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The Intercept has a recent article: Local Governments Increasingly Poking Through Your Garbage:
Civil libertarians are worried about an increasingly common form of domestic surveillance that...has to do with looking through your garbage... [G]arbage trucks now have the ability to record the contents of your trash cans on video to inspect each object. The ACLU says, "While encouraging residents to recycle is commendable, any program involving the government's systematic monitoring of citizens crosses a line. The contents of your trash can be surprisingly revealing." [emphasis mine] In some cities, trash cans are monitored with RFID devices to determine who is actually putting their recycling bin out on the curb. Prizes are given, or fines can be levied if a threshold limiting recyclable content in trash is exceeded, although none have been issued yet. "It's very crazy. Also not entirely surprising given the prevalence of surveillance technologies. Nothing is safe, not even our trash."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Francis on Thursday July 30 2015, @09:01PM
The city was doing that here, but the fines were small and they ultimately agreed to stop doing it. There are a number of problems, the trash collectors always saw what you were throwing out, but having them pay attention to it and try to judge whether you were over the limit never made much sense. There was little predictability about how much was too much, the collectors didn't really have any oversight and if you did get tagged there wasn't much you could do about it. To make matters worse, somebody like me that has the tiniest possible collection bin gets kind of shafted whereas my neighbor who needs more than one of the biggest ones can have more recyclables in one of those bins than all of my trash.
The nail in the coffin so to speak was that it wasn't necessary. The cost of the bins was sufficient to solve the problem we had, as in we're not going to be running out of landfill space any time soon.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday July 30 2015, @09:13PM
My boss got in trouble with the city when someone dumped paint cans in his trash.
If they want to make people pay based on what they trash, they'd have to secure the bins first. That'd be a job for millions of unemployed people, or interesting tech... Can't wait to have people call themselves I337 trash-hackers!
(Score: 1) by patella.whack on Friday July 31 2015, @12:22AM
While video analysis is rudimentary, and apparently confined to discerning whether or not you obey recycling regulations, it seems like much ado about nothing, now. But I can imagine a future where, once entrenched, automated garbage analysis becomes part of your profile. The tools will become more sophisticated. Chemical sniffing, etc..
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 31 2015, @12:39AM
I wouldn't be surprised if I was told that our provider weighs each of our 3 standard trash cans as they get lifted by the robotic arm. It makes sense from a "knowing when the truck is full" sense, and it may allow them to modulate prices down the road.