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Going Through the Garbage
frankejames writes "This is a very funny piece on how Portland politicians said it was okay for police to seize a citizen's garbage without a search warrant. But when some reporters swiped their garbage (and reported the contents!) they screamed foul play! Read Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs."
sounds like a goose and gander scenario to me
Goose for Gander, yar.
I thought once u put ur garbage out for pickup then it was legal for anyone to take it....
Fight fire with fire.
Way to go folks...
Only 4 troll posts so far, and already their webserver has melted!
Are they being hosted by that "webserver-on-a-gameboy" guy, or what?
The Free desktop that Just Works
It's normally legal to swipe peoples' garbage? Guess I better send that organ I swiped off to the city dump. (It honestly doesn't sound all that bad, just smells funky)
There's a whole division of physical anthropology dedicated to the study of people's garbage. Basically, a scientist goes door to door and asks people questions about their consumer habits (how many beers do you drink a week?). Later, they go dumpster diving to verify the survey questions.
The lying on these surveys is astounding.
Damn Lag! Can't get that story for a day or so, I guess.. the slashdot effecct took hold already!
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
Ok. So I need to delete all of the data on my hard drive at least 7 times before it is *really* deleted, and now I need to pulverize all real life garbage just to make sure the cops (or reporters, or neighbors) don't use it as evidence? Jeesh.
Sex - Find It
Earthquakes, family killers, terrorist camps, crashing helicopters, missing girls...
Oregon just can't stay out of the news. HELLO? We got this big crazy state just south of us! Go report on them!!
How often do they consider how it would feel if these laws were applied to them?
Will the government officials who enacted the USA PATRIOT act ever have to really be subjected to the same things they allowed to be done to us?
Really cared about the security of your garbage, you wouldn't set it on the curb so a guy who makes $7.50 an hour can come by and take it with him.
Last issue of 2600 magazine had a four page article dedicated to the art of dumpster diving. Best advice: Bring a bunch of empty boxes in your car, that way, you can tell a police officer that you are helping a friend move, and your just looking for more empty boxes.
What law did the reporters break?
This should be a clue to all pointdexter bashers out there....
Hey, I *know* people can go through my garbage. I mean, it's just sitting there on the street every week!! That's why I use a cross-cut shredder on all my credit card statements and private stuff.
Also I smear everything with my feces, urine, and semen before putting it in the trash (I keep a bucket and a stack of Playboys next to the garbage can just for this purpose).
Brillant arguement...
What law? By putting your trash at the curb, you relinquish ownership. Anyone can legally take it. Police officers do not have special rights in this area.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The police can do a lot of things normal citizens cannot. The police can arrest people, beat people, shoot people if neccesary.. doesn't mean that we can. If we expect the police to be able to keep order in society they should be allowed to do certain things that normal people cannot. This looks like a case of bad journalism, and I cry foul over that.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
RUBBISH!
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
clydgate@wweek.com
nbudnick@wweek.com
Web-only content:
Vera Katz's press release
Stories that have appeared in other media
KATU
The Oregonian
It's past midnight. Over the whump of the wipers and the screech of the fan belt, we lurch through the side streets of Southeast Portland in a battered white van, double-checking our toolkit: flashlight, binoculars, duct tape, scissors, watch caps, rawhide gloves, vinyl gloves, latex gloves, trash bags, 30-gallon can, tarpaulins, Sharpie, notebook--notebook?
Well, yes. Technically, this is a journalistic exercise--at least, that's what we keep telling ourselves. We're upholding our sacred trust as representatives of the Fourth Estate. Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. Pushing the reportorial envelope--by liberating the trash of Portland's top brass.
We didn't dream up this idea on our own. We got our inspiration from the Portland police.
Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her (see "Gross Violation," below).
The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so. Prosecutor Mark McDonnell says that once you set your garbage out on the curb, it becomes public property.
"She placed her garbage can out in the open, open to public view, in the public right of way," McDonnell told Judge Jean Kerr Maurer earlier this month. "There were no signs on the garbage, 'Do not open. Do not trespass.' There was every indication...she had relinquished her privacy, possessory interest."
Police Chief Mark Kroeker echoed this reasoning. "Most judges have the opinion that [once] trash is put out...it's trash, and abandoned in terms of privacy," he told WW.
In fact, it turns out that police officers throughout Oregon have been rummaging through people's trash for more than three decades. Portland drug cops conduct "garbage pulls" once or twice per month, says narcotics Sgt. Eric Schober.
On Dec. 10, Maurer rubbished this practice. Scrutinizing garbage, she declared, is an invasion of privacy: The police must obtain a search warrant before they swipe someone's trash.
"Personal and business correspondence, photographs, personal financial information, political mail, items related to health concerns and sexual practices are all routinely found in garbage receptacles," Maurer wrote. The fact that a person has put these items out for pick-up, she said, "does not suggest an invitation to others to examine them."
But local law enforcement officials pooh-poohed the judge's decision.
"This particular very unique and very by-herself judge took a position not in concert with the other judges who had given us instruction by their decisions across the years," said Kroeker.
The District Attorney's Office agreed and vowed to challenge the ruling.
The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic. It's not. Your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your most intimate secrets; what you toss away is, in many ways, just as revealing as what you keep.
And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy is being pilfered. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government has granted itself far-reaching new powers to spy on you, from email to bank statements to video cameras (see "Big Brother's in Your Trash Can," below).
After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.
We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.
Boy, were we wrong.
Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief Kroeker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public property.
"Things inside your house are to be guarded," he told WW. "Those that are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers and--and police. And so it's not a matter of privacy anymore."
Then we spread some highlights from our haul on the table in front of him.
"This is very cheap," he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a receipt with his credit-card number, a summary of his wife's investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker."
"Are you a member of Focus on the Family?" we asked.
"No," the chief replied.
"Is your wife?"
"You know," he said, with a Clint Eastwood gaze, "it's none of your business."
As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a fault, cut us off in midsentence. "OK," he said, suddenly standing up, "we're done."
Hours later, the chief issued a press release complaining that WW had gone through "my personal garbage at my home." KATU promptly took to the airwaves declaring, "Kroeker wants Willamette Week to stay out of his garbage."
If the chief got overheated, the mayor went nuclear. When we confessed that we had swiped her recycling, she summoned us to her chambers.
"She wants you to bring the trash--and bring the name of your attorney," said her press secretary, Sarah Bott.
Actually, we couldn't snatch Katz's garbage, because she keeps it right next to her house, well away from the sidewalk. To avoid trespassing, we had to settle for a bin of recycling left out front.
The day after our summons, Wednesday, Dec. 18, we trudged down to City Hall, stack of newsprint in hand. A gaggle of TV and radio reporters were waiting to greet us, tipped off by high-octane KXL motor-mouth Lars Larson.
We filed into the mayor's private conference room. The atmosphere, chilly to begin with, turned arctic when the mayor marched in. She speared us each with a wounded glare, then hoisted the bin of newspaper and stalked out of the room--all without uttering a word.
A few moments later, her office issued a prepared statement. "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible," it read. "I will consider all my legal options in response to their actions."
In contrast, DA Mike Schrunk was almost playful when we owned up to nosing through his kitchen scraps. "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?" he joked.
We told Schrunk that we intended to report that his garbage contained mementos of his military service. "Don't burn me on that," he implored. "The Marine Corps will shoot me!"
It's worth emphasizing that our junkaeological dig unearthed no whiff of scandal. Based on their throwaways, the chief, the DA and the mayor are squeaky-clean, poop-scooping folks whose private lives are beyond reproach. They emerge from this escapade smelling like--well, coffee grounds.
But if three moral, upstanding, public-spirited citizens were each chewing their nails about the secrets we might have stumbled on, how the hell should the rest of us be feeling?
HAUL OF FAME
Decked out in watch caps and rubber gloves, we are kneeling in a freezing garage and cradling our first major discovery--a five-pound bag of dog poo.
We set it down next to the rest of our haul from District Attorney Mike Schrunk's trash--the remains of Thanksgiving turkey, the mounting stack of his granddaughter's diapers, the bag of dryer lint, the tub of Skippy peanut butter, and the shredded bag of peanut M&Ms.
There is something about poking through someone else's garbage that makes you feel dirty, and it's not just the stench and the flies. Scrap by scrap, we are reverse-engineering a grimy portrait of another human being, reconstituting an identity from his discards, probing into stuff that is absolutely, positively none of our damn business.
It's one thing to revel in the hallowed tradition of muckraking. It's another to get down on your hands and knees and nose through wads of someone else's Kleenex. Is this why our parents sent us to college? So we could paw through orange peels and ice-cream tubs and half-eaten loaves of bread?
And yet, there is also something seductive, almost intoxicating, about being a Dumpster detective. For example, we spot a clothing tag marked "44/Regular." Then we find half of a torn receipt from Meier & Frank for $262.99. Then we find the other half, which reads: "MENS SU 3BTN." String it together, and we deduce that Schrunk plunked down $262.99 for a size-44 three-button suit at Meier & Frank on Saturday, Nov. 16, at 9:35 am.
We are getting to know Portland's top prosecutor from the inside out. Here's an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. There's a pile of castoff duds from his days as a Marine. Is he going "soft" on terrorism!?
Chinese takeout boxes and junk-food wrappers testify to a busy lifestyle with little time to cook. A Post-it note even lays bare someone's arithmetic skills (the addition is solid, but the long division needs work).
Our haul from Mayor Vera Katz is limited to a stack of newsprint from her recycling bin--her garbage can was well out of reach--but we assemble several clues to her intellectual leanings. We find overwhelming evidence that the Mayor reads The Oregonian, The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, U.S. Mayor and the Portland Tribune.
We also stumble across a copy of TV Click in which certain programs have been circled in municipal red. If we're not mistaken, the mayor has a special fondness for dog shows, figure skating and The West Wing.
Our inspection of Chief Kroeker's refuse reveals that he is a scrupulous recycler. He is also a health nut. We find a staggering profusion of health-food containers: fat-free milk cartons, fat-free cereal boxes, cans of milk chocolate weight-loss shakes, cans of Swanson chicken broth ("99% fat free!"), water bottles, a cardboard box of protein bars, tubs of low-fat cottage cheese, a paper packet of oatmeal, and an article on "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."
At the same time, we find evidence of rust in the chief's iron self-discipline: wrappers from See's chocolate bars, an unopened bag of Doritos, a dozen perfectly edible fun-size Nestle Crunch bars, three empty Coke cans.
We unearth a crate that once contained 12 bottles of Cook's California sparkling wine, but find no trace of the bottles themselves. Is the chief building a pyramid of them on the mantelpiece? We stack the crate beside a pair of white children's socks, a broken pen, the stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar, burnt toast, a freezer bag of date bars, orange peel, coffee grounds, a cork, an empty film canister (no weed--we checked), eggshells, Q tips, tissue paper and copious quantities of goo.
We uncrumple a holiday flier from the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church, which contains a handwritten note: "Mark. Just want you to know one Latin from Manhattan Loves You."
Invasion of privacy? This is a frontal assault, a D-Day, a Norman Conquest of privacy. We know the chief's credit-card number; we know where he buys his groceries; we know how much toilet tissue he goes through. We know whose Christmas cards he has pitched, whose wedding he skipped, whose photo he threw away. We know what newsletters he gets and how much he's socked away in the stock market. We even know he's thinking about a new car--and which models he's considering.
By the time we tag the last item (a lonesome Christmas tree angel), our noses are running and our gloves are black with gunk. We scrub our hands when we get home. But we still feel dirty. --CL
WHAT WE FOUND
POLICE CHIEF MARK KROEKER
* Empty containers and wrappers: Kodiak Washington pears, Washington "extra fancy" fancy lady peaches, Oasis Floral Foam bricks ("Worth Insisting Upon") (2), Kashi Go Lean! cereal, Sunshine fat-free milk, Kirkland Signature weight-loss shake, fat-free Swanson Chicken Broth, mandarin oranges, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Arrowhead water bottle, Cook's California sparkling-wine box, fried apples, cheese rolls, Bounty paper towels 15-roll pack, Kirkland facial tissue, 12-pack Dove soap, Quaker oatmeal, See's candy bars, lady's razors, Dentyne Ice chewing gum, Vivant zesty vegetable crackers.
* Hershey's Cookies n Crème mini-bars, uneaten (3).
* Several Oregonian issues, still folded.
* Email correspondence between chief and Mayor Katz's staff in which he preps them on what to tell Los Angeles officials regarding his application to be chief there.
* Rough draft, internal police memo.
* Various cash-register receipts.
* Half-full bag of fun-size Nestle Crunch bars.
* Slice of burnt toast.
* Photocopy of WW Nov. 13 "Murmurs" item on chief, hand-dated in blue pen, reporting scuttlebutt that Katz has "taken over the day-to-day running of the Police Bureau."
* Half-smoked stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar.
* Paper cups from Starbucks and Torrefazione.
* Pears, lettuce, grapes, bread, eggshells, goo, potato salad, wire hangers, a 75 watt light bulb, orange peels, coffee grounds, wine cork, dish rag, film canister, used Q-Tips.
* Half-eaten protein bar, still in wrapper.
* Newsletter from Focus on the Family, a conservative political group. Insert, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker." Insert asks for "one last year-end contribution."
* Photos of chief and a bare-chested man moving a large appliance.
* Creased wedding photo of a prominent Portlander.
* Broken pen.
* Three envelopes from California, hand-addressed, sent on consecutive days.
* Notice from mortgage company for payment.
* Internet printout of "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."
* Postcard from friend vacationing in Arizona.
* Post-it with notes about a new car.
* Extremely personal note on dinner napkin, handwritten in pencil.
* Account summary from Fidelity Investments for the chief's wife.
MAYOR VERA KATZ
* Trader Joe's "Happy Holidays" paper bag.
* Several issues of The Oregonian.
* Several issues of The Washington Post National Weekly Edition.
* A copy of U.S. Mayor (a monthly magazine devoted to mayors).
* A copy of TV Click. Someone has marked several programs in red, including Wargame: Iraq, Simulated National Security Council meetings, MSNBC; Everwood: Ephram tries to revive his mother's Thanksgiving traditions, KWBP; CSI Miami: A dead man is found hanging from a tree, KOIN; Life with Bonnie on KATU; The West Wing on KGW; The National Dog Show on KGW; Figure skating: ISU Cup of Russia, ESPN; Biography: "Audrey Hepburn, the Fairest Lady," A&E: Figure skating: ICE WARS: USA vs. The World, KOIN.
* Several issues of the Portland Tribune.
* Daily Journal of Commerce from Dec. 3, 2002.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY MIKE SCHRUNK
* Empty containers and wrappers: Cozy Fleece Baby Blanket, Bee Cleaners, Nibblets Corn and Butter, Johnnie Walker Black Label, Fred Meyer unflavored gelatin, Burger King beverage cup and straw, possible Chinese takeout (lots), Dreyer's Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream, Skippy peanut butter (creamy), Land's End, Fred Meyer green beans, Campbell's Chunky New England Clam Chowder with 100-watt bulb inside, Meier & Frank, Jelly Belly jelly beans, Foster Farms boneless and skinless Oregon chicken thighs.
* Coffee grounds.
* Used pekoe tea bags, many.
* Used Christmas napkins, used Kleenex, used Q-Tips.
* Remains of Thanksgiving turkey carcass, drumstick intact.
* Remnants of roast beef.
* Soiled baby diapers.
* Plastic bags containing dog poo, very clean, with some blades of grass (2).
* Bag of dryer lint.
* Christmas wrapping paper.
* Orange peels, empty Millstone coffee bag, containing two very ripe but uneaten bananas, two half-eaten loaves of wheat bread.
* Disposable razors.
* Remnants of peanut M&Ms bag.
* Energizer AA batteries (2), wrapped in plastic bag.
* Shopping lists.
* Baseball cap with crustacean emblem: "DON'T BOTHER ME. I'm CRABBY."
* Baseball cap for Outward Bound.
* Baseball cap with embroidered green fish.
* Military khaki shirts with "SCHRUNK" embroidered on pocket and collar (4).
* Jacket, olive drab, with fading stencils of "USMC" and "Schrunk."
* Yellow Post-it note with sample of someone's arithmetic: The addition is successful (54 + 32 = 86), but the long division of 32 divided by 6 comes up a little bit wide, at 5.4.
Gross Violation
Officer Gina Hoesly has long had less privacy than the average cop, thanks to the Portland Police Bureau's rumor mill.
Hoesly (below), 34, has dated rock musicians, other cops and Portland Trail Blazers. She's had breast implants and once posed for a photo on a website selling motorcycle gear--badpig.com--showing plenty of skin. In 1996, she won a $20,000 settlement from the bureau in a sexual-harassment claim based on behavior by her co-workers. But none of that comes close to the scrutiny she received in March, when fellow officers rifled through her garbage. The evidence they found led to her indictment on charges of possessing ecstasy, cocaine and methamphetamine.
Hoesly, a 13-year police officer who occasionally was an undercover decoy in police prostitution stings, became the subject of an investigation early this year, when she told police she'd been assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, Joshua David Rodriguez. Rodriguez has a history of drug arrests and convictions, and when officers booked him on assault charges, they found meth in his pocket.
Subsequently police began investigating Hoesly, hearing rumors from police informants that she had used drugs. On March 13 at 2:07 am, narcotics officers Jay Bates and Michael Krantz took her garbage. The order to do so came from Assistant Chief Andrew Kirkland, who dated Hoesly in the early '90s.
Searching through her trash back at Central Precinct, they found traces of cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as drug paraphernalia. They also found a bloody tampon. They sent a piece of the tampon to the state crime lab, where forensics experts tested it for drugs, DNA and, for reasons that remain unclear, semen. The results of those tests have not been released.
The police didn't seek a search warrant to take Hoesly's trash because, as the Multnomah County District Attorney's office conceded, officers didn't at the time have sufficient evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant. But once they had drug residue from Hoesly's trash, officers were able to persuade Judge Dorothy Baker to issue a search warrant for Hoesly's house. Inside, they found more paraphernalia and a diary that described apparent drug use. An indictment was issued in June.
Hoesly, who is currently on medical leave and at the time of her arrest was in the process of medically retiring, pleaded not guilty and hired criminal-defense lawyer Stephen Houze. Like a Labrador smelling leftover turkey, Houze promptly zeroed in on the grabbing of her garbage. He argued that under Oregon's Constitution, privacy rights extend to someone's trash--at least until it's picked up by trash haulers. The used tampon "goes to the heart of just what an outrageous violation of privacy rights this police search was," Houze said. "If the police will do this to a police officer, who won't they do it to?"
Not only that, he said, but if garbage is up for grabs, "There will be identity thieves lining up out there on every garbage day, knowing they can [take trash] with impunity."
The Hoesly case is not unprecedented. In 1997, police poked in the trash of David Peters, a star prosecutor for Multnomah County, and found cocaine residue, which was used to obtain a search warrant. Unlike Hoesly, he was not indicted; instead, he was fined and allowed to enter court diversion to maintain a clean record.
In a hearing on Dec. 10, Judge Jean Kerr Maurer agreed with Houze, issuing a ruling that said the cops' taking of trash was illegal. Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonnell immediately said his office would challenge the ruling. --NB
Big Brother's in Your Trash Can
The government is essentially going through your trash every day, says Evan Hendricks, publisher of Privacy Times, a Washington, D.C., newsletter. "They just don't have to get their hands dirty.
In the past 16 months, thanks to measures contained in the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act and the creation of the Total Information Awareness office, our government has turned into a bad Oliver Stone movie--you know, where a cabal of conservative spooks takes over and suddenly Big Brother is in charge.
No longer do the Feds need to meet the evidentiary standard of "probable cause" to initiate an investigation or start amassing information on you. Nor do they need to show any evidence of a link to terrorism. All they need to do, in short, is say they find you suspicious. They don't need to tell a judge why.
"This administration really represents a combination of Reaganism and McCarthyism--though they're not chasing Communists, they're chasing people that they call 'terrorists,'" says Hendricks, who grew up in Portland. "They're expanding their power and intimidating people to sort of go along or be afraid of being accused of being soft on terrorism."
The October 2001 enactment of the USA Patriot Act opened the door to domestic and Internet surveillance, as well as warrantless, covert "sneak and peek" searches. Then, on Nov. 19, 2002, Congress approved the Homeland Security Act, which Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) called the "most severe weakening of the Freedom of Information Act in its 36-year history."
The HSA also created the Total Information Awareness office, whose logo, taken from the back of the dollar bill, is of a pyramid with an eye on top, looking down at the globe. Headed by Iran-Contra co-conspirator Admiral John Poindexter, the agency will "mine" commercial databases, including magazine subscriptions and book purchases, to spy on American citizens. It plans to use this information to profile likely terrorist supporters; it also wants to deploy video camera and facial-recognition surveillance systems.
"The Pentagon basically wants to knock down the walls to all private-sector records and plug into them," says Hendricks. "And trash is like a microcosm of what you get: the bills people pay, what they buy at the store, the packages they throw out. The government is proposing more systematic surveillance of databases that have the same information."
How do they define who is a likely terrorist supporter? Sorry, but that's a secret. Attorney General John Ashcroft has given federal agencies free rein to reject information requests, with the assurance that his Department of Justice would defend the agencies no matter what.
Civil-liberties advocates point to the inherent danger in granting the government such sweeping power. Declassified documents have shown myriad abuses by law-enforcement agencies involved in domestic spying in the '60s, '70s and '80s, including in Portland. In 1997, a Washington, D.C., police official used video surveillance of people coming and going from a gay bar to try to blackmail married men. And studies of camera systems in Britain found that they were used to target minorities for increased police attention, while women caught on camera were often targeted for voyeuristic reasons, with male camera operators panning over them for purposes of ogling.
Small wonder that even conservatives such as Rep. Dick Armey, Sen. Charles Grassley and New York Times columnist William Safire are going ballistic. Attorney General Ashcroft is "out of control," and the federal government has "no credibility" on protecting individuals' privacy, said Armey, who has even volunteered to do consulting work for the ACLU on privacy issues upon his retirement.
"You Are a Suspect" was the title of Safire's Nov. 14 column on the Total Information Awareness program, which he called a "supersnoop's dream" and a "sweeping theft of privacy rights." --NB
That's a good name--ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
Here.
This seems to be an interesting precedent...
As I understand it, the basic claim of the police is that if it's easily accessible, it's public information.
So, how does this apply to the Internet?
For instance, is unencrypted email now public information? What about information on a HTML page - with no links leading to it?
I particularly like the police officers claiming that the lack of a "No tresspassing" sign / "don't open garbage" sign gives them the right to do this... Does a woman have to wear a "Don't Rape" sign to make this clear to potential attackers?
Perhaps the "Don't Rape" sign should really go on the Constitution - particularly the Fourth Amendment.
I think that's the "do as I say, not as I do" law.
Doing things of this nature are becoming an effective means of grabbing attention of the people involved. It is much more effective that "changing the system from the inside" because it allows people who don't want to be politicians, executives, etc to shake things up. It is also is exponentially more effective than just being a pain in the ass.
Now...if we could only figure out a way to limit the power of major players in the news business. Drudge Report.
I haven't read the article because it seems slashdotted (already?).
It is legal for police to take garbage without a search warrant. IANAL, but from civics classes, trash falls under "abandoned property", so police can take it without a search warrant. It's kinda like if a police office thinks you're speeding, he doesn't need a search warrant to aim his radar gun at you to check your speed. Not exactly the same thing, but kinda in the same category.
What a great argument. Shouldn't you be out patrolling Springfield right now?
This gives new meaning to Dumpster Diving.
Site seems /.ed already...
cf : Benjamin Pell aka Benji the Binman, who has made a career of poking through folks rubbish. Not illegal, but not exactly reputable either.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Garbage In, Garbage Out...
I completely disagree, as in your example your as assuming that the judge will approve the warrant. The police could go throw the garbage, have the warrant refused, and say 'Oh well, we already have the evidence and it was obtained legally'. Why not work on shortening the time required instead of giving more leeway to the police?
Being a policeman yourself, you'll know that a policeman without a warrant is just a citizen like any other, and if it's good and leagal for you it's good and legal for anyone else.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It seems to me there is a difference between the police, who are guided by local, state and federal laws regarding use of evidence, and reporters, who have pretty much free reign under the US constitution in what they report. Quite honestly, despite the anti-government, anti-authority slant by both the article and the comments in the posting here, I would be far less comfortable with reporters stealing my garbage than with police collecting it. And I can entirely see the city's point about why reporters going around rummaging through peoples' garbage is a bad idea. Reporters are not answerable to anybody - government is.
That said, why would anyone expect that something they've acknowledged they no longer want and have therefore basically thrown up for grabs on the curb to be secure? As someone who lives in NYC, where it's routine for people to pick up junk they find lying on the side of the street, this just strikes me as idiotic. Not just dumb, not just stupid, but completely moronic. You threw it away; it's on the curb, it's no longer yours. End of story. Whether it's the police or the press taking it, if you're at all worried about it you should have either kept it or destroyed it.
There's a reason why shredders exist. And if you don't want to use one, that's your choice. But then don't complain when people go rummaging through your garbage looking for credit card statements and pay stubs. You put that stuff out on the curb of your own free will.
here
What law? The basic argument the police/court used was that anything on the curb was public/abandoned and therefore free game. If that is true anyone can take possesion of any garbage/thing sitting on the curb and use it as they wish.
When you tell a man "hey, you can take my shit for free" do not be surprised if he takes shit.
All your garbage are belong to us!
The law that says "Citizens can't go through peoples garbage, but police can."
I have to call foul on this one.
Either the garbage, once placed on the curb, is the private property of the owner (in which case the police must get a warrant) or it is not. If it is not the private property of the owner, then it must be legal for a private citizen to paw through. Period. Those are the only two alternatives. The idea that it's okay for police to paw through it without a warrant but not for private citizens is bullshit.
I really don't give a damn if it makes it difficult for policemen to do their job. Thats how it is. We are supposed to be a freedom-loving country. I'll agree that it would be nice if the job of the police could be made easier without restricting citizens civil rights. But it can't. And I won't give up my liberties to make it easier for police to do their jobs. I just won't.
Its un-American. By doing things like this (Patriot act, anyone?) we devalue the price American citizens paid to secure those liberties. They paid with their lives. Don't be so quick to throw that away.
Grumble.
Screw privacy: Speaking as someone who had my credit card numbers stolen from my trash, EVERYONE should have a shredder to shred bills. It's incredibly cheap insurance.
As far as people taking the rest of my garbage, they're welcome to it. Less I have to take to the curb!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Shouldn't you be pistol whipping some niggers now?
In CALIFORNIA v. GREENWOOD, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), the Supreme Court ruled police could do this. I happen to agree with this. By putting it on the curb, you have shown that you want the city to come and take it away. In other word you want the city to have it.
As far as the city getting annoyed at the journalists, they can be annoyed, but I doubt there is much they can do about it, for much the same reason that the police can rummage though trash.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Just because the police are Trying to get a warrant, doesn't mean they will.
What ever happened to Innocent until proven guilty? How would you like the police going through your trash, if you were innocent?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Not in Portland buddy.
How would you like it if I went through your trash every week and published all your cancelled checks, love notes, hate speech you printed out from the web, and your CD-R's with dirty movies?
The U.S. Government seems very fond of this phrase so I'll throw it back their way...
If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't have anything to hide.
Hear that sucking sound kids? Those are your civil rights being tossed into the abyss by your friendly police personnel.
Because being a policeman myself, I know that by the time a search warrant is signed off by a judge and executed (around a week), the trash will be long gone. So, the policeman have a perfectly valid arguement.
Clearly this is being done for a good cause so what do we care that the police and other government agences no longer have to abide by the same laws as public citizens? Doesn't anyone understand that we need to relinquish some of our liberties so that we can be secure in our homes? Isn't the loss of a single legal standard for all citizens a small price to pay for easier evidence gathering by governmental agencies? After all, if it makes us safer, how could it be bad?
I'll leave the appropriate Thomas Jefferson quote as an exercise for the reader.
-jaded- walking the earth as a living corpse is in somewhat questionable taste
If you are a cop they why do you have the following posted in your Journal?
"There is a kid at my school who has a badge on his backpack (attached with a safety pin) with the words "Superjew" on it. What should I do?"
Doesn't sound like much of a cop to me.
Yes, but you can buy a good paper shredder (the kind that dices it up into little squares) for pretty cheap these days.
I agree to a point. I think the police should be able to seize the garbage and then search it if they obtain a search warrent. I don't think this would be much different than towing a suspects car, and then searching it later with warrent.
because the police are an investigation bureaucracy devoted to helping people
I am sure that whomevers privacy is being violated could care less which bureaucracy is doing it, and what their intentions are!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Now come now, you know very well that just because you have an excuse does not make it legal.
Cops have a perfectly good excuse to beat up and butt-rape (with broomhandles) criminals but that does not make it legal.
more like harrasing and beating people up. this just goes to show you assume you can do what you want. like others have said, youre assuming youll get a warrent.
man, you should just find a job where you arnt fucking with people all the time.
So... We need a better warrant system. Good to know, let's work on it.
And therefore the police can ignore the rules? Ok, so that's how it works in the movies, but I'm nervious about applying that to real life. Here's the question being asked: can the police confiscate property without warrant or permission? Rules have been passed to allow that in some cases (assets of suspected drug dealers come to mind), but it gives an oportuntity for abuse. (What is garbage? If I set something next to my trash can by my garage is is garbage? How do I prove that diamond necklace was not in my garbage? Do the police have to report they took it if they don't prosecute? How long can they keep it without prosecuting?) A warrant provides a level of accountablity. Accountablity is usually incovienent; tough. That's not its point.
Which ignores the whole other arugment you made: Prove the police are helping people and the reporter isn't. Prove that I'm not helping people when if I were to go through the councilman's garbage and take what I wanted. Again, a warrant requires a neutral third party to decide beforehand. A sensible idea.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Because being a policeman myself, I know that by the time a search warrant is signed off by a judge and executed (around a week), the trash will be long gone. So, the policeman have a perfectly valid argument.
So, your argument is based upon timeframes of achieving due process and getting a warrant? No offense, but I don't think that would stand up in any court of law. In fact, if I recall, precedent has been set by stating anyone who puts their garbage on the sidewalk is relinquishing any ownership.
The councilman have every right to call foul play, because the police are an investigation bureaucracy devoted to helping people (legally),
The problem here is one of giving government authorities more and more access to privacy which some fear may prove to be a problem if governments ever decide they are devoted to self service and not to providing a service to their constituents.
while the reporters are going through garbage in order to report what bills the councilman paid last week (illegally).
And how is this illegal? I agree that it might be irritating, yes, but how is this any different in a legal sense from the police going through garbage? The point of this is that people are trying to illustrate the duplicity of many government policies that are playing off of fear in the current political climate. Total Information Awareness anyone?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Willamette Week's web server has always been slow as molasses, now you /. it?? Poor lasso files don't even know what hit them.
I believe in Dallas the new chief of police earned some respect from the citizens around here by arresting city employees, policemen, and firemen for unpaid tickets, etc. etc.
If there is a problem with Judge's taking two weeks to sign a search warrant, then there is a problem with the judge and the system, not a reason to create 'special rights' for people who should not be considered 'special people.'
Just my 2c.
My neighbor was cutting his grass, ran out of gas on his weed whacker and put it down by his mail box. By the time he came back with the gas can someone had already taken it. Therefore, by your logic they were not stealing.
In this case, my other neighbor witnessed the incident and got the license plate number of the offender.
I don't think it was the fact that they took the garbage that made them mad. It was almost definatly the fact that they reported the contents. example, if you are throwing out an old computer, you don't know what it's good for! It's old and slow with nothing on it. However, some guy that knows computers back and around, decides he could salvage it, so takes it. Would you be made? Nah, it was headed for the dump anyways. However, he finds your secret porno stash from the 1940's and starts selling the videos, or simply tells other people. Do you want people knowing your a porn addict? Probably not. But do you mind if somebody salvages a few parts from what you think is a worthless computer? Again, most likely, no. It's all in the intended use.
Pls No Negative Modding!
I could swear we did this a few weeks ago, but I can't get the slashdot search engine to perform.
:)
The police or anyone can take trash at curbside, as it is considered abandoned. CA v. Greenwood
It gets stickier in the "curtilage" area of the property left open to trash collectors to come in for the garbage. See Greenwood. IIRC curb versus curtilage was the distinction in this Oregon case between the two trash takings?
Warrant is otherwise required unless a 4th A. exception applies such as exigency or evanescent evidence. (If these interest you, do a search or try nolo.com.
States or local authorities can set the 4th Amendment bar higher if they like, that is they can require greater restraint. I don't know of any that have done so offhand -- perhaps yours.
Another reason not to live in Portland.
The article (which was kindly copied by a decent slashdotter) said that the police not only took a fellow officer's garbage without her permission... they went further against the privacy of her body itself by using a bloody tampon as a drug test sample which led to her dismissal!
Folks, this is not a case of stolen "property". This is an involuntary medical examination; an invasion of privacy to the highest degree.
thank you very much for posting that text i really enjoyed reading it and was afraid i wouldn't get a chance since the server is slashdotted why slashdot doesn't create their own cache to avoid this problem is completely beyond me thank you once again for your service to this community i will place you in my friends list sircrashalot
And by your logic, it is alright if the police had taken his weed whacker instead?
People frequently leave things on their curb when they want to give them away. I'd say the Taker of the Weed Whacker has a perfectly plausible defense.
Being a seventh grader, on the other hand, seems far more easy to detect.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
And about deleting stuff... Yeah, most files are not really "gone" until the spot on the drive has been overwritten. Here's what you do if you want to be certain... Encrypt the file, then delete it. In the chance that someone does end up restoring it, they won't be able to read its contents. Also, don't forget to wear your foil hat to prevent the alien signals from messing with your brain. ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Mod Parent UP!
How would you like it if I went through your trash every week and published all your cancelled checks, love notes, hate speech you printed out from the web, and your CD-R's with dirty movies?
Fine with me, but realize that I shred everything that has financial or personal info on it, even 10 year old records being cleared from the basement, and I snap all discarded CD-Rs in half before throwing them out.
I have *always* assumed that I would be the target of dumpster divers. It takes very little effort to do all this; I just have a cardboard box next to the shredder, and I toss stuff in there. Once a month or so I go over there, plug in the shredder, run everything through, and dump the pieces in the recycling bin.
Anyone who's trying to maintain a political image who doesn't do this is an idiot, plain and simple. If I had a political image to maintain I'd own a lots better shredder.
"There is a kid at my school who has a badge on his backpack (attached with a safety pin) with the words "Superjew" on it. What should I do?" Doesn't sound like much of a cop to me.
I dunno. He sounds a lot like one of them minority-beating LAPD cops I see on the news every 6 months or so...
Once, when we were working on a Hispanic drug dealer case, we sent in a warrant to look for drug dealer supplements in his garbage (half-used joints, cloth with coke residue on it, etc.). It didn't get approved for two weeks (due to nothing but slow buereaucracy) and as a result this drug dealer was able to get away with three murders in the mean time.
Would you want the blood to be on your hands because you didn't go and grab the garbage after the judge didn't approve it quickly enough?
I doubt it, and if you do then you certainly have what it takes to be a policeman in an area where you need a search warrant for everything.
Also, a barely went over point in this article is that almost all the states allow police to do various searches without warrants. You should check the laws in your own state and contact your local representative if you have a problem with any of these laws.
about recycling being 'stolen' Apparently people were going through the bins taking what they thought was valuable and recycling it themselves.
Not sure how it ended up, but it was the same issue.
Blogging because I can...
Dude, you live a great fantasy life.
All politicians have better healthcare, retirement, and now they dont have to live by the laws the write and approve. I think I need a career move because it would be nice to shit on everyone below me.
When are americans going to wake up and see that they are being shafted in every direction possiable.
Sorry for the rant.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
What would your response be if someone had "planted" garbage on your curbside... and that garbage contained photo's of naked young boys in comprimising positions ?
Well.... you could just claim it wasn't yours.... of course, excuses wont get you far.
"Scrap by scrap, we are reverse-engineering a grimy portrait of another human being, reconstituting an identity from his discards, probing into stuff that is absolutely, positively none of our damn business."
They better be careful! Reverse Engineering is a violation of the DMCA!!
Studying at night at UB with idiot 20 year olds is stressful, thanks for asking.
A policeman, on duty, is an arm of the government, not a citizen. The policeman has sworn an oath to uphold the law *as* an instrument of the government. Actual ordinary citizens have to trust the police to do so or their entire function, indeed, the entire function of *law* falls into disrepute.The Constitution puts certain limits on the actions of police officers *because* the second they put on the that shield they are the government, not a citizen. Police have *fewer* rights than citizens.This is why the police have adopted the dodge of hiring ordinary citizens to go places and do things that they cannot.
A policeman who does not follow due process is the greatest threat to lawfulness there is.
Contrarywise, a journalist going through the trash of a public official to find out the truth has long been held to be one of the *greatest* preservers of democratic law that there is. See the Pentagon Papers.Protections for such behaviours were specifically written into the Constitution.
The entire function of the Constitution is to *restrict* the actions of government and law enforcement and *empower* citizens.
Indeed, some of the restrictions on law enforcment ( such as it taking a week to get a warrant) were overtly written to make it impossible to effectively prosecute certain unjust laws. That's the frikkin' *point.*
I don't wonder why some polititians might object to this.
KFG
Until a moment ago I *thought* NYC sanitation workers were well paid. It's a difficult job and a fairly expensive place to live. Not so -- $30-48k.
Politicians' trash
Worse than that in public sight
That's some sick shit there.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
...I like the idea of the government poking through my trash without a search warrant. When living in a suburban community I found the police polite, respectful, and extremely helpful. Since moving to the big city I've found the police to be rude, threatening without cause, verbally abusive, and have even witnessed blatent policy brutality and unreasonable violence. If a cop ever asks permission to enter my home, asks me even a simple question, or for a damn thing, I'll tell him/her no. Not without a warrant. And I'd like to speak with a lawyer, please. No matter what the situation.
As a nearing middle age white guy I now see police as an enemy to basic civil order within society. I didn't used to think this way, but seeing many officers abuse their position and responsibility toward citizens has left me disrespectful of police authority. I don't break the law and the police have had little reason to interfere with my life. Thank God I'm not a minority. Racial profiling, unreasonable threats, rudeness, obvious police brutality is ruining what little trust is left of police throughout society. This is only making it harder for the many good cops who walk the beat out there. And yes, I know there are a lot of good cops out there who work a hard and dangerous job in miserable conditions.
BTW: I used to donate to the FOP. NEVER AGAIN!!!
your garbage goes through YOU!!
A-fucking-men. Seriously. Slashdot has gotten to the point of IRC #sex rooms it seems. Granted, this is a scientific-oriented "community" (if you can really call it that anymore...to me it's just a cool way of testing one's webserver to see if it can withstand millions of clicks within minutes), but come on folks. Everyone's posted "credintials" when they respond to an article like this SEEM honest and respectable enough. Who wouldn't believe somebody claiming to be a PhD in physics or an IT Manager or in this case a cop considering the articles at hand? No, this isn't a scientific article per se, but you guys get my point.
It just sucks when the curtain in OZ is removed and instead of there being a wizard, it's a 15 year old punk with a identity problem.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Excellent point!!!
I worked at Walmart at one time and found there are individuals in town who will go through trash on the curb and take only the broken items that they think Walmart will exchange. I had a city employee who almost got a refund for a non working sanyo tv that was in a brand new sanyo box. Fortunately I caught it just as the refund was being approved. There was another individual who was returning a weed eater for exchange and it turned out it was put on the curb by the Sporting Goods Dept manager the day before.
:-)
Also lets not forget about those who have yard sales, a neighbor of mine took a broken down table and a few other items I put on the side of the road and I found them at their yard sale a few months later.
Needless to say, if restrictions were place on trash, there will be those who will have to look for another source of income.
Side note: If you have stuff that can be embarrassing to you and if there is nothing in the garbage that can lead to you, throw the trash into a local dumpster or accidently place it on the curb in front of your neighbors home and blame it on the wild dogs.
...once placed on the curb, is the private property of the owner...
You are only partially correct in that statement.
Most areas, especially urban, have a small strip of land that starts at the curb and goes onto the property of the owner that is called right of way. It's this right of way that allows a city to go ahead and install a power line pole, or a sidewalk, or a storm drain WITHOUT your permission.
Most major metropolitan areas have a department (usually under Public Works) that deal with Right of Way Management.
Now, that being said... if it's on the curb, it's legally considered to be UNWANTED by the owner, and therefore free takings.
Regardless of WHICH side of the curb it's on.
Have you ever heard of a Citizen's Arrest? People still do this. Ever heard of Self Defense? People do this, too.
The police are there to cart the bad guys off to jail, and make sure that the accused appears before the judge's bench when appointed to. Beyond that, the police have not many "rights" beyond what ordinary citizens have. If anything, the police have many more restrictions.
Studying at night at UB with idiot 20 year olds is stressful, thanks for asking.
~udb
perhaps they grabbed the server out of the garbage?
Someone up the block threw out a perfectly good, actually quite expensive skateboard. My friend told me about it so I went up to swipe it. By the time I got there the garbage truck was there.
He wouldn't let me swipe it. I explained it was trash going to the landfill, he still said it was quite illegal. Couple minutes of protest got me nowhere. I would have used some whup-ass but I was only 14 or so at the time and this was a big fat smelly teamster looking guy...
But to this day I still have no idea why such a thing would be illegal. I think we need to pay the legislators less, they seem to have too much time on their hands...
Actually, sounds like a lot of cops I've encountered.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Good insight. But I expect that the police need something before towing a car. Some sort of violation, car illegally on the road, stolen car, whatever. The police should not be allowed to tow a car for a fishing expedition. As a note, I do expect that it should be fairly easy for a policeman to come up with a valid reason to tow, however, whenever he/she wants to. The old "something hanging from the rearview mirror" - that is usually illegal and justifies being pulled over and fined. Perhaps that could support a towing.
Similarly, the police should not be allowed to take trash for fishing expeditions. To follow your idea then, taking trash for holding until a warrant comes through should only be allowable if some sort of violation is being committed by the trash placement.
Haven't you ever watched Law and Order? They do this sort of bullshit all the time, tricking people into using a comb and giving it back and other stuff just to get a DNA sample. Weather or not it is ethical is another matter, but as long as you willfully gave up the property, it is no longer yours to control.
It is reassuring to see that most of these high-flyers don't waste their time with recycling. Who was that moron putting dead batteries in his trash? Geesh.
Of course, there's a world of difference between a weed whacker left at the curb presumably on its own and stuff inside a recepticle that was specifically made to contain trash and signal that the trach guys can dump what's in it...
I have trash pickup next to my garage, well away from the street. So does that mean that they can go in my garbage then? How about when you take it close to the curb. Would it be considered private property or not?
The weirdest part about moving to oregon is learning that you can't pump your own gas.
(yes, it is illegal to get out of your car and fill up).
That and no sales tax, but you get used to it.
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
thank you very much for posting that text i really enjoyed reading it and was afraid i wouldn't get a chance since the server is slashdotted why slashdot doesn't create their own cache to avoid this problem is completely beyond me thank you once again for your service to this community i will place you in my friends list sircrashalot
Oh come on, -1? Even though it's from an Anonymous Coward it rates a "Funny". Too bad I don't have any mod points left...
There is a reason you can be sued for searching through someone's trash; you short-circuited the fourth amendment.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
From the article :
"Chinese takeout boxes and junk-food wrappers testify to a busy lifestyle with little time to cook. A Post-it note even lays bare someone's arithmetic skills (the addition is solid, but the long division needs work)."
Ouch.
My
Limekiller
If they want to advocate digging through the trash as an okay thing, then they shouldn't have a problem with other people doing the same to them. I think the legal process to get permission to search through trash should be stricter, somewhat like getting a phonetap.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
Hey! Don't fuck with the "Superjew!"
Great way to take a quote out of context... you forgot the "Either the garbage" and "or it isn't" parts. Thus the full statement is perfectly correct.
He's not a cop, he's a lying sack of feces. The best part of him ran down his momma's leg. He's posting these comments while he is locked in his bedroom during christmas break praying to god that his father won't bugger him tonight.
First, while the police can do things that we as normal citizens cannot, it doesn't mean that we have to like it or even agree to it. If nothing else the fact that they do have rights that go beyond the laws that they are supposed to uphold means they should be even more heavily scrutinized as a result.
Second, this is not about the police doing something that a normal citizen can't. According to the article the police took the trash without a warrant because it was essentially placed in the public domain (the sidewalk) and therefore was freely available for anyone, including the police to take. This means that it should be completely legal for any bloke wandering the streets to pick up anyones trash sitting at the curb and do what they will with it. That these people can't accept the fact that someone used their excuse to pilfer their trash just means that they are nothing but hypocrites (which is nothing new given the fact that they are politicians, lawyers, and cops). However, this also means that if this manner of taking ones trash is indeed illegal then those indicted from their trash that was taken in the same fashion should be released immediately.
Really, I think that the only thing that you should cry foul over is the fact that there are those in this world who willingly buy into what law enforcement and other government agencies do without ever questioning it. To say that they can do that because they are the police is just ignorance. It is this ignorance that is the reason for things like the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts which infringe on our unalienable rights to pass so readily. 1984 is becoming more a reality every day.
For all of those people that have waxed on about due process, and Fourth Amendment rights, and private property, and whatever else.. keep in mind that this was already argued at the US Supreme Court level.
Police have the legal right to search trash without a warrant.
Here is an exerpt from the ruling:
1. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. Pp. 39-44.
(a) Since respondents voluntarily left their trash for collection in an area particularly suited for public inspection, their claimed expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items they discarded was not objectively reasonable. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left along a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through it or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. The police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public. Pp. 39-43.
(b) Greenwood's alternative argument that his expectation of privacy in his garbage should be deemed reasonable as a matter of federal constitutional law because the warrantless search and seizure of his garbage was impermissible as a matter of California law under Krivda, [486 U.S. 35, 36] which he contends survived the state constitutional amendment, is without merit. The reasonableness of a search for Fourth Amendment purposes does not depend upon privacy concepts embodied in the law of the particular State in which the search occurred; rather, it turns upon the understanding of society as a whole that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion. There is no such understanding with respect to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street. Pp. 43-44.
2. Also without merit is Greenwood's contention that the California constitutional amendment violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Just as this Court's Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule decisions have not required suppression where the benefits of deterring minor police misconduct were overbalanced by the societal costs of exclusion, California was not foreclosed by the Due Process Clause from concluding that the benefits of excluding relevant evidence of criminal activity do not outweigh the costs when the police conduct at issue does not violate federal law. Pp. 44-45.
182 Cal. App. 3d 729, 227 Cal. Rptr. 539, reversed and remanded.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, sig changes you!
Quite a similar thing happened in Australia. John Safran, a young rebellious media maverick putting together a pilot for a new TV show, decided to show up at the house of Ray Martin, the host of one of Australia's rather sleazy "investigative current affairs" shows.
The host of this show certainly didn't cope with being the victim of the same tactics that his reporters use on all sorts of down and out storekeepers. Watch the most amusing video here.
Go Aussies!
All the more reason for this
Snap in half? Do what I do, put the CD-R through the shredder. yes, it probably won't get cut up into little bits, but it will tear the hell out of the recording medium making it completely unrecoverable.
Did you know that a full and true DOD wipe of a hard-disk involves shredding the platter? And I thought I was paranoid lol
I suggest you take the time to do a little research next time. According to California v. Greenwood, police can search and seize trash REGARDLESS of whether it's on the person's private property. It does NOT violate the 4th A. It does not violate one's right to due process. End of story.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, sig changes you!
...doesn't mean you're insightful.
I took a quick look at the journal of the authorof the orignial post, and saw no reference to schools, backpacks nor superjews. How about a link? Whether he's a cop or not, at this point, is moot to me.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
You would make a great nazi!
If you want it changed, change the law.
This is ancient news. Heck, it was covered on the TV Show "Law & Order" 5 years ago or so.
You cease to have an interest in something when you put the garbage out. It becomes literally garbage.
Don't like it? Shred it? Or keep it. There are secure disposal companies you know.
How can something which doesn't even have value to you be considered valuable enough to protect?
if you put recyclables in a City-marked recycling bin, they become property of the City. I know that sounds like one of those "Soviet Russia" trolls, but it is true. Homeless people have been busted for raiding recycling bins. This is why I cut out the middleman and give my bottles and cans to the local gleaners. Let them get the California Redemption Value. They need it more than I do.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
I burn my personal trash.
Credit Card receipts, income statements, bank statements, etc.
I do NOT trust shredders unless they produce dust, and those are expensive. The Office Depot shredders are a joke.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
If you live in Portland just start flushing your garbage down the toilet and shitting in your garbage can.
Trolling is a art,
All of my receipts, no matter what kind, and anything else I don't want people to see, goes into the fireplace and is burned.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
By putting MY trash out, I have contracted with a company to remove and deliver it to the proper place for disposal. Brains? Where are yours? Any deviation from that scenario is stealing. Do you still live at home with momma?
What if I have a private company to pick up my trash?
My gripe isn't about whether or not its legal to search someone's garbage. My gripe is with the fact that it's either one way or the other. I can understand both arguments, both for and against the ownership of garbage placed on the curb. I *don't* agree with the idea that it would be legal for police without a warrant to search the garbage, but not a private citizen.
Whether or not garbage is the personal property of the owner is another argument altogether.
I was just ticked because the parent poster made the assertion that warrentless search by the police was okay, but searches by private citizens were not. This in the interest of "making it easier for the police to do their jobs".
Just to put the whole argument in context.
The secret stuff is hidden behind some kind of magic veil called "national security."
How can you make that huge leap of inference?
:
How is that not consistent with
a: "Hey, I brought you a porno mag"
b: "er, thanks"
b throws it in the trash when a leaves
or
a: "son, this is a pornographic magazine and this is what I think of them"
a throws magazine in trash
or
a: "hey, look the printed some writing of mine in Playboy. Bah, I'm going to have to throw it in the trash in case someone finds it and thinks I'm into porno"
a throws magazine in trash
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I apologize if I mistyped. Of course you are correct... and regardless of whether these politicians griped about having their trash rooted through, I'm 99.9% sure that it's perfectly legal for anyone to root through anyone's garbage. I just can't find anything on findlaw yet!
keyword1 keyword2 site:slashdot.org
The Slashdot search engine leaves a lot to be desired.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
If you discount expectations that reasonable people might have, you will soon have homes looked into using ultrasound and infrared, the NSA breaking into your computer and turning on your web cam, etc. Hey, after all, you could, in theory, take steps to prevent that if it really bothered you.
If we go down that road, it will mean that only the very rich can have privacy because only they will be able to block all the ways in which their privacy can be invaded without technically violating some simple bounds.
I think it's the government's responsibility to protect the privacy of all Americans, not just the very rich. And that means that the government needs to protect our trash and respect it, too.
Of course, I agree to the degree that if examining trash is fair game, it should be fair game for everybody. However, you can bet that the next legal argument will be that once you put the trash out on the curb, it legally belongs to the recycling center, and therefore, you are committing trespass and theft if you examine it.
I agree. It's not that I want the police rifling thru peoples trash all the time (I don't, and I agree with the article in calling it "reprehensible"), but what other legal conclusion could you come to? I mean, at what point DOES trash become public?
Clearly it has to become public at SOME point, right? You don't think it should be criminal for the people at the junkyard to, for instance, sift thru trash looking for soda bottles do you? Or rubber tires? I mean, you THREW IT AWAY, you SENT IT OFF via public servants to a public land, to be stored by agents of the state. Do you think you still "own" the trash you threw out in 2001? 1996? 1939? Why not? At WHAT POINT did you think you lost that ownership?
Anyway, like I said, I think it's sneaky, but I also think the Supreme Court made the only reasonable legal decision. Here's the bottom line: if you want to throw away something incriminating, break it apart, shread it, or what have you, first; take it to a public dumpster; no, take it in pieces to FIVE public dumpsters; better yet, don't throw it away in the first place.
It makes me wonder whether an entrepeneur could make money with a "private" trash collection scheme, where things are left on your driveway (private land), picked up by private trashmen, put in a private truck, and taken to a private landfill where things are (perhaps) stirred up, burned, crunched, and otherwise mangled before being burried forever -- where the government would have no rights to the stuff. Hmmm...
Yeah - you're right.
They should let the police go through everyone's garbage, cause they might be missing some other murderers!
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Absolutely correct.
My feeling is that a lot of cops are the high school bullies who, once they graduated from high school, looked frantically for a way to maintain their previous lifestyle, and found it.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
No, it's not a blood sample, it's trash that has blood (menstrual fluid) on it. Discarded materials are unprotected by the 4th amendment, there's no violation of privacy in their seizure. Trash is trash.
Here's a new angle: Healthy women regularly and predictably bleed on things and throw them away, but men don't unless they're VERY clumsy shavers. Is the legality of taking such a DNA sample unfair to women? Had this officer been male whould his home have been searched based upon the discarded paraphenalia alone?
Yet another angle: If you are on a city sewer system (as opposed to a septic tank), can the city legally grab your waste after you flush the toilet?
I see a difference between tricking someone into giving DNA or fingerprints with drinks in a police station (as others have mentioned) and taking it from their home, or more precisely from their curbsides. I have not thought about it enough to decide wheter either should be legal or not, but it sure feels uncomfortable to me.
So your wife's tampons become gerbil bedding? How about old bandaids of yours that they could use to test for diseases you might have. Maybe you need an partially organic waste shredder too. Cut that DNA up.
Once, when we were working on a Hispanic drug dealer case, we sent in a warrant to look for drug dealer supplements in his garbage (half-used joints, cloth with coke residue on it, etc.). It didn't get approved for two weeks (due to nothing but slow buereaucracy) and as a result this drug dealer was able to get away with three murders in the mean time.
Well now, the emphasis was on drugs, not murders, by making this statement, you imply that murder and drug dealing go hand in hand. Two different things and NOT supported by anything but your say-so, seems like a crock of shit to me, all comming from your keyboard. Just remember, if you were a good cop, you would have been on top of the situation and Prevented the murders, surveillance ya know!
8-)
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Your direction of thought is good, but I dont quite think you understand the internet if your asking those questions, for example...
What about information on a HTML page - with no links leading to it?
That is BY DEFINITION public. If your running a web SERVER, your intent is obviously to make data accesible. If you cant figure out not to put your PIN number on a web page, you need to do some more reading. You have to EXPLICITLY allow a certain port to be open, and to resond with public data. Why you think this should be private is beyond me. If you spray paint your PIN number on your car in big yellow numbers, isnt it obvious that other people are going to read it, even though its not public because its 'on' your car?
For instance, is unencrypted email now public information?
If you ever thought that unencrytped mail was ever private, umm...Ive got some bad news for you. Think of email as a postcard, yes its addressed to someone else, but anyone who happens to be around in the travels of that postcard really has no problem reading it. Once again, do NOT put your PIN number in an email
The fact that this still needs explaining bothers me a great deal.
Perhaps the "Don't Rape" sign should really go on the Constitution - particularly the Fourth Amendment.
This, however, I agree with
But, whats the reason this happens? Why do they do this? Answer: Because they can! I mean your sitting her postulating in a comfy chair how this applies to the internet, while this crap is probably going on in your home town...go talk to your librarians about it, they will be glad to let you in on all the wonderful stuff that is being done now, oh wait, its a felony for them to tell you.
The guys who collect your trash work are up at the butt-crack of dawn, freezing in the winter, roasting in the midday sun in the summer, collecting the smelly things we don't want in our houses anymore. They go back smelling like all of our garbage mixed with their own sweat.
How many of those teachers work as garbage collectors in the summer?
two dimensional shredders that make confetti should make it pretty darn impossible to reconstruct any documents, especially if they use the rotating cutter method. Don't think that just burning your receipts is sufficient, the ink can be recovered with chemical processes if the ashes are intact, so you still need to pulverise the results, so why not skip the burning stage and just pulverise them correctly in the first place.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
And by your logic, it is alright if the police had taken his weed whacker instead?
No, by YOUR logic. Not his.
That link is a horrible summary, and doesn't do the original justice.
I put some of my garbage in my neighbor's garbage bin. He takes some of it back inside.
You either throw out some very useful stuff in which case I would like to give you my postal address or you have a very weird neighbor.
I can live with the throwing stuff in the other guy's bin (I used to do it all the time while living in Germany with the tiny restmuel bins there), but why on earth does he take the stuff inside?
Hmmm...unless your neighbor is actually an undercover cop placed there on long term duty to keep tabs on you. Did you think of that possibility?
If you've just gotta nickpick like this, at least do it right, fer crissakes. Does it say "times" in there at all? No. Just saying "more" implies addition, not multiplication. Even though units weren't specified, it's pretty clear from the context of the parent it was dollars per hour.
I agree with you on the principle, but your grammar is broken.
This is like what, the fourth or fifth time he's been reported dead. Must take a page from all them books he's written as he keeps turning back up.
Yep, I tried it. No luck. Agree re Google, as do most (can't they just plug Google in here?).
:)
One problem is that any search with slashdot and "garbage" just brings up too many hits to read.
Appreciate the quick mirror of that ;)
Try fourty thousandth or fifty thousandth time...
I second Randolpho!
Doesn't anyone understand that we need to relinquish some of our liberties so that we can be secure in our homes? Isn't the loss of a single legal standard for all citizens a small price to pay for easier evidence gathering by governmental agencies? After all, if it makes us safer, how could it be bad?
You give up YOUR liberties, it will not make us safer. Some of us fought and died for those liberties and you cheapen them. Leave the country!Nazi!
The rest are, of course, the kids who were bullied, who want to "get back" at everyone.
If somebody wants to do that, all they have to do is assault me and get a blood sample that way. Or pickup a sample from a glass I've taken a drink out of. Though the first one is a petty obvious violation of my rights, the second is less than clear.
Empty the litter box on top of everything else.
I'm not saying, "This is all worthless, so it's up for grabs." I'm saying, "This is all mine, and I'm paying the city to dispose of it -- not analyze it." To me, discarding something in my trash can should be treated the same as keeping it in my house. I am required to put my trash can on the curb -- on public property -- not so it will be public property itself but so it's easier for the trash collectors to get to it.
Sure, if I throw my bomb-making equipment into the street, come arrest me. Of course, seeing it in the street would be your probable cause for a search warrent. You should require probable cause and a search warrent to go through my trash.
"We're just trolling for crooks" is not probable cause.
For the same reason, electromagnetic radiation coming from my house is still my property and covered by privacy even though I didn't shield my house. That puts an unreasonable burden on me in order to obtain my rights. But you should not be required to do jack shit to obtain your rights; that's what a right means.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
A policeman, on duty, is an arm of the government, not a citizen.
Good post. The actual legal term you're looking for here is "state actor".
It's not entirely accurate to say that "police have *fewer* rights than citizens", since as citizens themselves they have all the rights afforded to citizens. However, one power that citizens do not have is the power to arrest people and throw them in jail. That is reserved for (certain) state actors.
A state actor can (as a citizen) search your trash for crack pipes. But then he is doing it as a citizen, and not a state actor, because state actors are forbidden to do that. If the cop does find anything, he cannot follow through and arrest you any more than I can. However, being a citizen, he can put whatever he found on a web page or in a newspaper. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. Paparazzi take pictures through windows all the time. The Constitution does not protect you from paparazzi. Stuff like that is left up to legislation.
Most civil rights are defined as controls on the power of state actors- not citizens or private organizations. For example, a newspaper editor can fire a reporter for writing something he doesn't agree with. Since the newspaper is not a state actor, no First Amendment violation has taken place. This point seems to sail over the heads of most people when they bitch and moan about their First Amendment freedoms being violated by private citizens or organizations. Unless the cops are involved, the First Amendment issues are usually irrelevant. But this isn't always the case. For example, when a state university fires a professor for his political views, that is a First Amendment violation- because as a public institution the university is a state actor! The same rule wouldn't apply to, say, a Bible College that receives no public funds. It makes sense, but no wonder people are confused.
A cop is perfectly free to search your trash and put up a web site with pictures of everything he found, but if he then tries to prosecute you with what he found, a court will be obliged to throw it out. Unless you live in Portland, where judgeships are apparently being dispensed from Cracker Jack boxes. The article doesn't mention whether any Cracker Jack boxes were actually found in these people's garbage so I cannot speculate any further.
My trash belongs to me until the trash collector takes possession of it -- and then it's my understanding/agreement that (for a fee) they will dispose of it properly. Hmmm...so maybe it even belongs to me when it's buried in the landfill. I didn't exactly sell it to them or anything.
In any case, I don't believe the police should have it without a warrant. (Although thanks to the Patriot Act we really don't have to worry about warrants too much anymore.)
P.S. There was a movie, "Star Chamber", in the 80s that used this exact thing as its plot point... Murderer got off because the gun was taken from his trash can and ruled inadmissable, so the judges go around and kill them themselves... Ok, lame movie, but...
Christ, this is 1984, or [insert big brother novel here].
/. is no longer enough. E-mail doesn't work. March...let them know that they've crossed the line. Tell, them, vocally. Just don't sit, cos they'll never see. I'm just scared that what's happening over there will make the crosiing to the EU.
This is just...evil?....sick?
Hypocracy has reached it's peak in the 'land of the free'. I'm just glad I don't live there. The problem of course is the old joke "When the end of the world comes, be glad you live in the Netherlands...it'll come six months later".
After the PATRIOT acts I was amazed. After the Homeland Security act I was frightened. Now I'm just scared. Call me naive, but this is just freaky scary.
I knew that science fiction writers are prophets of a sort. What they qwrite is what people aspire to. Case in point, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson. People read their work, and aspire to create giant Manga robots, the internet, geosynchronous satelites. What sci-fi predict comes to pass, because young kids think it's cool, and thionk of that for the rest of their life. But they also have nightmares...and this is one.
Maybe it's the champange, but this double standard scares the shit out of me. This just shouldn't happen. In the seventies, people marched against a war which didn't really even effect them. But now the problems are at home, and no-one gives a peep!?!? WTF!?
That's really all I can say...wtf!?!?
People, posting on
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Fuck all this talk about dumpster-diving. I want to know about Superjew. Is he an anti-semite or kosher to the extreme?
A full DoD wipe of a hard drive involves one or more thermite grenades and a couple of Marines closely "supervising" every step of the process.
I already employ a 'scorched earth' approach to anything I put out in my trash, this after some trashpickers left stuff scattered all over the place and I had to go back out and clean it up. When I put out a computer monitor now, I make sure the tube is obviously busted. Other computer/electronic equipment gets smashed up enough to dissuade anyone from taking it.
I guess in addition to that, now I'll have to obtain some infectious medical waste and sprinkle a little into each of my trash bags every week along with some razor blades and X-Acto knife blades.
"Hey, I cut myself on your trash!"
"Sucks to be you, pal, you shouldn't have been rooting around in it."
IANAL - hell IDELITUS (I Don't Even Live in the US)!
/. There's nothing the politicians can do about it. So if it's legal what would happen if these reporters decided to do it as mush as they could. For example, the could publish a weekly "Best of the DA's trash" column in the newspaper.
:)
I love what the reporters have done but I'm curious as to what could happen next. What the reporters have done is perfectly legal, according to other posts here on
Does this mean the DA has his hands tied? The mayor was busy inferring that it was possibly illegal. How about if she decided to force the issue?
Now the best thing here would be if the mayor and DA got fed up and took the reporters to court. My understanding is that they would lose and they'd look likea bunch of idiots in the process for attempting to stop a legal activity. On the other hand, if they did nothing they'd be held up to public ridicule as the publics perception of the law is that it is stupid and invasive.
I saw go for it either way
Because moving it from the realm of open and read, to open, assemble, and read is that much harder. Wait, it's not!
Unless you burn and rake the ashes, don't count on your shredded information not being put back together again easily. I know people think nothing of doing a 700 piece jigsaw puzzle, so why is your vertically shredded garbage suddenly impossible to re-assemble?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What's all the hoopla about? Geez! You think you guys have as many rights as your rulers or something? Hah!
It's been over two hundred years since the newborn United States made the heretical proclaimation that rights are unalienable. We were born with our rights, they were not given to us by the state. But the state no longer believes this, and neither should you.
You are here to serve the state. It is your rightful master. When your politicians are sworn into office, they miraculously become better than you. They become better able to run your life than you can yourself.
If they say they can rummage through their garbage but you can't rummage through theirs, then who are you to argue? Ingrate!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Everybody should just start planting suspicious items into their garbage.
Whoa! Five yard penalty! I think we all know that 90% of city and county level police give the other 10% a bad name, and that's just unfair.
Anyway, it's human nature. No one is scum, but they can tell you who is. Example: A convicted thug who crippled a teller, paralyzed and blinded a lady depositing a pension check and killed a widower cop with three kids all while trying to shoot his way out of a bank robbery gone bad will be the first guy to kick a "new fish" in the nuts because he got caught with a hard drive full of Traci Lords' early work. Why? "Cuz some tings just ain't tolerable! Fucking scumbags!"
on the whole, are a species that received their judgeships from Craker Jack boxes. Such seems to be the nature of the beast. That is why, in part, we are blessed with courts of appeal. I won't even get into what I think of the typical city councilman who passes some of these "laws".
I'd note that I specifically said "on duty." Of course an officer not on duty is just an ordinary citizen. While on duty, as a state actor, an officer is given powers that would be extraordinary for a citizen, but this is balanced, to a certain extent, by a removal of certain rights they retain as citizens. The officer *as state actor* has fewer rights, just as, say, a soldier does ( who has damned few rights as the citizen understands them).
A police officer cannot arbitrarily switch back and forth from being a state actor and a citizen. If he collects my trash *while in uniform* he does so as a state actor. As such that trash is now evidence ( although possibly inadmissable) and the *property of the state,* not the officer, and it must be handled with the same protocols as all other evidence.
Including whatever restrictions on freedom of speach apply to evidence.
Of course, if he goes through my trash off duty and posts the contents to a web site he may well be surprised to find he only retains the *protections* of an ordinary citizen. Libel is actionable.
KFG
Doesn't anyone understand that we need to relinquish some of our liberties so that we can be secure in our homes?
Absolutely. So you won't mind if I come around to your house and feel up your wife, will you? After all, it's quite possible that she's concealing dangerous contraband somewhere about her person, and so I'd be failing in my patriotic duty if I didn't come around and give her a thorough strip search and internal examination just to be on the safe side.
Thanks for being so understanding about the need for this though.
and if you put the confetti in seperate bags disposed of in seperate locations, so much the better :-)
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Only comment in this thread with useful info
I wonder where this leaves recyclables. In Portland, does this not give ANYONE the right to go from home to home and pick up the recycled newspaper to sell? There is precedence up here in Canada on this. The recyclables are owned by the homeowner or the intended recipient. They are not free for anyone to take. Apparently there is an opportunity for a private entrepeneur in Portland by taking all those free recyclables being set out on the side of the road for anyone to take.
In the article, the reporters talked about taking trash from two of the individuals and recycling from the mayor. I don't know about Oregon law, but where I'm from, it's the state (or whoever has the contract to pick up recycling) who legally owns the recycled material when it's put on the curb in the proper container. While it would be OK to take trash under any circumstances (as long as you don't dump it illegally), recycling is protected from individuals taking redeemable cans and from reporters. I'm not quite sure about police, since they probably would be given permission by the recycling company or by the state gov't to take the recycling too.
The reporters could indeed get in trouble for taking the recycled objects, but I don't know if tresspassing would apply. Probably more like petty larceny (all the paper material taken is probably worth about five cents).
P.S. Remember, never put anything related to drugs in the recycling, especially needles. It's usually people, not machines, who sort the bottles and stuff at the recycling plant, and you don't want them getting hurt in the process of doing their jobs.
The now-deceased belgian weekly L'Instant did something similar ten years ago. They went through politicians' garbage. They discovered that Olivier Deleuze one green political figure, now in charge of energy in the federral government, had not-so green consuming habit. He reacted with fair-play.
http://www.somebaudy.com
From the Blue World 'analysis' of Lasso versus PHP:
"The Lasso vs PHP report shows how Lasso Professional 5 beats PHP," said Bill Doerrfeld, CEO of Blue World. "This white paper will further increase awareness as to the significant performance, ease-of-use, architecture, security and total cost of ownership benefits of using Lasso over competing offerings such as PHP."
Uh, sure it fucking does. Scaled like a fucking champ here.
Double bangs. Double whats. Overall, literacy on the level of an inner-city eighth-grader grinding along in the slow 'n' easy courses. Doing federal investigations.
I suddenly believe everything I've ever read about no-knock warrants being served on the wrong house. Looks like it's suicide for me again.
NB Next time you whip out a first-person pronoun, how about holding down the shift key, Special Agent Fuckhead.
Slashdot is not The Well. Only The Well is The Well. When I see some hole in the wall Johnny come lately "online community" brag about low UIDs I just slap mah' fro. I certainly hope you guys are impressing each other, at least, and it appears that you are, so no harm done.
You can't have such a far swweping generalization. I know many cops who this is true for, but many others who idealistically signed up for the job to be a hero and keep society safe and are frustrated as hell spending alot of their time tax collecting by enforcing minor traffic violations.
Collecting garbage is one of the most hazardous jobs on earth. Heavy machinery, sharps, biological and chemical hazards, exhausting hours... doesn't matter if it takes brains or not, if you want people to work an unpleasant, essential and extremely dangerous job, you need to pay them well.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
More than half the ppl here run MS and willingly send there credit card to a MS run web site. That means, that they know (perhaps not accept statistics that MS runs 95% of the stolen credit cards) that they endanger their own information. The way I figure it ppl can not be too concerned about security.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What would happen if garbage men took the whole Summer off?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Where do you put your dead AA batteries, up your arse?
...in practice it generally costs the trash company money to collect/process recyclables. They are no more interested in recycling your AA cells than you are in sticking them up your bum.
Most communities 'recycle' only because it's mandated
Hypocracy? WTF is that? A ruling class of syringes?
especially if they use the rotating cutter method
I understand this. But it still CAN be re-constructed. There is a person within the intelligence community whose job it is to verify shredders. You put a blank sheet through, clean the rollers and cutting blades, then pass though a test sheet. This sheet is then collected in its entirety in a bag and send to this person. They then try to re-assemble the test sheet. Consequently I trust very few shredders.
And the shredder I am talking about has a security rating of TOP SECRET. It cuts and cross cuts, with the resulting cut sized about one/half millimeter by 4 millimeters. This shredder I trust.
ashes are intact
Not after I get through mixing them around, burning wood with them, and pouring water on the fire. I do this once a year on the annual camping trip.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Don't let the unions run you. It is not illegal. It is against union policy though. At trade shows this means a lot, they'll file grievances all over the place, and trust me, you'll grieve.
But it isn't illegal and there's no way they can stop you on the street. If they do try to, please sue them. The Teamsters need knocked down a peg.
How can you recover ink from ashes and determine what the ink said?
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for the garbage,
and by then,
there was no one left to speak up for the garbage.
Another slashdot clone.
Google does have a privacy policy. But it is not restricted by the Fourth Amendment, and even if they violated their policy or other laws by handing stuff over to law enforcement, I think all you'd have is a nominal civil claim against them. The gov't prosecuting you over this evidence would probably still be OK, unless they use the private party in a way that the latter is deemed their agent (more caselaw on that...). In other words, the gov't can't direct an investigation with Google as their puppet, w/o a warrant. Also, Google could be forced to caught up the info with a subpoena, easier to get than a warrant in most cases.
;-)
I don't know the legal details on privacy among private parties otherwise, what they can collect and what would break the law. I know there have been more and more noises about federal legislation to raise the bar for privacy in many areas, which I generally support. Don't even get me started on this national database idea....
On garbage, like I said, it would be easy enough to force you to waive your ownership interest. I wish they would, in fact, rather than beat up the 4th A. You could then dispose of your garbage privately, at a private dump, under the contractual conditions you desire.
Actually, having unfortunately read the article, I would *much rather* the police sift through my junk than reporters who then *publish* the information! Yech. I wonder if those reporters will be seeing a little less cooperation from the police, you know, background info and the like?
You have no constitutional right to be able to drive a car on public roads. It is a privledge. If you wish to drive a car on public roads, you are required to be liscenced to do so, and are required to register your vehicle.
Yet the government has no constitutional ability to deprive you of life, liberty, or the pursuit of a job. In this modern life, for most people, a vehicle for personal transportation is a need, not a want. I am fortunate enough to live within ten block of my workplace, and even closer to my school. Still, without roomies that have vehicles, I would have to use a taxi for all of life's little necessities such as trips to the grocery and discount stores.
I think a harsh reality of today's life in the US is that, in order to be a normal member of society, one must own a car. The only persons exempt from that are mostly residents of very dense population centers. There once whas a time when it was a privilege to drive. The legal system still sees it that way, as you know. As I see it, though, it is about time for the privilege to become a right.
Don't think I'm suggesting the government should not have the ability to take away or suspend that right - the law still needs to provide for reasonable protection of other persons as well. I'm just saying the fact it's a privilege is held over a person's head now, with little room for recourse - after all, driving is a freedom given by the good grace of the state; you have no reasonable expectation of it.
It is far too easy for the state to take that privilege away from those who aren't willing to jump through hoops, and that needs to change. IMHO.
± 29 dB
So you are saying I could just add some to the same bags as the body parts?
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
I guess the way to create a surveillance state is to put a tax on any activity you want to track...that way anyone who protects their privacy can be nailed for tax evasion.
It might give the authorities enough to get a search warrant, but I'd think a good defense lawyer could ensure that your trash wasn't what put you in jail.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
You save all of your sensitive trash for a year? That seems a little inconvenient and perhaps a bit insecure. Do you keep it in a safe?
I wonder if the Slashdot powers-that-be ever offer to mirror their victim's sites before baiting the Slashdot readership into unleashing a DoS attack upon it?
If they don't, how long until it gets used against them in court? The PTB known damn well that they knock over web servers on a regular basis. How long until they knock over a web server belonging to someone who responds with a civil suit?
Are they assholes? Are they idiots? Or are they offering to do things right, and are the owners of the slashdotted sites to blame?
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
what if i knew that those reporters were going to investigate those politicians' garbage and threw copies of Jihad Weekly into their garbage cans for a laugh? ....
"So you are saying I could just add some to the same bags as the body parts?"
;).
Yes! The paper dust can thus sponge up any leaking blood from the body part
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
"Wow...someone on /. who almost knows his dead languages. I'm nearly impressed."
:)
That's almost what I put down. But then I realised that no, no-one does give a fuck about where their country is headed. Pithy comments is what they prefer to put down, instead of doing something about what's going on.
I have to admit though, it is very nearly, but not just quite nearly enough, funny
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
...a beowulf cluster made out of politicians' garbage?
Slashdot killed their server haha... http://goinside.blogspot.com
The police have a duty to get a search warrant before invading your privacy.
It can't be THAT private if you're THROWING IT IN THE TRASH.
creation science book
According to California v. Greenwood, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.
The police can search your trash only if it has been left where trash collection would normally pick it up. If that place is on your private property, only then can the police search your trash. In my neighborhood, the police cannot search my trash until I move it OFF my property because the trash truck has an automatic arm that can't reach into my yard.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
That depends on how you reconstruct them. Reconstruction by taping it together would probably be near impossible... but imagine if you could dump all those little wee bits onto a wee conveyor belt that runs them over an automated scanner and then proceeds to try to assemble them in digital form.
The problem doesnt become easy, but it does become a lot easier. And compared to cracking crypto it becomes downright simple.
Not that I've ever seen such a device, but I'd be rather surprised if some government agencies did not have something like that.
Under Oregon law
^^^^^^
Damn, I meant Washington, not Oregon. Didn't hit "Preview".
All you geek households need to go set up Squid and set it up to distribute the load. The Slashdot Effect can be eliminated within our lifetimes.
Help us build a better map!
Isn't there a third logical possibility you haven't considered? Maybe garbage put out belongs to the city or whatever authority is in charge of collection. The act of putting the garbage out would be an implicit transfer of title to the city or other authority. Thus, that authority would have the right to search the garbage, since it belongs to them, while a journalist would not. What does the law say? (I don't know.)
Two words: burning barrel
Usually when I snap them they shatter into a few dozen pieces. If they don't, the silvery part comes up, and I peel that off and roll it between my palms, and it turns to a few hundred little pieces.
I'm not trying to be DOD safe. I figure what I do will keep your average nosy neighbor, credit card theif, or reporter in check.
... Don't think that just burning your receipts is sufficient, the ink can be recovered with chemical processes if the ashes are intact, so you still need to pulverise the results, so why not skip the burning stage and just pulverise them correctly in the first place.
:)
Let me guess... Ex-Enron?
-- MrMud
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
How simple can it get? If you don't have reasonable cause to search my house and can't get a warrent for that, you don't have grounds to dig through my trash, so piss off. When I put my trash out, I expect it to go to a sanitary landfill.
Now a private individual digging through my trash is a different matter which indeed may lead to a reasonable seach warrent. The lines are corssed, however, when public servants are the violators. Also, because a trash can on the street is NOT really under my control, "evidence" found there is not realy useful for much. Sworn testomony by neighbors to illegal activity is a much more useful thing than finding something in a trash can that anyone could have put there.
I want the police to be able to catch the bag guys just as much as you do, but I don't want innocent people suffering and I don't want to live in fear my house will be searched unreasonably. I don't like the idea that someone with a grudge could drop drugs and kiddie porn into my trashcan and get my house raided. Think about it for a while and you will realize that the only way to put the bad guys away is to catch them and pove they done what they did beyond a reasonable doubt. Digs in trashcans are a cheap and useless trick that offer nothing but abuse for all of us good guys.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The constition limits what government can do, not what you or I can do. 'Animals, children, scavengers, snoops and other members of the public' are not paid officials of the government. A racoon may embarass me by spilling my garbage on the road, but it won't create a public record or trigger a raid on my house.
For the very same reasons, searches of garbage are useless for providing reasonable evidence of wrongdoing. Anyone can walk by and place drugs, kiddie porn and other foul things in anyone's garbage.
If you can't get a warant to seach a house, you don't have reason to dig through garbage and the results are not worth the trouble.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is your neighbor antisocial?
I mean, come on. Don't put stuff on the curb if you don't want to lose it. The rule is, if you have something that someone else may find useful, but you don't want it anymore, give it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
When either of those organizations says "It's too trashy for our clientele", (or if you don't like them for some reason, as I do not) then you stick it on the curb and wait 'till a passerby takes it. If a passerby doesn't take it and you get sick of looking at it, THEN you HAUL IT YOURSELF.
Therefore, by convention, just like saying "thank you" when you pay for your fuckin' groceries, if you put something on the curb, anyone else can have it. Unless it's a car. Bicycles are usually excluded too. A sign helps.
Perhaps if your neighbor prefers not to honor this convention then he should hang a sign informing the passersby that he does not honor this convention?
Like what I said? You might like my music
Turn it around. Say they got the warrant approved too quickly, search the wrong guy, attach the evidence to the wrong case, convict and sentence him to DEATH. Would you want *that* blood on your hands?
In America, until the fourth amendment was recently appealed, we were "innocent until proven guilty by a jury of our peers". The criminals get this treatment just like the rest of us, because it's not always easy to prove someone's a criminal.
If it's THAT easy to prove someone's a criminal, do you really think warrants would be needed in the first place?
Like what I said? You might like my music
Nice try kid, but gloating about your troll in an easily locatable place immediately after the fact is rather telling.
You've failed at the very same "proper" troll you used as a boasting point. You are a disgrace to trolltalk.
1.5 x 4 mm?
:-)
scan both sides, runlength encode permiter of each side, sort them in a 2d mesh and print with the bitmap of each cell. Its a non trivial unless you've got the memory to store and manage about 50 million 32 bit integers for a ream of paper thats been shreaded. To bad thats only $40 these days.
The good shreaders do less than 1mm squares and will eat hard drives as well.
This is "classified" approved so the three letter agencies can read your stuff
The best thing for home use is a blender and a bit of water.
I thought this was interesting. From Willamette Week's article:
"Actually, we couldn't snatch Katz's garbage, because she keeps it right next to her house, well away from the sidewalk. To avoid trespassing, we had to settle for a bin of recycling left out front."
From Mayor Vera Katz's press release in response to the article:
"My trash and recycling receptacles are picked up not from a curbside location, but from my private property. Both receptacles were covered. Willamette Week trespassed on my private property, opened up my trash and recycling receptacles and rifled through my trash and recycling, and took several items."
So, who to believe? The journalist or the politician? In all seriousness, a difficult choice.
If I remember quickly, after Saigon fell, the Vietnamese reconstructed a bunch of embarrassing documents that had been left in the US Embassy in the rush to depart. They had been shredded, but (if I recall correctly from the film of it) only in one dimension. The Vietnamese had no shortage of manpower or motivation, and stuck all the bits together. I should think the same is theoretically possible for many of the cheaper 2D shredders. The problem (if you had the patience) would be that the bits are so small, the slightest draft would ruin everything.
Yeah, and while we're at it, let's pay programmers and webmasters big bucks. Then everybody and his brother will want to be one, and in a couple years we'll be able to pay them even less than we are now. That's the ticket!
Teachers aren't so bad off that they should be complaining. I'd kill for a $30K/year job right now. You don't understand how much money that is in most parts of the country. You're probably from a big city where the vast wealth of the resident slave drivers artificially inflates the price of everything.
To teachers in those cities: Get the hell out of town and let the corporate masters figure out what to do with their own spoiled rotten kids. That'll teach 'em.
Funny you should mention that, I've been employing used cat litter in liew of a shredder for many years now.
P.S. No need to _buy_ a cat - we've got two young ones to give away currently, if you can convince us that you'll treat them well.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Okay, I do think that caching is a nice idea. However, I can think of very few people that are interested in doing it under this sort of scenerio -- essentially, their privacy goes entirely out the window. The one public ircache node has a log of *everyone* using the damn thing, and even if not, it's very easy to watch what people are doing.
If latency ever improves on the Freenet, I could see running a cache through there...
May we never see th
Yes well, that's one sheet. Now let's shred 100 sheets, mix the resulting confetti and let Mr. Inspector try to sort out the results..
Yeah, it is strange. I live in Washington, about 10 miles from the border with Oregon, and almost every time I get gas over there I forget, get out of the car to start pumping my own gas, and then have to look sheepish as the attndant hurries across the station to take over. I suppose it's illigal, but I've never recieved any stronger punishment than, "I'll do that for you sir."
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Your muckraker,your spindoctor and your garbologist. Hello!
Put it into microwave - that's ultimate solution!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/11/125522 9&mode=thread&tid=126
no?
I'm guessing that marcelmouse was using that particular example to make a rock solid example of how to make a solid inference from trash based evidence. The problem with inference is that it is the mind of the surveyor creating the "truth".
The missing jewels were stolen from that room.
The only person I am aware of that went into the room is you.
Therefore : you stole the jewels.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
what if ppl start burning all their trash in their yards now?
then, later, it's deemed 'terrorist like activity' to burn things in their yards.
aah, it's all wierd.
Scenario: A dealer does a fantastic deal on new car, but is a bit bad with publicity and noone knows. The local newspaper does a front page story; the next day the dealer is overwhelmed with thousands of customers and can't cope. Is it the newspapers fault?
An Author puts a item on the web. On a public Network. (Presumably) in the hope that people are going to come and read it. They cant then complain that people come and read it!
Maybe slashdot should take a copy of each page and host that on there servers. But they shouldn't do this automatically.
A) Copyright issues
B) Techincal issues with dynamic pages
C) Original Author of page will not record hits; possible loss of revenue for them from there advertisers.
It would be nice if they offered, but Slashdot are within there right to operate as they do now.
Not that anyone is still reading... :)
:), and the ironic thing is that many of the teachers can't afford to live in the county, which is not at all ritzy. Median home (note, not average!) value has reached $350k, double since I moved here 5 years ago(!). Anyway, one needs to look at context or the numbers mean nothing.
:)
;-)
I'm surprised people portray school teachers as borderline panhandlers. They vary WIDELY, as does per pupil school spending which varies by about 6:1.
NEA survey of salaries & spending
Private school teachers, esp. parochial, often make less than unionized public school teachers. I don't know how much teachers *should* make, but there are professions in worse shape.
Actually, I'd say the NEA data is pretty much worthless because averages entire states and does not factor in some sort of COLA. The COLA between NYC and SD is *huge*. Also, states vary internally. I see that my state, VA, spends ~$6,000/pupil, pretty low on the list, while DC looks staggering at $13k. However, my county of Arlington, across the Potomac from DC, spends $12.5k. I again don't know the "right" number, but the averages are misleading. Medians would be slightly better.
Here is a more nuanced survey of VA salaries, which vary nearly 2:1 intrastate. When I lived in IL, spending varied nearly 6:1. (Here is NYC.) Our salaries are not proportionally as high as our spending per pupil (don't forget to factor in classs size BTW
Versus sanitation workers it appears the teachers, education notwithstanding, make similar wages. Before someone chimes in to rag on the quality of teachers, at least some (or many) are good and deserve to be paid accordingly. And, before I get one of *those* people, no, "throwing money at something" does not guarantee fixing it. Choking off its air supply does guarantee results. (I hate that stupid argument.)
If NYC sanitation workers don't like their wages, they can convey they effectively by smell --- strike. Teachers have less colorful options, though I suppose closing the schools and sending kids home is pretty cruel.
As you can see, I'm starting off the new year cranky. Let's hope it lasts.
by reading great literature.
Shakespeare, Chaucer, Marlowe, etc.
If they don't want people to spell like them they shouldn't make poor, impressionable children read them in school.
KFG
Don't forget about how the authorities had a press conference about his large porno collection. Just what every guy needs, save a few lives at your minimum wage job only the FBI make sure your porno collection makes weekend update on SNL.
What do you want to bet next time he sees a suspicious package he just quietly turns around and walks away.
Unlike the FBI at least SNL eventually tried to make amends.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
The simple fact is that government officials cannot abide their own laws. The very structure of government requires them to be above the law, like how the IRS never gives anyone a jury trial because they know that no one would ever be convicted if they did.
Doubters should take note that there is no secret that every law passed by the US Congress exempts that very congress from having to abide the law.
Gun owners take note: Everywhere that you are prohibitted from defending yourself is a place where a bureaucrat can, and will, have their own arms or armed guards.
Etcetera.
Peace, may your aim never waver,
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I'm sure we have plenty of lawyers who read Slashdot. Why don't they post and give some legal advice?
Zodiac Survey
Thanks for the clarification. For context, consider that in the UK, most mail order companies are strict about matching card numbers to addresses. Right now, I'm trying to convince a vendor to send goods to my home address (which they've verified) but they're complaining because I don't have a land line that they can use to further verify the address. I've never met a company quite so reluctant to take my money, but while it's extremely annoying, it's also rather reassuring.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm totally on the side of the reporters on this one. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled that access to what used to be private property in public areas is allowed, the police may go fishing in a suspect's garbage for evidence. Boo-hoo, that battle has already been lost.
Conversely, since trash has been put out in public, the Portland politicos have no expectation of privacy either, and have no recourse when the Press turns the tables on them. If I had been one of those reporters, I'd have laughed in the face of the Mayor at her 'summons' to her private chambers.
Folks, this is what a Free Press is all about. Government is by nature expansionist; the Press, when it is doing its job, is an effective tool in beating back that tendency.
I particularly savor this kind of approach when dealing with legislative types who propose yet another overly-invasive policy, such as blanket video surveilance, such as that practiced in Washington DC or in London. If I were a citizen of those places, then I'd very publicly petition the populace to mandate video surveilance of all legislative chambers, and use the same arguments put forth to justify general video spying. How would officials like to be watched, every minute of their day, by the public? A citizen referendum which makes an end-run around legislators would be a powerful message from the populace that spying is not necessarily the best possible way to combat crime.
In general, I am not keen on the idea that police might target me for some reason, and routinely search my garbage. A container in public is far too subject to planting of evidence, in my opinion. But occassionally citizens can and should remind their officials who they work for, and how laws made to ease law enforcement's job may have unintended consequences.
Hypocricy also runs the other way. Here in Denver, it was recently uncovered by the local press that the Denver police had been maintaining files on citizens who participated in protests, seemingly regardless of the issue involved. it seems the press are complaining that Denver has 'no written policy' concerning the collection of intelligence about citizen dissidents, and darn it, there's got to be a state-wide consistent policy established.
Interestingly, at the height of this country's gun control phase a couple years ago, the two biggest local papers, who were shilling for ever-stricter gun control laws, did so under the justification that Colorado is a 'home rule' state, meaning that each jurisdiction has the freedom to determine its own policies concerning the enforcement of gun controls within its own boundaries.
So, while our state constitution clearly states that no person's right to bear arms shall be called into question, the Post and the News argued that Denver City and County had the right under home-rule to abort that constitutional clause within their own borders.
Now that the issue is police surveilance in a public place, these papers have conveniently forgotten about their holy home-rule stance.
(Francesconi is city commissioner in Portland)
....
.....
...
x .ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/portla nd_news/104038899617000.xml
----
Dear Commissioner Francesconi at al,
Below is a letter to your colleague Mayor Katz regarding recent "garbage" related events. Specifically the issue of Mr Kroeker calling Willamette Week reporters pigs at some official city function recently. I'm copying you on it for two reasons:
(a) the issue of unacceptably hateful behavior toward your constituents by anybody in the city employ is, hopefully, of concern to all city agencies not only those supervised by Ms. Katz. And because
(b) I would like you to give some serious thought to the idea of supporting or maybe even originating new "zero-tolerance, one-strike and you-are-out" city policy in situations of this type.
With best regards
-----------
Dear Ms. Katz
This is regarding recent events involving your and your constituents' garbage. As you are probably well aware by now (or should be) so-called garbage pulls are extremely intrusive invasions of one's privacy*. You should also be aware that they have been and will likely remain routinely employed by various government agencies, yours included. Some of those agencies recently asserted their right to conduct them without any judicial review. Yours among them again. Needless to say such assertions are seen by many as gross and highly unwarranted corruption of civil rights of the citizenry and a good example for what some see as a gradual emergence of a semi-totalitarian order of things in this country.
Unfortunately technically the issue remains unresolved, various authorities have assumed widely differing positions. It will clearly take some time to fully resolve it, judicially or otherwise. In the meantime we all hope all involved parties will strive to proceed in mutually respectful, dignified and civilized manner. This letter is an attempt to recruit your good offices in furtherance of this difficult goal.
The undersigned feels the need to speak in support of recent Willamette Week's actions. They, I believe, were fully within the scope of our current understanding of what is legal in this case. Your own city employees are on the record supporting the legality of such actions. After all the city does these things to its residents routinely. What is good for one of your citizens, Ms. Katz, needs also be good for you. Furthermore, their reporting in this case is of a highly responsible and civically minded caliber and as such should be commended not condemned, as you are implying in your recent press release.
Contrast this to the highly irresponsible, inflammatory language recently attributed to one of your employees specifically Mr. Kroeker, your police chief. He is reported by the media** to have stated at the recent official city function "Never ever wrestle with a pig in the garbage, because you'll get dirty and the pig likes it." The context of this remark was made abundantly clear by him, by pigs he is implying reporters at the WW.
Needless to say we cannot tolerate the situation where the use of hate speech and expression of utter contempt by any elected or hired city employee toward any constituent of yours is permitted. I ask you in your capacity as a police commissioner and city mayor to restore some measure of civility to the behavior of your own employees.
The situation, in my judgment, is grave enough to call for a decisive and strong immediate action on your part including but not limited to immediate termination of Mr. Kroeker's command. From his own remarks it appears only prudent to assume a strong likelihood exists a hate crime could be committed or contemplated in the future. Which given the extensive and deadly force presently at his command is a risk I think you and the city cannot afford to tolerate.
To repeat there should be zero tolerance for civically unacceptable behavior displayed here so egregiously by Mr. Kroeker. I suggest the city of Portland adopts a very simple policy- one instance of a disrespectful or hateful outburst toward any of your constituents by any of the city employees and you are out.
With best regards
* http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso
** http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/oregonian/inde
paper shredder
Jeez, didn't any of these legal experts see The Star Chamber? This whole thing about "charges dropped cos you stole the trash" was exposed nationwide, all the way back in 1983.
Heck, I've been covering this critical issue in my signature for years. Ironically, the featured user comment at IMDB is "lively trash". I get all of my legal advice from implausible Hollywood thrillers.
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
Quoting from this 1996 article:
"Trash. Only nonsensitive, and perhaps already destroyed materials, should be discarded in the trash. It is foolish to spend thousands of dollars on perimeter security guards and equipment just to hand over sensitive information to a waste paper or trash removal company."
"Trash, whether placed in a dumpster or other area for collection or delivered directly to a trash disposal service, is extremely vulnerable to snoops. Trash placed in a public area may be deemed legally abandoned; even if not, as a practical matter it remains accessible to all who may wish to rummage through it. In a noted example, in 1975 former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left five bags of trash on the sidewalk in front of his home. A reporter for a tabloid newspaper seized these bags and sifted through them for information. In the aftermath of the incident it came out that trashpicking was a common journalistic practice."
"In another example, Northwest Reports, a television news magazine, aired a story last August about several Portland, Oregon banks that failed to protect customer information. The story focused on private investigator John Stevens' search for information from the bank's outdoor trash containers. Stevens' search yielded valuable customer and bank information, including credit applications, credit card account numbers and balances, copies of customer's tax returns, safe deposit box information, and bank building information (including floor plans and combinations for locks and alarms)."
"Searches of abandoned material are legal under Oregon law, according to attorney Dwayne Bosworth of the Portland law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, who was interviewed on the show. Whether material is considered abandoned depends on several factors. These factors include whether the trash is placed in a public area such as a parking lot and whether any precautions are taken to prohibit public access to the containers, such as posting warning signs and placing containers behind a wall or fence."
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
All that great police work, and the only thing preventing you from arresting this murderer was getting his garbage? I feel safer already.
actually, real trolls reveal the trolls that they have posted, and we all laugh together. That is a real proper troll.
So shut the fuck up you stupid fucking dumbass.
real trolls reveal the trolls that they have posted
AFTER the troll has caught some hapless children trying to cross the bridge. You have failed utterly.
Real trolls will be laughing together, that goes without saying, at you.
...we all laugh together.
And then handjobs
Not that I've ever seen such a device, but I'd be rather surprised if some government agencies did not have something like that.
Of course should know that it's possible on your home computer and only takes a few seconds to do, because I saw the Lone Gunmen do it last year!
Try to reassemble a BLANK sheet?
Are you sure - I'd imagine every shredder would fail that test!
Alex
What I found interesting about the article was the Mayor's threat of legal action. Now wouldn't that be interesting, having the Mayor drag Williamette Week into court for theft of her recycling. The case would go to trial and the WW could then deliberately lose the case in order to set a legal precedent for trash being property.
Williamette Week has posted a followup story Garbage Chronicles.
In short:
Currently my garbage goes into a huge communal pile from 50 residences so while they could search it they'd have a hell of a lot of garbage to wade through.
When it's just mine I shred important documents and I do not leave it outside my own house - I either put it in front of another house in the area, picked at random, or I drop it into a public dumpster in the city.
I don't know about others, but my trash can says "Property of the Disposal Company." The police shouldn't be able to open the trash can unless they have permission of the disposal company. And I pay good money to have the disposal company take the garbage away, so they better take them away and not give them away to the police! If they do, they better give me my money back!
If the paper knew that there was a strong liklihood of swamping his business with people who just stopped by for a quick gander and had no interest in buying... And that the car dealership had to pay 50 cents per x number of people who stepped onto the lot, even if it was only for 5 seconds, then yes. There would be a potential of a lawsuit.
While the area is very murky for businesses or newspapers--Free advertising!--it's a lot less murky for the individual homesites Slashdot often brings down. Those users often pay a lot more for their bandwidth than a business, because they don't buy it in bulk. They also don't tend to obtain any income from the site.
-Sara
And I'm sorry to sound Harsh, but this appliles to the small website owner who makes no cash to. They made a decision to set up a site at there cost with no profits and they have to live with it. If it then turns out to be the wrong one due to perfectly normal actions on the part of a web surfer (Surfing the web) they've got no-one to blame.
I'm not as Harsh as I sound. It would be nice if Slashdot offered to host mirrors for websites. But in my book, they in no way have a moral obligation to do so and the companys should defeinetly not be able to sue over this.
"Obviously, a major malfunction has occurred."
-- Steve Nesbitt, voice of Mission Control, January 28,
1986, as the shuttle Challenger exploded within view
of the grandstands.
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