Never mind, "What's in your wallet?" - What's in your garbage?

edward.greenspan@sunmedia.ca

That's Not Evidence, It's Garbage

Winnipeg Sun

August 11, 2008

Page 11

The Supreme Court of Canada will soon decide whether the police can sift through your garbage at will without a warrant.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that there is no privacy interest in garbage because it was unreasonable for Americans to expect their garbage to remain private. It makes me wonder if the U.S. authorities need a warrant to search a person wearing a garbage bag? Regardless, I sure hope our Supreme Court doesn't follow the U.S. because I think it is completely reasonable to expect our garbage to remain private.

Think about the sorts of things in your garbage on any given week: prescription medication bottles, credit card bills, bank statements, receipts, cell phone bills listing numbers you've called, private correspondence, and countless other items that can reveal a lot about you and what you do. And that is nobody's business but your own.

Do you expect your garbage bags will be examined by the police or other government authorities?

Here's what I expect when I throw something in the garbage: I expect the Surly Garbage Fairy will come in the morning and whisk my garbage away from my trash bin. I expect the garbage will meet a dreadful fate - being mercilessly crushed by a Wall-E type trash compactor. I expect the crushed remains to be shipped to Michigan to be buried in a landfill teeming with humongous, but very happy, flies.

If there is anything I do not expect of my garbage, it is that it will be picked over by the state without a search warrant.

Some legal scholars say garbage is "abandoned property," but that's absurd.

My garbage is no more abandoned from a letter I drop in a mailbox. As required by the city, my trash is left where it can be picked yp, thrown in a dump truck, and taken to its intended destination. I have never abandoned my interest in maintaining the privacy of what I throw away.

I do not expect the police to read my mail before it gets to its destination, and I do not expect the police to rummage through my trash before it gets to its final resting place. Whether I use Viagra, or Cialis, or both, is not the state's business.

If garbage is not private, then what are we supposed to do if we want ot keep our garbage private? Never throw stuff away? That sounds real healthy.

Create a landfill in your backyard (something Toronto probably should do actually, but that's for another day)? I'm sure there's a zoning law against that, not to mention my neighbours won't like it.

Put is all in the fireplace? It's already too hot in the summer.

Maybe I'll just put all my garbage into a steel safe marked "PRIVATE - DO NOT OPEN," weld it shut, and then just lug a new safe full of junk to the curb every other Wednesday. The Surly Garbage Fairy may get a hernia, but I'll feel better knowing my personal information is more secure.

To recognize a right of privacy in garbage does not give criminals some kind of loophole way to dispose of evidence. All it would mean is that the police would have to do what they already have to do any time they want ot search a home in our free and democratic society - get a warrant.

We'll have to wait for the Supreme Court's decision, but if it rules that our garbage is no longer private, I'll sure feel down in the dumps.