Crime and Garbage

Collecting Information

Trash trawling, dumpster diving, and waste archaeology are all terms given to the practice of culling garbage for potentially valuable information. This information can be of interest to private detectives, law enforcement officials, and identity thieves. Businesses that wish to understand trade secrets or interpret corporate planning documents may engage in forms of dumpster diving. Individuals are even more commonly targeted for such crimes. Information gleaned from garbage—including personal identification numbers and other personal information—is used to commit various forms of identity theft. This form of crime stems from the convenience of people throwing their garbage out without regard for what is thrown out. In response, in the United States and other nations, there has been a growth in personal shredders as well as businesses that pick up documents and shred them on the spot. There is also the issue of privacy and due process of the law related to garbage.

In 1988, in overturning a California court's decision in California v. Greenwood, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment's protection against unwarranted search and seizure does not extend to trash. Criminal defense attorneys have attempted to argue that police searches of garbage should occur only after obtaining warrants. Some U.S. cities have passed legislation making it illegal to go through garbage. The laws are focused on reducing identity theft resulting from trash pilfering. Canadian officials, responding to cases of their own (including the case against a man who was discovered to have marijuana paraphernalia in his trash), have expressed that laws related to garbage are especially not well defined. In 1995, a British Columbia justice wrote that, “putting material in the garbage signifies that the material is no longer something of value or importance to the person disposing of it … when trash is abandoned, there is no longer a reasonable expectation of pri-vacy [Page 161]in respect to it.” This ruling is similar to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1988 that defined garbage as bona vacantia, or “ownerless goods.” The reasoning behind this view of garbage as no longer belonging to the individual who disposed of it relates to interpretations that the individual exercised free will in disposing of the garbage. Some advocates complain that such laws result in violations of the individual's privacy, regardless of what is contained in the garbage.

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