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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."
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
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.
Depends on the state. But most states its illegal. It is still that persons property till the trash man takes it. Then it becomes the property of the trash company.
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
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.
This should be a clue to all pointdexter bashers out there....
I wouldn't assume because the cans are their property, the trash is also. The cans are designed to be re-used, and just like taking a mailbox would be theft, so would taking the cans The trash, on the other hand, is discarded. From my previous research, as far as I know in about 99% of cases taking trash is legal. If you are asked to leave, you should though, as at that point if you do not leave, it becomes tresspassing.
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
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?
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.
It might be legal for anyone to take it,
I think the biggest issue here is in using that trash as *evidence* in an investigation, who's to say it's actually *your* trash?? I throw garbage in other people's trash all the time, if I throw some some drug residue in there, and the cops confiscate it, they can prosecute the home owner for possession?? That is not a good thing.
"Oregon just can't stay out of the news. HELLO? We got this big crazy state just south of us! Go report on them!!"
You left out our criminal basketball players! (TrailBlazers...)
Heh yeah that was off-topic, but it's funny if you're from Oregon.
We have some really amusing political situations here. That's really all this is. I wouldn't worry too much about people's rights being heavily affected by it.
"Derp de derp."
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.
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
All your garbage are belong to us!
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.
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
Heh...and don't forget breast-grabbing, pregnant-woman-exposing airport security workers. This story about Portland International Airport has been spreading like wildfire; another blow to my already beleaguered state.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
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.
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.
In Tennessee its not legal to go through and take someones trash. I work at a retail store and just an hour ago we caught someone going through our trash. We got their license # and reported it to the police because it is considered theft. It is our property till we pay someone else to take it from us. Just because it sits in a container doesnt mean it's free game.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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!!
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.
...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!!!
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.
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
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...
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
You lack imagination - under civil forfeiture laws the cops can grab the house and the owner has to put up a bond and prove he wasn't using it for a crime.
Yup, welcome to America.
http://fear.org
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
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.
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!
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?
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.
Yeah - that's just the usual misuse of law enforcement by corporations - remember it is a crime to try and make stores honor an advertised price in some places (best buy last year). If they had to enter your property to take it that is probably illegal otherwise it's fair game.
When there are no ordinary citizens with camcorders around.
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
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.
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
That is because he deleted the entry.
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.
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.
I believe the supreme court ruled that once its on the curb, its 'public' property. The reasoning is that if you really didn't want something taken from your trash, you'd dispose of it more throughly.
At my previous home, the garbage men wouldn't collect any garbage if it required them to go onto private property. I had a small lawn at the front of the house, and I had to move the trashcan from one end of the lawn to the other to get it collected. I didn't really have a problem with this . The ironic bit was that the garbage men would then walk _across_ my lawn (i.e. closer to where the trashcan would have been anyway) to get to my neighbours because that was the quickest route. I never did get around to complaining...
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.
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.
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.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
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?
I mean, who could imagine, in Oregon, people being herded like cattle, blocks away from an event, just bacause they want to have a civil protest, or that an 8 year old would get sprayed with mace, just for doing nothing... oh wait.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
Most posters on /. ARE NOT LAWYERS (gasp!) And while they'll certainly say `that's not legal' or `that's legal', and often they're even right, often they don't really know what they're talking about.
Getting legal advice on /. is never a good plan :)
Of course, even a lawyer often doesn't know how a judge is going to rule on something. But at least they're usually in a good position to make an educated guess, and to assign some sort of score to that guess stating how reliable it's likely to be.
Personally, I tend to believe that what the reporters did was and should be legal. (But I'm not a lawyer.) But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking.
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
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"?
He's a Real American Hebrew!
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
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.
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!"
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.
State government realized that people were willing to recycle without getting that nickel back for each can - so now they keep the cash and make sure that it's illegal for anyone to "steal" their aluminum cans.
"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?
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)
" But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking."
Methinks not. Politicians are very public figures just looking through their garbage alone is *probably* insufficient to bring a charge of stalking. Furthermore, many states have statutes on guaranteeing freedom of information. Anyone can claim that they are simply performing research on a public figure, and are not engaging in any illegal activityn
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
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".
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
That's too good. As I was reading it, the music started running through my head :)
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
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.
Granted a little pot residue in the trash probably isn't enough for a prosecution, However, the fact that *MY HOME* may be searched because the teenagers in my neighborhood decided to throw their Friday night leftovers in my can is still an UNACCEPTABLE occurance. Have you ever seen a home/business after its been searched by the cops?? I doubt it or you wouldn't be so forgiving... They cause thousands of dollars in damage generally, and the owner is left to foot the bill whether they find something or not. A cop getting a search warrant to search my home because they looked in my trash is just as bad as them trying to prosecute me for doing the same.
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.
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.
Wow, how silly of you. DO you really think that it is an effective use of employee time to be talking to people going through the trash and reporting them to the police?
What value does it provide to your company? Afterall, everythin gin the trash is stuff that someone decided was of no value to the company and could be sent off into the trash black hole.
So, if anything of value to the company was in there, then the problem is NOT that this dude is going through the dumpster, its that it was in there in the first place.
Here in MA we are much more sensible. If you are tossing it, then its fair game. QUite simple and effective. If you want it, then don't package it up like trash and leave it where you leave trash, because doing that is evidence "prima facie", if you will, that you have no use for it and, in fact, don't want it, and are not intending to derive any gain from it, as you either give it away for free, or pay someone to take it away.
See quite simple... you want it, don't throw it out. If the dude in the dumpster was finding anythin gof value you should leave him alone and instead fire the employee that was throwing out valuable things.
much more sensible.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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..
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.
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.
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.
Hey. Don't knock it till you have tried it. Ask Bill Gates. He will vouch for it. That's how he has made his $40 billion.