PI License Needed for computer repair in Texas

[delman]

This makes me angry, now I think it will be harder to find a job for me for a while just based on initial reading.

It came out last week but Texas made a law to where you have a Private Investigator License to repair computers. To get that though you either have to have a criminal justice degree or 3 years apprentice ship. I saw it originally on slashdot tonight but it was on gearlog and a local T.V. station too. So that means it will become much harder for me to get a job in the field even though I have worked for geeksquad in the past. I really hope that it gets taken out by a lawsuit that has been filed.

A couple links
CW 33 T.V. Station article
Gearlog actually has a link to the law and at the bottom they have a link to a site that analyzes it.
Gearlog Article

 

[petteyg359]

Update: Found it. My laziness was vanquished. Here is a writeup of the legislative text, thanks to some blog called "Post Process." Presumably, these guys are involved in forensics.

NB: Of all the people I know who practice network forensics in Texas (myself included), approximately zero percent hold a PI license, and the pre-2007 text seems to imply that all we Intrusion Analysts need a special Texas license, too. IOW, this sounds awfully unenforced, if not unenforceable.

The wording could be easily interpreted as "a person needs a PI license in order to remove malware from any computer not owned by them" as in order to remove malware one must obtain information from the drive of the computer. And any computer in this case literally means any computer, including the one in your grandparents' house.

 

[usp8riot]

This is understandable considering the info on peoples' PC's.

If a computer repair technician without a government-issued private investigator's license takes any actions that the government deems to be an "investigation," they may be subject to criminal penalties of up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, as well as civil penalties of up to $10,000. The definition of "investigation" is very broad and encompasses many common computer repair tasks.

But then where do we stop? The same can be said with mechanics and the info I may have in my car, the person I take my pay-per-call phone to refill the minutes, a maid, babysitter, painter, and all the countless people out there able to access my other information, be it phone number, SS#, background history, etc.

Edit: After reading the Slashdot article, it seems it may only apply to computer forensics specialists and not exactly for PC repair. To quote one of the Slashdotters:

Imagine that doing a "find . -name file.jpg" or similar might be considered an "investigation". 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.

 

[G3F0RC3<>R4D30N]

Wow...that's the stupidest thing I have ever seen and not because it doesn't make sense. It's because they haven't justified the other possibilities with other work areas....