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Trash is Private Property in New Hampshire
suwain_2 writes "As this article in the Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph discusses, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that trash set out on the sidewalk for collection is private property. In the case that led to this landmark decision, police searched through an area man's trash, finding traces of marijuana in his garbage. The New Hampshire Supreme Court declared yesterday that the police didn't have the right to go through his trash without a warrant. This is the opposite of what most states, and the US Supreme Court, have previously ruled. Live free or die indeed."
I'm sorry. I don't see the techie, nerd, geek, IT, whatever connection here. Not a bit. At all. Remotely even hardly resembling maybe.
I do not have a signature
1) The heck with shredders, buy a woodstove and feed it on paper. (This is also the best way to prevent identity theft.)
2) Haul your own trash to the dump.
3) Don't set out your trash can until you hear the truck coming down the street. Yeah, sure, the police are going to ooming screaming up in their squad car with the PA system blaring "Step away from that trash!" as the garbagemen attempt to empty it...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I can just see my private property trash joining together with all the other private property trash down at the landfill and declaring themselves a commune.
Either that, or else I'll be sued by someone whose private property trash was injured in a scuffle with my private property trash in the back of dumpster somewhere.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
New Hampshire state legislators propose changing the state motto to "Live free... or don't!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Man...I know of people who have found some way cool stuff in dumpsters. TVs, computers, furniture, other office equipment, etc. Does that mean you can get arrested now for divin' if you're in NH? Not cool.
Imagine the irony of ironies though...what if you were divin', a cop catches ya, finds marijuana, but it's from the dumpster. Oh the humanity...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Anything on property owned by you is private property; if it is concealed (that is, not visible by plain sight) the police should need a warrant to search it. The minute your trash leaves your yard, it is no longer your property, but rather the property of the trash-company (that is the agreement between you and your trash company). How it is treated then depends upon your contract with the trash company.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If someone tosses their empty Jolt Cola can in my trashcan while it's sitting on the lawn to be picked up, is that tresspassing?
This is just dumb. Who has an expectation of privacy with their trash?!
In Oregon, after a case where the cops went through a person's trash to get evidence (against one of their own officers, in fact), one of the local weeklies decided to do a little protest.
They went through the trash of the police chief, they mayor (who supported the right for cops to go through trash), and the district attorney. They then held meetings with each of these people, asking how they felt about this privacy violation. The police chief actually threw them out of his office. Then they reported on these meetings and printed a list of every item they found in the trash bins.
Needless to say, the "victims" were pissed. The mayor held a press conference, claiming she was going to sue Wilamette Week for, uhhm, well, she never said what exactly. She never did sue.
It was pretty hilarious.
Well, it's nice to see that there is some respect for privacy/freedom still in the US.
Certainly I could have an arrangement with the garbage company which would come onto my property to obtain the trash, and that would have it remain my property until mixed with the other trash, but what's to keep the police from examining the trash and finding my dna in the saliva on a reefer?
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On the show the judge said it was OK if the trash was in the "scoop" of the garbage truck, at which point it was considered public property, but the cops couldn't touch it before it was mixed with everyone else's trash.
I wonder if the writers were inspired by a real-world legal ruling.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
I don't know about the rest of you, but I didn't need a law in 1988 that told me information left out in the open, niavely and ignorantly presumed to be private, to be readily accessable to the public simply if one wanted.
Shredding, composting and heavy recycling usually foil peoples attempts to 'scan' your garbage for anything you wouldn't dare let out into the public domain.
The law in NH is great in my personal opinion, but it's no subsitute for diligence in ones duty to remain private in a very open world, where disclosure is fastly becoming a way of life.
Tsk Tsk, people come on now! Do you really think that uncle sam will stay on your side forever with things like the DCMA, USA PATRIOT ACT with Ashcroft and Co running the show?
To quote a famous Founding Father:
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
-z
RUBBISH!
x in=3485
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
[...] 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. [...]
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?
[...] 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. [...]
---
Much hilarity ensues. See http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/allstories.lasso?x
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Thanks for pointing this one out. I vaguely remembered this story (read it in the paper when it was published) but not the specifics. Pretty good capsule summary of what statists believe :)
a) We get to invent the rules
b) The more rules, the better
c) except for us
wrt point b), notice that many public oafficials like to brag about how many new laws they passed or implemented (depending on whether they're in the stick-em-up or the stick-it-to-ya part of the political spectrum). This is something that they *ought* to shamefacedly cough their way out of answering, not brag about.
If we called them all "rule inventors" and "tattletale," I think the proper perspective would be easier to maintain. Words like "lawmaker" and "executive" sound far too important for these arrogant brats.
What, me venty?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The movie is crap, but Michael Douglas almost saves it.
by earlier writers who were inspired by yet earlier writers.
So how does this affect dumpster diving? I know that I've gotten some nice computers out of the trash, as well as other semi-working electronics. I don't understand why someone would throw out a computer with a blown power supply instead of asking their friendly neighborhood geek what the problem is.
Of course, finding a 2 or 3 generation old computer was more useful before you could get a NAT router for under $50. "Back in my day, we had to install Linux on the drive to build a router... and we liked it!"
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
But what kind of self-respecting pot smoker is going to throw out part of his stash!
Kids today...
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
Must we make a law for everything just so people can get a warm fuzzy? Take some responsibilty for your actions, exercise a degree of intelligence and dispose of sensitive information or incriminating evidence correctly. It is not the place of a law to protect criminals from their own stupidity.
Why should we have an expectation for privacy in our trash (once it is placed for collection) ?
Heck the article in Willamette Week Online just tells a story of some incredibly stupid public officials. They should politely thank the journalists for showing them they need to be a bit more careful in how they dispose of sensitive information. After all a person interested in stealing your credit card number from the trash is not going to be scruplusly following the law on the privacy of trash. Also I would think common sense would dictate that you better have more evidence than a joint in the trash to imply someone uses drugs, any passer by, trespasser, or even visitor can easily discard material in an innocent's trash.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
is that there is no such thing as "public property"; it is an oxymoron. To speak of someone's property implies they own it, have rights over it, can do with it as they please (so long as they don't use it to initiate violence against someone), can exchange it, and acquired it rightfully.
Since the public (all tax-paying individuals) has no control over public property, and very limited use thereof, the property cannot be said to be owned by tax-paying individuals, as a corporation is owned by its shareholders. If anything, public property is a burden on us, adding to our enslavement, because we are forced to pay taxes on it, pay taxes to support it, and take care of it, despite the fact that we have no control over it.
In reality, what we improperly call "public property" is really the property of the politicians and beurocrats who decide how it can be used, property which they stole from the taxpayers they have systematically enslaved. Yes, taxes are slavery (forcing individuals to work 10-37.5% of the year without compensation is slavery, as is forcing them to work for 10-37.5% less than what they would otherwise work for).
Hence, all questions of what is proper on public property are meaningless, for it is asking the question "what is the right thing to do with stolen property". The only answer can be to return it to it's owners (if you know who they are), or allow it to be homesteaded by claimees. Talk of whether or not it is ok for police to search public property pre-supposes that the theft of the property which we call "public" is justified, when in fact it is not.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I personally don't like this. I think that trash, and recycling too, once it is sent to the curb, should be thought of public property. Anyone can claim it if they want. I don't mind people knowing what I throw away. If it is something sensitive then I will make it unsensitive or keep it. Plus rulings like this make it harder to turn "one man's trash into another's treasure."
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Well if trash is private property, then Bill Gates has a problem (Bill gates used code trown away by company's to understand how operating systems and alike worked)
Maybe some company *cough* SCO *cough* could sue him for stealing private property
Time is the only precious thing I've got left; Don't waste it
There are good reasons why you might want to search a person's trash. If they have put recyclables in with stuff going for landfill, then they deserve to be punished, and punished hard, for pollution. {Murder: victim is one person. Treason: victim is a whole nation. Pollution: victim is an entire planet.} Everyone who puts recyclable goods in for landfill is stealing from the local council, twice over: firstly in the cost of landfilling the goods, and secondly in the money not paid by the scrap merchant for the goods recovered.
.....
Sounds like a clear case for limiting powers. Hunting down and killing polluters is all fair as far as I am concerned. Making use of information that was not volunteered to you, or disclosing it to a third party, is not. There's obviously a line to be drawn somewhere
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Was the garbage networked or something? That's the only reason I can think of why this would be in YRO....
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
Interesting how society makes a law based on current events, and later reverses them based on newer, current events. I suppose ignorance is an acceptable excuse? e.g. First, going through someone's trash - rotten apple cores, bathroom tissues, empty Schlitz cans - is legal. Later, going through someone's trash - dozens of credit card offers with reply envelopes, banks tatements with SSNs, liberal newsletters, CD with 800MB of hidden cache on it - is illegal. Adds merit to the idea that perhaps law makers didn't KNOW ENOUGH back then, and only now KNOW ENOUGH to make a reasonable law? Did we have to wait until EVERYONE had incriminating evidence in their garbage before we could make a sensible ruling... apparently so.
If trash is public property in most states, and freely searchable without a warrant, if they search someone's trash and they find illegal materials (drugs or whatever) in there, technically that illegal material would no longer belong to whoever put it there, right? So you can't bust someone for possessing it if it is no longer theirs.
Say a heroin addict decides they want to kick the habit so they throw out all of their heroin and paraphanalia. The cops search their garbage and find it all. Too bad it doesn't belong to the addict anymore, since it's now 'public property.'
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The FSP has recently selected New Hampshire as the state they are going to target for a "plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S., where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government".