WHY is PC Repair Tech Now Required to have a P.I. License?

I understand the law is in effect and also will soon be going to other states, but I don't understand the reason WHY the law was created.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20080630/tc_z...

Follow the money:

"Some of the area's larger companies already employee technicians with PI licenses, a fact which generally doesn't apply to small computer repair shops."

I'm - generally - a big fan of the Institute for Justice, but I'm afraid their brand new TX office has 'slipped the leash' on this one.

The suit is PURELY for publicity to draw attention to the fact that the IJ now has a Texas office.

No-one has - EVER - even been threatened with prosecution under the law for repairing a computer. What the IJ has done is come up with a - very twisted - interpretation of one part of the law regulating Private Investigators and said "Well, the State *could* prosecute a repair shop for violating this provision" and has filed a challenge to it in court.

The fact is that it has never happened - and won't happen.

The law does require that a technician that searches a computer in the way that a regular PI might search a house or a car be a licensed PI - and that's why a few big repair houses have one or two techs that are PI's. (So that when Mrs Smith brings in her husbands laptop and says "Can you tell me if he's been emailing his girlfriend?" they can legally do that.)

The IJ's claim that "searching" a hard drive for a bad sector or a corrupt file or virus in order to repair a malfunctioning machine would be a "search" as used in the PI statute is a heck of a stretch. I predict that this case will be (If it hasn't already been) dismissed as meritless.

Richard

Because Politicians are ignorant. It's like the ban on cell phones in cars. A passenger is just as dangerous if not more so.