RPF0579-Why_and_How_to_Protect_Your_Garbage_from_Snoopers_and_Thieves
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00:00:30.900 | It's past midnight.
00:00:32.600 | Over the whomp 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.
00:00:43.200 | Flashlight, binoculars, duct tape, scissors, watch caps, rawhide gloves, vinyl gloves, latex gloves, trash bags, 30-gallon can, tarpaulins, Sharpie, notebook.
00:00:55.200 | Notebook?
00:00:56.500 | Well, yes, technically this is a journalistic exercise.
00:01:00.100 | At least that's what we keep telling ourselves.
00:01:02.400 | We are 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.
00:01:17.300 | We didn't dream up this idea on our own.
00:01:19.500 | We got our inspiration from the Portland police.
00:01:22.400 | Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hosley.
00:01:27.400 | They didn't ask permission.
00:01:28.600 | They didn't ask for a search warrant.
00:01:30.400 | They just grabbed it.
00:01:32.100 | Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her.
00:01:40.300 | The news left a lot of Portlanders, including us, scratching our heads.
00:01:44.100 | Aren't there rules about this sort of thing?
00:01:46.300 | Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
00:01:51.200 | The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so.
00:01:54.300 | Prosecutor Mark McDonald says that once you set your garbage out on the curb, it becomes public property.
00:02:00.200 | She placed her garbage can out in the open, open to public view in the public right of way, McDonald told Judge Jean Kerr Maurer earlier this month.
00:02:08.300 | There were no signs on the garbage.
00:02:09.900 | Do not open. Do not trespass.
00:02:11.900 | There was every indication she had relinquished her privacy, possessory interest.
00:02:18.300 | Police Chief Mark Croker echoed this reasoning.
00:02:21.200 | Most judges have the opinion that once trash is put out, it's trash and abandon in terms of privacy, he told the Willamette Week.
00:02:29.400 | In fact, it turns out that police officers throughout Oregon have been rummaging through people's trash for more than three decades.
00:02:35.900 | Portland drug cops conduct garbage pools once or twice per month, says narcotics Sergeant Eric Skober.
00:02:42.800 | On December 10th, Maurer rubbished this practice, scrutinizing garbage.
00:02:47.700 | She declared is an invasion of privacy.
00:02:51.300 | The police must obtain a search warrant before they swipe someone's trash.
00:02:55.600 | Personal and business correspondents, photographs, personal financial information, political mail, items related to health concerns and sexual practices are all routinely found in the garbage receptacles, Maurer wrote.
00:03:06.900 | The fact that a person has put these items out for pickup, she said, does not suggest an invitation to others to examine them.
00:03:14.100 | But local law enforcement officials pooh poohed the judge's decision.
00:03:17.900 | This particular very unique and very by herself judge took a position, no, not in concert with the other judges who had given us instruction by their decisions across the years, said Croker.
00:03:29.700 | The district district attorney's office agreed and vowed to challenge the ruling.
00:03:34.600 | The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic.
00:03:38.300 | It's not your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your most intimate secrets.
00:03:44.500 | What you toss away is in many ways just as revealing as what you keep.
00:03:49.400 | And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy is being pilfered.
00:03:54.100 | In the wake of 9/11, the US government has granted itself far reaching new powers to spy on you from email to bank statements to video cameras.
00:04:03.200 | After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials.
00:04:08.700 | We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage to make a point about how invasive a garbage pool really is and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.
00:04:22.500 | We chose district attorney Mike Shrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs.
00:04:30.700 | We chose police chief Mark Croker because he runs the bureau and we chose Mayor Vera Katz because as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
00:04:41.400 | 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.
00:04:49.100 | So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.
00:04:53.900 | Boy, were we wrong.
00:04:55.600 | Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief Croker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public property.
00:05:03.800 | "Things inside your house are to be guarded," he told Willamette Week.
00:05:07.400 | "Those that are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers and and police.
00:05:13.300 | And so it's not a matter of privacy anymore."
00:05:16.600 | Then we spread some highlights from our hall on the table in front of him.
00:05:21.100 | "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,
00:05:28.800 | an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles,
00:05:33.900 | a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin.
00:05:39.000 | So personal it made us cringe.
00:05:41.400 | We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed to Mr.
00:05:49.100 | And Mrs. Mark Croker. "Are you a member of Focus on the Family?" we asked.
00:05:54.100 | "No," the chief replied. "Is your wife?"
00:05:57.600 | "You know," he said with a Clint Eastwood gaze, "it's none of your business."
00:06:02.300 | As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a fault, cuts us off in mid-sentence.
00:06:08.300 | "Okay," he said, suddenly standing up. "We're done."
00:06:11.600 | Hours later, the chief issued a press release complaining that Willamette Week had gone through my personal garbage at my home.
00:06:18.400 | KATU promptly took to the airwaves, declaring, "Croker wants Willamette Week to stay out of his garbage."
00:06:24.600 | If the chief got overheated, the mayor went nuclear.
00:06:28.700 | When we confessed that we had swiped her recycling, she summoned us to her chambers.
00:06:32.900 | "She wants you to bring the trash and bring the name of your attorney," said her press secretary, Sarah Abbott.
00:06:38.400 | Actually, we couldn't snatch Katza's garbage because she keeps it right next to her house, well away from the sidewalk.
00:06:44.700 | To avoid trespassing, we had to settle for a bin of recycling left out front.
00:06:49.200 | The day after our summons, Wednesday, December 18, we trudged down to City Hall, stack of newsprint in hand.
00:06:55.900 | A gaggle of TV and radio reporters were waiting to greet us, tipped off by high-octane KXL motormouth Lars Larson.
00:07:03.600 | We filed into the mayor's private conference room.
00:07:06.500 | The atmosphere, chilly to begin with, turned arctic when the mayor marched in.
00:07:12.500 | 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.
00:07:21.500 | A few moments later, her office issued a prepared statement.
00:07:24.500 | "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible," it read.
00:07:32.000 | "I will consider all my legal options in response to their actions."
00:07:36.200 | In contrast, District Attorney Mike Scrunk was almost playful when we owned up to nosing it through his kitchen scraps.
00:07:42.600 | "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?" he joked.
00:07:45.900 | We told Scrunk that we intended to report that his garbage contained mementos of his military service.
00:07:51.600 | "Don't burn me on that," he implored. "The Marine Corps will shoot me."
00:07:55.800 | It's worth emphasizing that our junkyological dig unearthed no whiff of scandal.
00:08:01.000 | Based on their throwaways, the chief, the district attorney, and the mayor are squeaky clean, poop-scooping folks whose private lives are beyond reproach.
00:08:10.100 | They emerge from this escapade smelling like, well, coffee grounds.
00:08:15.600 | 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?
00:08:25.800 | 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.
00:08:34.900 | We set it down next to the rest of our haul from District Attorney Mike Scrunk's trash.
00:08:39.300 | 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.
00:08:49.200 | There is something about poking through someone else's garbage that makes you feel dirty.
00:08:53.300 | And it's not just the stench and the flies.
00:08:55.700 | 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 business.
00:09:08.700 | It's one thing to revel in the hallowed tradition of muckraking.
00:09:12.200 | It's another to get down on your hands and knees and nose through wads of someone else's Kleenex.
00:09:17.200 | Is this why our parents sent us to college?
00:09:19.600 | So we could paw through orange peels and ice cream tubs and half-eaten loaves of bread?
00:09:24.600 | And yet, there is also something seductive, almost intoxicating about being a dumpster detective.
00:09:31.400 | For example, we spot a clothing tag marked "44 Regular."
00:09:35.200 | Then we find half of a torn receipt from Meyer & Frank for $262.99.
00:09:41.900 | Then we find the other half, which reads "Men's SU3 Button."
00:09:46.400 | Stringing it together, we deduce that shrunk plunk down $262.99 for a size 44 three-button suit at Meyer & Frank on Saturday, November 16, at 9.35 a.m.
00:09:58.900 | We're getting to know Portland's top prosecutor from the inside out.
00:10:02.500 | Here's an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.
00:10:05.200 | There's a pile of cast-off duds from his days as a Marine.
00:10:08.800 | Is he going soft on terrorism?
00:10:12.100 | Chinese takeout boxes and junk food wrappers testify to a busy lifestyle with little time to cook.
00:10:17.700 | A Post-it note even lays bare someone's arithmetic skills.
00:10:21.600 | The addition is solid, but the long division needs work.
00:10:25.400 | Our haul from Mayor Vera Katz is limited to a stack of newsprint from her recycling bin.
00:10:30.800 | Her garbage can was well out of reach, but we assemble several clues to her intellectual leanings.
00:10:37.200 | We find overwhelming evidence that the mayor reads The Oregonian, The Washington Post, National Weekly Edition, U.S. Mayor, and The Portland Tribune.
00:10:46.900 | We also stumble across a copy of TV Click, in which certain programs have been circled in municipal red.
00:10:53.700 | If we're not mistaken, the mayor has a special fondness for dog shows, figure skating, and the West Wing.
00:11:00.500 | Our inspection of Chief Croker's refuse reveals that he is a scrupulous recycler.
00:11:06.000 | He is also a health nut.
00:11:07.900 | We find a staggering profusion of health food containers, fat-free milk cartons, fat-free cereal boxes, cans of milk chocolate weight loss shakes,
00:11:16.200 | cans of Swanson chicken broth, 99% fat-free, water bottles, a cardboard box of protein bars, tubs of low-fat cottage cheese,
00:11:24.200 | a paper packet of oatmeal, and an article on how to live a long, healthy life.
00:11:29.400 | At the same time, we find evidence of rust in the chief's iron self-discipline.
00:11:35.000 | Wrappers from See's chocolate bars, an unopened bag of Doritos, a dozen perfectly edible fun-sized Nestle Crunch bars, three empty Coke cans.
00:11:46.700 | We unearth a crate that once contained 12 bottles of Cook's California sparkling wine, but find no trace of the bottles themselves.
00:11:54.500 | Is the chief building a pyramid of them on the mantelpiece?
00:11:58.100 | We stack the crate beside a pair of white children's socks, a broken pen, the stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar, burnt toast,
00:12:06.400 | 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,
00:12:16.900 | and copious quantities of goo.
00:12:20.300 | We uncrumple a holiday flyer from the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church, which contains a handwritten note.
00:12:27.600 | "Mark, just want you to know one Latin from Manhattan loves you."
00:12:32.000 | Invasion of privacy? This is a frontal assault. A D-Day, a Norman conquest of privacy.
00:12:38.100 | We know the chief's credit card number. We know where he buys his groceries.
00:12:41.700 | 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.
00:12:50.100 | We know what newsletters he gets and how much he's socked away in the stock market.
00:12:54.700 | We even know he's thinking about a new car and which models he's considering.
00:12:59.400 | By the time we tag the last item, a lonesome, lonesome Christmas tree angel, our noses are running and our gloves are black with gunk.
00:13:09.500 | We scrub our hands when we get home, but we still feel dirty.
00:13:16.700 | This point in the article, listen to what was found in this one night's trash collection by this particular reporter.
00:13:24.000 | What we found. Police chief Mark Croker. Empty containers and wrappers. Kodiak Washington pears.
00:13:29.700 | Washington extra fancy lady lady peaches. Oasis floral foam bricks, worth insisting upon.
00:13:35.700 | Two cashew go lean cereal. Sunshine fat free milk. Kirkland signature weight loss shake. Fat free Swanson chicken broth.
00:13:42.900 | Mandarin oranges. Coca-Cola. Diet Coke. Arrowhead water bottle. Cooks California sparkling wine box.
00:13:48.500 | Fried apples. Cheese rolls. Bounty paper towels. 15 roll pack. Kirkland facial tissue. 12 pack dove soap.
00:13:54.800 | Quaker oatmeal. C's candy bars. Ladies razors. Dentine ice chewing gum. Vivant zesty vegetable crackers.
00:14:02.600 | Hershey's cookies and cream mini bars. Uneaten. Three. Several Oregonian issues. Still folded.
00:14:08.500 | 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.
00:14:18.400 | Rough draft of internal police memo. Various cash register receipts. Half full bag of fun-sized Nestle crunch bars.
00:14:26.900 | Slice of burnt toast. Photocopy of Willamette Weekly November 13 murmurs item on chief.
00:14:32.700 | Hand dated in blue pen reporting scuttlebutt that Katz has taken over the day-to-day running of the police bureau.
00:14:38.600 | Half smoked stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar. Paper cups from Starbucks and Torrefazioni.
00:14:45.300 | Pears, lettuce, grapes, bread, eggshells, goo, potato salad, wire hangers, a 75 watt light bulb, orange peels, coffee grounds, wine cork, dishrag, film canister, used Q-tips.
00:14:54.700 | Half eaten protein bar. Still in wrapper. Newsletter from Focus on the Family, a conservative political group.
00:15:00.100 | Insert addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Mark Croker. Insert asks for one last year-end contribution.
00:15:06.300 | Photos of chief and a bare-chested man moving a large appliance. Creased wedding photo of a prominent Portlander.
00:15:13.000 | Broken pen. Three envelopes from California, hand-addressed, sent on consecutive days.
00:15:17.700 | Notice from mortgage company for payment. Internet printout of "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."
00:15:22.700 | Postcard from friend vacationing in Arizona. Post-it with notes about a new car.
00:15:27.800 | Extremely personal note on dinner napkin, handwritten in pencil. Account summary from Fidelity Investments for the chief's wife.
00:15:35.100 | Mayor Vera Katz's garbage. Trader Joe's Happy Holidays paper bag.
00:15:40.800 | Several issues of The Oregonian. Several issues of The Washington Post National Weekly Edition.
00:15:45.100 | A copy of U.S. Mayor, a monthly magazine devoted to mayors. A copy of TV Click.
00:15:49.600 | Someone has marked several programs in red, including War Game, Iraq. Simulated National Security Council meetings.
00:15:56.100 | MSNBC, Everwood. Ephraim tries to revive his mother's Thanksgiving traditions.
00:16:01.300 | KWBP, CSI Miami. A dead man is found hanging from a tree.
00:16:05.600 | KOIN, Life with Bonnie on KATU. The West Wing on KGW. The National Dog Show on KGW.
00:16:12.600 | Figure skating, ISU Cup of Russia. ESPN, Biography. Audrey Hepburn, The Fairest Lady, A&E.
00:16:19.900 | Figure skating, Ice Wars, USA vs. The World, KOIN.
00:16:24.400 | Several issues of The Portland Tribune. Daily Journal of Commerce from December 3, 2002.
00:16:29.600 | District Attorney Mike Schronk. Empty containers and wrappers. Cozy Fleas baby blanket.
00:16:36.600 | Bee cleaners. Niblets, corn and butter. Johnny Walker black label. Fred Meyer, unflavored gelatin.
00:16:41.600 | Burger King beverage cup and straw. Possible Chinese takeout. Lots.
00:16:45.600 | Dryers. Mocha almond fudge ice cream. Skippy peanut butter, creamy.
00:16:50.100 | Land's End. Fred Meyer green beans. Campbell's chunky New England clam chowder with 100-watt bulb inside.
00:16:57.600 | Meyer and Frank. Jelly Belly jelly beans. Foster Farms boneless and skinless Oregon chicken thighs.
00:17:03.100 | Coffee grounds. Used Picoe tea bags. Many.
00:17:06.600 | Used Christmas napkins. Used Kleenex. Used Q-tips. Remains of Thanksgiving turkey carcass. Drumstick intact.
00:17:13.100 | Remnants of roast beef. Soiled baby diapers. Plastic bags containing dog poo. Very clean with some blades of grass. Two.
00:17:20.100 | Bag of dryer lint. Christmas wrapping paper. Orange peels. Empty millstone coffee bag containing two very ripe but uneaten bananas.
00:17:27.100 | Two half-eaten loaves of wheat bread. Disposable razors. Remnants of peanut M&M's bag. Energizer AA batteries. Two.
00:17:34.100 | Wrapped in plastic bag. Shopping lists. Baseball cap with crustacean emblem. Don't bother me, I'm crabby.
00:17:40.600 | Baseball cap for outward bound. Baseball cap with embroidered green fish. Military khaki shirts with "Skrunk" embroidered on pocket and collar. Four.
00:17:49.600 | Jacket olive drab with fading stencils of USMC and "Skrunk." Yellow post-it note with sample of someone's arithmetic.
00:17:56.600 | The edition is successful. 54 + 32 = 86. But the long division of 32 divided by 6 comes up a little bit wide at 5.4.
00:18:08.100 | Now, that article was published in the Willamette Week, authored by Chris Lidegate and Nick Budnick.
00:18:17.100 | It was published December 23, 2002, and the page from which I sourced it had an updated note from December 11, 2017.
00:18:27.100 | I used 17 minutes of your valuable time to read that article to you with the hope of impressing upon you the danger of your not protecting your personal garbage.
00:18:42.100 | Now, if you've been around in law enforcement circles or if you've ever known a private investigator or you've ever watched a show on such things, I would bet that you are aware that people can go through their garbage.
00:18:55.100 | But I would also be willing to bet that you probably haven't done anything about it.
00:19:01.100 | How do I know this? Well, I go through a lot of people's garbage. My wife and I have a penchant for curb diving.
00:19:08.100 | We enjoy looking through people's garbage and finding valuable items that are thrown away. It's been quite an excellent source of fine items for us in our household.
00:19:17.100 | And as such, I always take a little bit of an interest in how much personal information I find in people's garbage.
00:19:23.100 | Now, thankfully for the people whose garbage we go through, we have found that we don't do anything with it, but I certainly enjoy piecing things together sometimes.
00:19:33.100 | It's quite interesting some of the things that you find, especially in the neighborhoods where people tend to throw away more garbage.
00:19:39.100 | But we found personal journals with all kinds of personal information. We find all kinds of financial information, all kinds of mail, all kinds of stuff.
00:19:48.100 | Now, again, we don't make a habit of going out and collecting the bags of trash and really sorting them through.
00:19:53.100 | But certainly if I were a private investigator and if I were looking for you, I would make that a primary habit.
00:20:01.100 | And to my knowledge, there is no legal jeopardy from somebody taking your trash.
00:20:08.100 | It is generally considered to be publicly available and is certainly easy enough to go through people's trash.
00:20:18.100 | When we go out trash picking, we don't try to go in the middle of the night in a white van that might get the cops called on us.
00:20:24.100 | We go about 1030 in the morning, walking around the neighborhood and just poking through the trash piles to see what turns out.
00:20:29.100 | And I think it's so interesting that this is one of those those areas in which we we don't think much.
00:20:39.100 | And yet there is a significant danger to you.
00:20:43.100 | And so in the theme of our September preparedness month shows, I want to give you some ideas on preparing yourself so that your trash is not taken and to at least minimize the risk.
00:20:57.100 | Now, you can decide how hardcore you want to be with some of these strategies.
00:21:02.100 | I'll give you some ideas and you can pick and choose.
00:21:05.100 | For the most part, I don't think that you need to burn every scrap of trash and anonymously dispose of it three towns over in a private dumpster that doesn't have a surveillance camera on it.
00:21:16.100 | Unless you have reasons to do that.
00:21:19.100 | What I have found is probably many of us have reasons why we should be a little bit more careful and circumspect with our trash.
00:21:27.100 | And in today's world, where things that are entirely legal and entirely normal can be used in a smear campaign towards you by somebody who is interested in smearing you, I think let's make it a little bit harder for people to find out some of that information about us.
00:21:45.100 | Generally, the people who probably need this the most will never take the advice.
00:21:51.100 | They'll never do anything, unfortunately.
00:21:54.100 | But I want you to do something about this, even though you don't need it.
00:21:57.100 | There's a lot of information available about you in your trash.
00:22:03.100 | So what can you do about it?
00:22:04.100 | I want to give you some suggestions.
00:22:06.100 | Let's talk about and one more point for the purpose of identity theft, which is, of course, the most closely tied issue of this to finances.
00:22:17.100 | Identity theft.
00:22:18.100 | This is an extremely important.
00:22:20.100 | I would bet you already have a paper shredder and I bet you already shred your documents.
00:22:24.100 | If you don't, you should, because that's obviously the most clear risk that may come to you.
00:22:30.100 | But that's something that you should.
00:22:33.100 | Well, that's rather obvious.
00:22:35.100 | But some of these other things, the privacy risks, the risks to your career by somebody who's searching you out, private investigator who's investigating you for some reason, the police department that's investigating you for some reason.
00:22:47.100 | I would recommend to you that you are careful.
00:22:49.100 | So first, think about your situation.
00:22:51.100 | The biggest difference here would be do you live in a house or do you live in an apartment?
00:22:55.100 | And there are advantages and disadvantages to each of them.
00:22:58.100 | One advantage of a house is you can generally maintain greater privacy of your trash, at least until you put it out by the street for collection, because you can keep it in the curtilage of your house close to your house, very close.
00:23:11.100 | And you can lock it up physically, which is a great idea.
00:23:13.100 | But unfortunately, your trash is a little bit easier to find.
00:23:17.100 | You have less anonymity.
00:23:18.100 | When you trundle your trash can down to the curb, anybody who knows where you live or knows your address can quickly go through that and can pretty safely connect it to your particular residence, as those reporters did.
00:23:31.100 | Some of you make it even easier by painting your house number right on your can so that it can be easily identified as being your particular can.
00:23:40.100 | And when you link the house number painted on your can with the name painted on your mailbox, which is also listed in your county tax deeds registry, then it's pretty easy to find your garbage.
00:23:52.100 | Now, one advantage of apartment living is the trash is probably a little bit more anonymous.
00:23:58.100 | You have perhaps less privacy of your trash because if you toss a bag of trash into the dumpster, it's there for the going through by those of us who enjoy dumpster diving as a sideline hobby and by anybody with nefarious purposes.
00:24:12.100 | But you do get a little bit more anonymity with the actual with effect to the actual bag.
00:24:17.100 | However, you should be careful there.
00:24:19.100 | And here I want to read to you one other short excerpt from a book by J.J.
00:24:25.100 | Luna called How to Be Invisible. Protect your home.
00:24:28.100 | What's the subtitle? Protect your home, your children, your assets and your life.
00:24:32.100 | And he has this cute little anecdote about trash in his book that I think is well worth your considering.
00:24:38.100 | The headline of this particular section is called this. Can you solve this mystery?
00:24:43.100 | A bilingual private investigator in San Jose, California, takes a call from a law firm in San Diego.
00:24:49.100 | They wish to locate a certain Victor R. in order to serve a subpoena in a civil lawsuit.
00:24:55.100 | They have only two pieces of information.
00:24:57.100 | One, Victor, who was born in Ameca, Jalisco, is staying with friends from his hometown.
00:25:03.100 | They live somewhere near Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border.
00:25:08.100 | Two, Victor has a younger brother named Fernando who rents a one-bedroom unit in a 64-unit apartment complex in San Jose.
00:25:16.100 | However, the private investigator is not to contact Fernando because if he does, Fernando will tip off his brother.
00:25:23.100 | Worse, the lawyers want fast results and yet they put a limit on what the private investigator may spend.
00:25:29.100 | If he needs any helpers, he will have to use slave labor.
00:25:32.100 | The intrepid PI takes the job despite the following drawbacks.
00:25:36.100 | If Victor is with friends, there is no way to track him down via rental agreement, telephone, or utilities.
00:25:42.100 | There are more than 10,000 Latinos in the Lake Tahoe area, and nearly 80% of them come from the same place, Ameca, Jalisco, which is in Mexico.
00:25:50.100 | A quick check shows that there is no landline telephone at Fernando's apartment.
00:25:56.100 | Our resolute PI is on the job that very evening, prepared for action.
00:26:01.100 | What he wants is every bit of trash that leaves Fernando's apartment for the next 30 days.
00:26:06.100 | He observes that there are two large dumpsters near the entrance of the parking lot, and learns that they are dumped between 3 and 4 a.m. every day.
00:26:14.100 | There is no uniformity in the bags the residents are using.
00:26:17.100 | Some are paper, some are white plastic bags from the supermarkets, and some are large black trash bags.
00:26:23.100 | The PI knows of a Guatemalan family where three teenagers are desperate for work, any kind of work, even diving into dumpsters.
00:26:31.100 | If you wish to play detective, see if you can answer this question.
00:26:34.100 | How will his Guatemalan friends know which garbage belongs to Fernando?
00:26:40.100 | Okay, check your answer with what happened next.
00:26:42.100 | Late one evening, the PI goes from door to door, calling at each of the 16 apartments that were on Fernando's floor.
00:26:49.100 | He wears a uniform with a name tag and presents each renter with a free supply of 30 trash bags, speaking Spanish or English as the occasion warrants.
00:26:58.100 | "This is a part of an experiment by our company," he says with a disarming smile.
00:27:02.100 | "The idea is to see if these extra strong bags will cause less spillage when our trucks unload at the processing plant.
00:27:08.100 | If you and your neighbors use these bags for the next 30 days, we may continue to furnish them at no charge."
00:27:14.100 | A young pregnant woman answers the door at Fernando's apartment.
00:27:17.100 | He gives her the pitch and hands her the bags.
00:27:20.100 | "Muchas gracias," she says.
00:27:22.100 | Then the three Guatemalans got their assignment.
00:27:24.100 | They are to take turns drifting past the dumpsters both morning and evening, checking to see if there is a bag from Fernando's apartment.
00:27:32.100 | For each bag they bring in, the private investigator pays them $20 cash.
00:27:37.100 | If he finds what he is looking for, there will be a $100 bonus.
00:27:41.100 | In the next two weeks, they bring in eight bags, and two days later, they bring in the bag that pays a $100 bonus.
00:27:46.100 | Fernando has a smartphone, and he's tossed the statement in the trash after tearing it into tiny pieces.
00:27:53.100 | Pieced together with tape, the statement shows six long-distance calls to the same number at Zephyr Cove on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
00:28:01.100 | That's all it takes to track down Victor, at a cost of $280 to the kids and $96 for the bags.
00:28:08.100 | Have you already guessed how the kids knew which bags to pick up?
00:28:12.100 | At 15 doors, the PI gave away dark green bags.
00:28:17.100 | At Fernando's door, he handed over dark blue bags.
00:28:21.100 | To paraphrase the late Johnny Cochran, "If it can be read, then you must shred."
00:28:29.100 | I hope you're getting the idea that your trash is important.
00:28:34.100 | Let me give you some suggestions for you to consider.
00:28:38.100 | First, one of the most important things that you should do.
00:28:41.100 | Always keep your trash can in a private location, within the bounds of your property.
00:28:48.100 | Ideally, it should be very close to your house in a clearly segregated or private enclosure.
00:28:57.100 | Keeping it in the garage would really be ideal.
00:29:00.100 | I know if you have a garage and if your garage has enough space, it's a great place for you to keep your garbage can.
00:29:05.100 | The reason for this is you can minimize somebody's access to that garbage can if it's close on your property.
00:29:13.100 | Consider where on your property you can keep your trash can.
00:29:16.100 | Don't do what a friend of mine does, which is leave the trash can out by the curb all the time and then just take your trash out and put it in.
00:29:23.100 | In his case, it's pretty much a disaster because he keeps his trash can full time by the curb.
00:29:27.100 | His cleaning lady takes his trash, which is filled with personal information, and dumps the trash in the garbage.
00:29:33.100 | So she, of course, has access to the trash as well as anybody else who wants to come along and get it.
00:29:38.100 | But keep your trash can up close to your house.
00:29:41.100 | Build an enclosure of some kind.
00:29:43.100 | This is, of course, nice for the beauty of it, not having to look at an unsightly trash can.
00:29:48.100 | But go ahead and put a lock on that enclosure so that it's not easily accessed.
00:29:52.100 | Or if it is accessed, you can prove because somebody has invaded your personal property and come close to your house and come through the locked door, you can prove that there was trespassing involved or ideally keep it in your garage.
00:30:07.100 | Keep it in your garage or keep it close to you until you are ready to put it out by the curb.
00:30:13.100 | And this will minimize and if possible, do it at the latest time possible.
00:30:17.100 | Many of us like to be ahead of time, so we put our trash out the night before when somebody is going to come through and the garbage guys are going to come through early in the morning.
00:30:25.100 | But then it just sits out by the curb all night.
00:30:27.100 | And as you heard from the story from the Willamette Week, that's now easily available to anybody who wants to come by and collect it.
00:30:33.100 | So why not make a habit of putting it out in the morning?
00:30:36.100 | Or you could do what I've done many times.
00:30:38.100 | If I work from home, since I'm home and I know that the trash guys come later in the day, then I just go ahead and put it out later in the day.
00:30:45.100 | And then there's very little chance of somebody coming on along and digging in your trash.
00:30:50.100 | So always keep your trash can close under the eaves of your house, inside a garage or somehow segregated.
00:30:57.100 | With your garbage can, don't put your number on your garbage can if you can avoid it.
00:31:01.100 | There's no reason for it.
00:31:02.100 | I frequently see that.
00:31:03.100 | And of course, it's going to be fairly obvious whose trash can it is if it's out in front of your house.
00:31:09.100 | But why make it so clear?
00:31:11.100 | Don't put your number on it.
00:31:13.100 | Make sure that when you're buying a garbage can, make sure that you buy one that's large enough to hold larger items.
00:31:18.100 | If you live in a large metro area, there's a good chance that your city has chosen to distribute large garbage cans that are individually numbered and assigned to your house so that their automated trucks can come along and pick those garbage cans up.
00:31:31.100 | That's fine.
00:31:32.100 | But if you are equipping yourself, go ahead and choose a large one.
00:31:36.100 | And the reason is if you'll choose a large garbage can, you can put more items into that garbage can that you would otherwise have to just set by the curb.
00:31:45.100 | The best example here is you already know if you buy something, an expensive TV or some kind of gear, don't put those boxes out by the curb.
00:31:54.100 | That just advertises that you've just purchased a 70-inch big screen TV, which somebody may want to come along and use as an incentive to break into your house.
00:32:03.100 | That's been recommended in every single piece of advice about lowering the risk of burglary I've ever seen.
00:32:10.100 | The challenge is what do you do with it?
00:32:12.100 | It's kind of hard to cut up those boxes.
00:32:14.100 | But if you just do the bare minimum of cutting them up into big pieces and you have a can, it's a lot easier to put those boxes in it than if you have a small can.
00:32:21.100 | So buy a large can with wheels so it's a little bit easier to use.
00:32:26.100 | One of the most obvious things that you need to do is shred everything.
00:32:31.100 | Any piece of paper that comes through your house should probably be shredded.
00:32:35.100 | Now, you could take this to an extreme or you can decide not to be so extreme.
00:32:41.100 | The challenge is if wanted, as you heard in one of those, I think it was the mayor's trash, where all they had access to was her recycling, you can put together a bit of a profile of somebody just based upon their reading habits.
00:32:56.100 | Very few of us would subscribe both to left-wing and right-wing publications.
00:33:01.100 | Very few of us would take multiple papers.
00:33:04.100 | And so if you just simply put all your magazines and your trash and your newspapers right in the trash, then you're easily giving away good information about who you are and what you think.
00:33:14.100 | Or good examples would be like that focus on the family publication that they found in the chief's office.
00:33:22.100 | It would, of course, be extremely embarrassing for somebody in Oregon to be receiving publications in Portland, to be receiving publications from focus on the family.
00:33:32.100 | And yet that's the kind of information that we usually would just go past because, oh, it doesn't have any personal information.
00:33:37.100 | It just has my name and address.
00:33:39.100 | So here's my recommendation to you.
00:33:41.100 | Shred everything.
00:33:42.100 | Shred any piece of paper that comes into and out of your house.
00:33:46.100 | Now, this is relatively easy to do because it's so easy to get good shredders today.
00:33:50.100 | And I think also this helps to protect you by creating a larger amount of paper that's really not that big of a deal.
00:33:57.100 | See, if you use a shredder and you only shred important documents like your financial information, and then you shred those right into a little plastic bag, and then you put that little plastic bag right into the trash so somebody can come along and grab that little plastic bag, there's a very good chance in today's world that if you're using a strip shredder or a crosscut shredder that those documents can be put together.
00:34:19.100 | And it would be very much worth the time to do that.
00:34:22.100 | One of the challenges with shredding, it used to give you some degree, some higher degree of security, especially just strip shredding used to give you a higher degree of security.
00:34:31.100 | The challenge is, especially today, in the past, a diligent private investigator or detective could put those documents together, but it would be very time consuming.
00:34:41.100 | But today with digitized computerized imaging technology, somebody can put those things together and the computer can reassemble the papers in a very reasonable format.
00:34:51.100 | Your best defense against this, in my opinion, is three things.
00:34:54.100 | One, make sure that the next time you buy a shredder, buy a micro cut shredder.
00:34:59.100 | There are three kinds, a strip shredder, which is the cheapest, a crosscut shredder, which are increasingly prominent, or the micro cut shredder, which is the very smallest.
00:35:08.100 | Go ahead and buy a micro cut shredder so you get the smallest shredding pieces.
00:35:14.100 | The second thing to do is to make sure that you're not only shredding important documents because there is a large amount of shredded materials and just a few important financial statements mixed in or some important tax returns mixed in with the junk mail, the political advertisements, the magazines, etc.
00:35:31.100 | Now it would be very difficult for someone to take all the time to put that together.
00:35:35.100 | And then the third thing that you want to do with your shredder is you want to disseminate the papers and don't keep them conveniently together in one bag.
00:35:41.100 | Whether that means you just dump them into your garbage can, whether that means you separate those shreds into two different weeks of garbage, then whatever it is, however you approach that, just make sure they're not easily collectible by somebody who's going after that shredded material.
00:35:57.100 | My wife laughs at me, but I think it's worth doing.
00:36:00.100 | Just go ahead, shred the magazines, the newspapers, the junk mail, etc.
00:36:04.100 | Of course, you might make an exception with things like newspapers, but if you ever are dealing with a newspaper, like you cut things out, etc., that gives off a lot of information about you.
00:36:12.100 | So consider shredding all of those things.
00:36:15.100 | Make sure that you don't miss all of the little things in your garbage.
00:36:19.100 | For example, if you have prescription bottles of medication, then pull the information off of that and pull the label off and shred it.
00:36:26.100 | If you're receiving boxes from Amazon, pull the label off of that and make sure that you shred that.
00:36:31.100 | You may or may not shred the box, although if you get a good shredder, that's relatively easy to do with cardboard boxes, but there's little reason to do that.
00:36:38.100 | But you could.
00:36:40.100 | But make sure that you're pulling all those little pieces of paper away from and shredding all those little pieces.
00:36:48.100 | Don't let them slip past you.
00:36:51.100 | One of the things that you could if you were extremely paranoid and you wanted to have the most secure system, then of course you would not only shred the materials, but you would probably shred it and burn it.
00:37:01.100 | Now, the challenge here is if you have the capability of doing or if you have the threat model where this would be important for you to do.
00:37:09.100 | It's hard for me to think that the average person needs to use a micro cut shredder and also burn their trash.
00:37:15.100 | But if it's relatively easy for you to burn your trash, then I would recommend go ahead.
00:37:20.100 | I've tested a few different methods of burning even shredded material, and here's what I've found.
00:37:26.100 | It's actually not easy unless you have an actual burn barrel and like many people in the country have a burn barrel where it's easy for them to burn large amounts of trash.
00:37:35.100 | Burning paper is not easy.
00:37:37.100 | A number of years ago, I went through a large amount of paper.
00:37:40.100 | I can't remember if her family member I was sorting through it and I was disposing of financial documents and it was just so much to shred.
00:37:46.100 | I don't want to feed it into a household shredder 10 sheets at a time.
00:37:49.100 | So I thought, oh, I'll burn it. Burning paper is not easy, especially burning large amounts of paper is not easy.
00:37:54.100 | But if you have either the threat model that would warrant this level of protection or if you have the facilities, then it's it's easier to burn things that have already been shredded.
00:38:05.100 | Now, if you don't have a shredder and if you can't burn because you're in a place where that itself would cause problems,
00:38:13.100 | then one of the things that you can do also is you can destroy what's written on your papers with bleach.
00:38:20.100 | I've also tested this method. I don't like it because it puts bleach out.
00:38:23.100 | But if you need to, let's say you have a large number of financial papers, you're going through your deceased parents, financial documents, things like that.
00:38:31.100 | And it's just too much to consider shredding all that stuff.
00:38:34.100 | If you put them take a garbage can, put a big, heavy yard waste bag in it, put a jug of bleach and water, enough water in it to cover and then stir it up.
00:38:46.100 | What will happen is the paper will become waterlogged and the bleach and the water together will blur the ink and somewhat dissolve the paper.
00:38:55.100 | You can turn it into kind of a slurry and then you can throw that whole bag out, being increasingly confident that most of that information has been destroyed.
00:39:03.100 | So with paper, paper is relatively easy to deal with.
00:39:06.100 | And of course, paper is the most important thing for most of us to pay attention to.
00:39:12.100 | Yes, it may say something about your personal tastes in terms of the ice cream cartons that are in your garbage.
00:39:19.100 | But paper, of course, has the most dangerous information for identity theft, for personal information. And so you can take care of it with that particular range of suggestions.
00:39:33.100 | With your garbage, one thing you can do is always use black garbage bags in order to make sure that the contents are not easily seen.
00:39:43.100 | Having poked through a lot of trash cans, if you use the normal white trash bags, what you find is they're relatively easy to see through and you can usually see what's in it.
00:39:54.100 | Now, this is nice to your local curb diver because they can know, oh, that's just the kitchen garbage and they're not going to want to go through that.
00:40:00.100 | But if you just use black garbage bags, that will give you an additional level of protection.
00:40:06.100 | But you should be very careful about the things that do go in your garbage and consider them, especially if there's something in your personal life or habits that you would need to take care of,
00:40:17.100 | or if you have some threat model that would indicate that you need to be careful.
00:40:21.100 | Simple, obvious example would be DNA samples.
00:40:24.100 | If you dispose of things like tampons in the garbage or you dispose of things like Kleenex or you dispose of anything that contains bodily fluids, that's going to create material that can create DNA sampling.
00:40:38.100 | And with DNA sampling, as the original story went from the Willamette Week that I didn't personally read you, that could give off some significant information.
00:40:48.100 | In the original story, it was based upon an investigation into the police officer for drug charges.
00:40:56.100 | Let me just read you a couple paragraphs so you understand.
00:41:00.100 | Gross violation is the article.
00:41:03.100 | Officer Gina Hosley has long had less privacy than the average cop thanks to the Portland Police Bureau's rumor mill, blah, blah, blah.
00:41:11.100 | None of that comes close to the scrutiny she received in March when fellow officers rifled through her garbage.
00:41:15.100 | The evidence they found led to her indictment on charges of possessing ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamine.
00:41:22.100 | Hosley, 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.
00:41:37.100 | Rodriguez has a history of drug arrests and convictions, and when officers booked him on assault charges, they found meth in his pocket.
00:41:44.100 | Subsequently, police began investigating Hosley, hearing rumors from police informants that she had used drugs.
00:41:49.100 | On March 13, at 2.07 a.m., narcotics officers Jay Bates and Michael Krantz took her garbage.
00:41:55.100 | The order to do so came from Assistant Chief Andrew Kirkland, who dated Hosley in the early '90s.
00:42:00.100 | Searching through her trash back at Central Precinct, they found traces of cocaine and methamphetamine as well as drug paraphernalia.
00:42:07.100 | They also found a bloody tampon.
00:42:09.100 | They sent a piece of the tampon to the State Crime Lab where forensic experts tested it for drugs, DNA, and for reasons that remain unclear, semen.
00:42:17.100 | The results of those tests have not been released.
00:42:21.100 | The police didn't seek a search warrant to take Hosley's trash because, as the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office conceded,
00:42:27.100 | officers didn't at the time have sufficient evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant.
00:42:31.100 | But once they had drug residue from Hosley's trash, officers were able to persuade Judge Dorothy Baker to issue a search warrant for Hosley's house.
00:42:39.100 | Inside, they found more paraphernalia and a diary that described apparent drug use.
00:42:43.100 | An indictment was issued in June.
00:42:46.100 | So that gives you the context for why other things in your trash may be worth your consideration.
00:42:52.100 | So be very careful and thoughtful about the things that you put out within your trash.
00:42:56.100 | Now, what should you do with the actual trash?
00:43:00.100 | You can, of course, be careful and not dispose of it at your house.
00:43:06.100 | So it's always worth your considering finding another location of disposing of your trash.
00:43:12.100 | If you have a location that's easily accessible to you, the simplest thing would be something like a county dump.
00:43:17.100 | If your county has that, or if you have dumpsters or public trash dumping facilities that are not personally connected to you,
00:43:25.100 | that would be an easy way for you to dispose of your trash in a slightly safer manner.
00:43:29.100 | Be careful about your workplace.
00:43:31.100 | One of the things that frequently can be used is your actual workplace can be used as a way of identifying information, even about your personal life.
00:43:41.100 | Let me read to you an excerpt from the book, "The Truth About Identity Theft" by Jim Stickley,
00:43:48.100 | because this will demonstrate to you how, if you are a public figure, such as a public CEO of a company,
00:43:55.100 | or you have some kind of public presence, how that particular connection can be used as an attack vector that somebody who's interested would use to find out your personal information.
00:44:06.100 | One man's trash is another man's identity.
00:44:09.100 | Through the years, I have broken into numerous banks through hundreds of different attacks.
00:44:13.100 | Though each was different, the main objective was often the same, to gain access to the cash or confidential information.
00:44:20.100 | I was once approached by a large financial institution that was not only concerned about the security of its physical locations and its network,
00:44:27.100 | but also had concerns about the risks associated with upper management.
00:44:31.100 | This institution asked that I also investigate whether its management team could be attacked in a way that might allow an identity thief greater access to its organization.
00:44:40.100 | So each afternoon I waited in the parking lot and watched members of the management team get into their vehicle.
00:44:45.100 | Then I followed them home.
00:44:46.100 | Within a couple of weeks, I had each of their home addresses.
00:44:49.100 | Since I had no permission to break into their homes and poke through their personal belongings, I opted for the next best thing, their garbage.
00:44:56.100 | Through the years, I have been amazed at the things you can find in the trash.
00:45:00.100 | There is big business for identity thieves in personal garbage.
00:45:03.100 | More importantly, once you put the garbage out on the street for trash pickup, it usually becomes open to the public.
00:45:08.100 | This means that if I am so inclined, I can take that garbage and bring it home, which is exactly what I did.
00:45:13.100 | Each week, I would snap on my rubber gloves and go through every item of trash, grocery store shopping lists, sticky notes with phone numbers,
00:45:20.100 | a private invitation for a little girl to a friend's birthday party, and much more.
00:45:24.100 | As I continued to go through the managers' trash, I was able to compile a list of their service providers, water bill, phone bill, gas and electric cable, and so on.
00:45:32.100 | I could use this information not only to gain access into their lives, but if I wanted, to take over their lives.
00:45:38.100 | Ultimately, I decided to use the billing information for the bank managers' internet service providers as an access point for my attack.
00:45:46.100 | Using the information I gained from the bills, I contacted the managers and explained that I was from that company.
00:45:51.100 | I told them that we were updating our services and that, for them to continue to have internet service, they would be required to install updated software.
00:45:58.100 | I explained that the software would be arriving within the next week.
00:46:01.100 | Because I was able to reference their past billing information during the call, the victims never suspected a thing.
00:46:06.100 | Within a week, they each received a package in the mail that contained upgrade software and instructions.
00:46:11.100 | One by one, the managers installed the software.
00:46:14.100 | Of course, the software they had just installed was actually malicious, and designed specifically to allow me to access their computer via the internet from anywhere in the world.
00:46:23.100 | Shortly after they installed the software, it was on their computers going through all their files.
00:46:27.100 | Within a few short days, I had usernames and passwords to corporate systems, and even VPN access, which allowed me to connect directly to the financial institution's internal network.
00:46:37.100 | When I submitted my report to the executives at the organization, they were obviously floored.
00:46:42.100 | None of them had ever suspected that I had targeted them at home, even though they had all signed waivers allowing me to do so.
00:46:47.100 | They said they were being cautious about emails that were being sent to them, as they were convinced that is how I was going to try to get in.
00:46:53.100 | But the idea that I would go through their trash and use that against them had never crossed their minds.
00:46:59.100 | So it continues on, but you can see the importance of making sure that your trash is disconnected from your personal location, if at all possible.
00:47:10.100 | Now, if you have any particular illicit substances or things that would put you into legal jeopardy in your life, I think you should take extra caution with those things.
00:47:20.100 | You need to, of course, make sure that your garbage, the information doesn't contain any personal connection to you.
00:47:26.100 | Make sure that there's no, for example, papers or mail, junk mail that has your name on it in the same bag.
00:47:31.100 | That, of course, would be evidence.
00:47:33.100 | You would want to make sure to remove anything that would have any kind of physical DNA.
00:47:37.100 | Burning, I don't, I think, I'm not an expert on this, but I guess that burning would be a good way to do that.
00:47:43.100 | Or make sure that you can dispose of them in some way where you can dispose of them completely away from yourself.
00:47:50.100 | And again, one thing is consider taking it to a public dump.
00:47:56.100 | One suggestion for you, if you live in an apartment or if you are disposing of things in a public dump, you may consider, rather than using a good, strong, black yard bag,
00:48:06.100 | you may consider just simply taking your trash and when you're putting it into the garbage, either dump the bag out or split the bag.
00:48:13.100 | And that will disseminate the trash and make somebody's job a whole lot harder.
00:48:18.100 | So if you live in an apartment, that's what I would do is I would take the trash down to the trash.
00:48:22.100 | And if there's something private in it, then I would make sure it didn't go into the public dumpster.
00:48:26.100 | But if there's not something private in it, then just go ahead and split the bag and strew the garbage into the dumpster.
00:48:32.100 | It'll make it very difficult for somebody to be able to deal with the entire dumpster full of information.
00:48:38.100 | Finally, well, two last things.
00:48:41.100 | Some people, I've heard some lawyers on this topic, recommend that you contact the garbage service itself and write to them basically saying that you need to be aware.
00:48:53.100 | If law enforcement is submitting a work order for the garbage collection,
00:48:57.100 | sometimes law enforcement will contact a garbage company and say, we need you guys to collect the garbage from this particular location.
00:49:04.100 | So I've heard lawyers make that recommendation to you.
00:49:07.100 | I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I wouldn't personally do that.
00:49:09.100 | But you might consider it. I have read lawyers make that recommendation.
00:49:14.100 | But I do want to say that there is an additional risk that's recently coming in to that you need to be aware of.
00:49:21.100 | And so I want to read here from a an article from the ACLU published back in 2015.
00:49:28.100 | It's called Some Towns Are Videotaping Residents' Garbage Streams.
00:49:31.100 | The New York Times reports on a group of Seattle residents who are fighting a new law that penalizes residents for improperly sorting their garbage.
00:49:38.100 | These residents say that the garbage inspections violate their privacy as protected under the Washington state constitution.
00:49:44.100 | Seattle is not the only city currently pushing the boundary between enforcing best recycling practices and gross violations of privacy.
00:49:52.100 | A growing number of cities in the United States are installing RFID chips in trash cans and recycling bins in order to bring computer technology to bear on the problem of ensuring compliance with recycling regulations.
00:50:04.100 | These programs consist of passive RFID, radio frequency identification tags, fixed to recycling bins and trash cans, coupled with computers on board each collection truck that interpret and read data.
00:50:18.100 | Their aim is to cut down both on waste and the costs related to resorting to improperly categorized garbage.
00:50:27.100 | The RFID chips are used in a variety of ways, some more intrusive than others.
00:50:32.100 | Many municipalities, including Charlotte, use them to record who is putting their recycling bins out at the curb.
00:50:38.100 | Some, such as Dayton, are taking a carrot approach by developing recycling incentive programs that financially reward residents who recycle.
00:50:45.100 | Others, including Cleveland, use the RFIDs to flag residents who haven't used their bins lately so their garbage can be manually inspected for noncompliance and fines levied.
00:50:57.100 | The program in Seattle uses the RFIDs solely to identify the residents to whom the garbage bins belong and relies on sanitation workers to visually inspect the garbage in order to flag any improper sorting.
00:51:10.100 | But in Wisconsin, some municipal governments are taking garbage surveillance to a whole new level.
00:51:15.100 | In Onalaska and La Crosse, garbage trucks are actually equipped with video cameras.
00:51:21.100 | Garbage trucks scan the chips installed in each bin when emptying carts, the cameras monitor the materials being dumped, and transmit a detailed collection history back to the company in order to determine if the right materials are coming out of each container.
00:51:35.100 | This information is, when deemed necessary, used to levy fines against residents who improperly sort their waste.
00:51:42.100 | This kind of automated garbage monitoring raises very serious privacy concerns.
00:51:47.100 | While encouraging residents to recycle is commendable, any program involving the government's systematic monitoring of citizens crosses a line.
00:51:54.100 | The contents of your trash can be surprisingly revealing.
00:51:58.100 | It goes on and references the actual Willamette Week article, which I previously read to you.
00:52:04.100 | But in my mind, this is absolutely unconscionable.
00:52:07.100 | And I think that I don't know about you, but I find that utterly offensive.
00:52:13.100 | Now, what would I do if I lived in one of those cities?
00:52:16.100 | Well, I might destroy the RFID tag.
00:52:19.100 | That would probably be legally penalized under some way, but I might destroy the RFID tag.
00:52:26.100 | I would probably just opt out of the entire thing out of spite, but that's my personal kind of--I get frustrated about things like that.
00:52:35.100 | I don't know what you should do, but you need to be aware of it.
00:52:38.100 | So if you are in a city that is using those kinds of things, you should inspect your cans.
00:52:43.100 | If you're using cans that have been distributed by the municipality, you should inspect those cans, and you should dig into your local municipality and find out what they're actually doing.
00:52:52.100 | In my opinion, that's absolutely egregious.
00:52:55.100 | And figure out a way to opt out and protect your privacy.
00:52:59.100 | So I hope that these ideas are stimulating for you.
00:53:01.100 | I hope you've got some suggestions.
00:53:04.100 | You can consider how far to take it, but you should be very careful about your garbage.
00:53:09.100 | And even if you just make a couple of simple changes, and these simple changes I want everyone to do are these.
00:53:16.100 | Number one, shred everything or at least everything that has any personal information about you.
00:53:22.100 | Has your name, address, or anybody's name and address, shred everything.
00:53:26.100 | Get a good shredder, a good micro-cut shredder, and put it by the kitchen garbage and put one in your office or wherever you sort your mail.
00:53:35.100 | Make sure you have a couple of them in the house.
00:53:37.100 | They're so cheap today, it's simple to do, and you should do it.
00:53:40.100 | So shred everything.
00:53:42.100 | If you're not going to shred magazines, newspapers, things like that, at least remove the cover where it has your name and address information and pull that off.
00:53:48.100 | Make sure that when you're disposing of things that have personal information, like your prescription drug canisters or your pet's prescription dugs or any of that kind of stuff,
00:53:56.100 | pull those labels off and make sure that they get shredded as well.
00:53:59.100 | Shred everything.
00:54:00.100 | Number two, keep your garbage can in a secure location up close to your house.
00:54:05.100 | And from time to time, take a look at it and ask yourself if there's anything in it that would be a problem if somebody found out about it.
00:54:15.100 | If it's not too close to your house, under the eaves, in the garage, then that will give some security.
00:54:20.100 | Don't put it out as early as possible.
00:54:22.100 | Put it out as late as is reasonable in your schedule.
00:54:25.100 | And if you'll do that, I think that you will significantly increase your privacy, which can protect you from identity theft and protect you from, hopefully, something that would be far worse than identity theft.
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