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."

Comments

Re:confused...

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What the fuck? The original poster did not mention child porn, yet you mention it three times in your response! Do you have a lot of child porn? Are you upset because you cannot find child porn by going through other people's trash?

The guy's point is that when a garbage can is sitting on the side of the road, anyone can put garbage in it, whether that garbage happens to be a tissue, a dead body, or your beloved child porn.

I don't see what this has to do with child porn, which a dedicated child pornographer would probably not dispose of, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't throw it in someone else's trash with their real name and/or address still on it.

I repeat: What the fuck?

The person who owns the trash can (my trash cans are bought and paid for, not on loan from the independent carting company that my town pays to take my trash, thank you very much) should not be held legally responsible for what happens to be in it when a law enforcement officer decides to go through it.

Scary? Only if you put the trash out regularly! This means that anyone can dump something illegal in your trash and call the cops. Do you think the cops would rather jump to the obvious conclusion or spend a week having forensics look at it? Oh sure, they'll try option two, but not until after they've done $25000 worth of damage to your home.