June 25, 2009

Your garbage just got less private. That includes
trash-talk.

In a majority decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled
that you can't expect your garbage to remain private just
because you left it at the curb for pickup. The case
involved a former national swim star who thought he could
safely dispose of ecstasy-making supplies.

Fallen star Russell Patrick supposed that remnants of his
lab would just disappear when he threw them out. The
Calgary resident naively thought that his drug recipes,
gloves, and weigh-scale packaging would safely vanish into
the anonymity of the garbage heap.

But the court ruled otherwise. They said Patrick had no
reasonable expectation that his garbage would remain
private. Garbage stops being private garbage as soon as it
is placed where anyone could easily rummage through it.
Justice Ian Binnie ruled that: "In my view, the appellant's
initial privacy interest in the evidence was abandoned when
he placed the bags for collection as garbage from a stand
indented in the back fence of his Calgary home adjacent to a
public alleyway."

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association argued that police
have no right snooping through garbage. Unrestrained access
to personal effects would have grave implications, they
warned, since the material found in the average household's
garbage bags reveals a wealth of information about the
people who live there.

The police should not be rummaging through your stuff in a
fishing expedition, argued the association. If they have
enough conventional evidence, then a search warrant should
be obtained.

Your garbage contains personal biological information. The
court agreed that garbage is a "bag of information."
"Household waste "is not just 'garbage' but is in fact a bag
of highly personal information that will reveal intimate
details of our private activities and lifestyle."

In a minority judgment, Justice Rosalie Abella said that
trash should not be easy pickings for police. Just because
a bag is abandoned near the property line, police should
have "reasonable suspicion" that a crime has occurred before
being permitted to comb through a homeowner's stuff.

"Individuals who put out their household waste as 'garbage'
expect that it will reach the waste disposal system: nothing
more, nothing less," she continued. No reasonable person
expects personal information to be publicly available to
random scrutiny.


The definition of "garbage" is an oversimplification because
residential waste contains personal information about what
is going on in our homes, including highly personal records,
overdue bills and love letters - hidden vices such as
syringes, pill bottles and sexual paraphernalia.

This marks a change in how we view garbage. While garbage
has always been used by anthropologists to reveal the habits
groups of people, now it reveals personal information.

Not only does garbage undergo physical journey as it travels
from trash can to garbage dump, it also undergoes a mental
transformation.

The language of garbage reveals this transformation. The
moment something is thrown in the trash bin, it changes from
clean to unsanitary. For example, I might retrieve an
advertising flyer that I just threw out if it's on top of
the trash but I'll think twice after it's covered by coffee
grounds and meat wrappers. And once it gets to the curb, I
generally regard it as irretrievable and well on its way to
anonymity.

The transformation is quite remarkable when you think about
it. What was once intimate becomes untouchable. Litter is
just an innocent eyesore until it's thrown in trash can.
Then trash becomes garbage and is one step closer to the
garbage heap. And the garbage heap becomes the final
dumping ground for the forgotten; a repository for things we
would rather not think about.

Trash-thoughts extend beyond the unsanitary. When someone
speaks garbage, it's nonsense. Trash-talk is depreciatory
banter about someone, usually offhand remarks.

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt thought her trash-talk
about fellow government ministers was private. Little did
she know that the voice-recorder in her aide's bag had
accidentally been turned on and that her throwaway comments
were being collected.

Unlike trash, trash-talk normally leaves no trail of
residue. Who would have thought that Raitt's imprudent "bag
of remarks" would make it to the curb where they could be
rummaged though by passers-by?

But that's just what happened when Raitt's aide left the
recorder in a press-gallery washroom were it was discovered
and the contents made public.

The lesson is: watch out where you leave your trash.
 

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

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