[Coco] New Texas IT Requirement

[Roger Taylor]

At 06:10 PM 7/12/2008, you wrote:
>Well, our great Texas Legislator really messed up this time. A bill 
>was drafted, passed, sign by the Governor and took effect on July 1, 
>2008. This bill added a requirement for all IT persons now have to 
>ahear to. If you do any kind of analysis of the hard drive on a 
>computer or repair of a computer, you have to have a PI license. 
>Yes, that is correct, a Private Investigation License or you can end 
>up in jail for a year and a $4,000 fine. The company you work for 
>can also be fined $10,000 for each day that you work on a computer 
>without the PI license. It seems the PI Association wrote the law 
>and no one read it prior to passing it on the floor and sending it 
>to the Governor for his signuture. It was designed to plug a loop 
>hole where CSI type people that work on cases where data on the hard 
>drive of a computer is evidence and the person searching it was NOT 
>a Licensed Investigator, thus was not qualified and have the data on 
>the hard drive thrown out. But they wrote it TOO broad and now it 
>covers anyone that works on a computer. Even the 12 year old next 
>door neighbor. LOL
>
>So here in Texas if you work on computers, you half to have a PI 
>license. To obtain a PI license, you either have to take pass a 
>Criminal Investigate Course or serve as an apprientice to a Licensed 
>PI for three years. This means you can not work on any computer for 
>a min of three years. CIC course is a 4 year College Course.
>
>If Rolan and Martin was still had their TV show, I am sure the Texas 
>Legislator would get the Whoope award.



There's no doubt in my mind that they'll fix this bad law writeup.  I 
seriously doubt that the tens of thousands of computer repair people 
and home repair hobbyists will stop doing what they do.  There's also 
the option of just replacing a hard drive and OS at the customer's expense.

However, everybody should worry about who's snooping around on their 
computers while they're being repaired.  I would probably make the 
repair person come to my home and work by the hour as I look on if I 
was worried about personal data being stolen.