someone's wife took her husbands pc in to have them find out if he was cheating/stealing from her/ stashing money offshore in preparation for a divorce, whatever.
Regardless, I read it as a bad law.