This is a story of how you should treat politicians. With the same disdain and contempt that they treat us.

In Portland the top people, supported by a judge of questionable worth, has regularly taken your trash without a warrant. One local paper decided to play the game by the authorities rules….The authorities were less then happy.

The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic. It’s not. Your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your most intimate secrets; what you toss away is, in many ways, just as revealing as what you keep.

And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy is being pilfered. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government has granted itself far-reaching new powers to spy on you, from email to bank statements to video cameras (see “Big Brother’s in Your Trash Can,” below).

After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a “garbage pull” really is–and to highlight the government’s ongoing erosion of people’s privacy.

We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.

Is this a sign of the next war for our rights? The supreme court says that the right to private property is null and void, so we go after theirs. All legal of course. Local politicians say your trash is theirs so we go through their trash.

If enough politicians are treated like the rest of us then maybe, just maybe, they will think twice before shafting us.

So go read the entire story. The anger showed by the politicians is more humorous then any punchline of a Robin Williams joke.

The Willamette Week Online has a comment section and I can see almost nobody objecting to politicians being treated just like us.

Posted in uncategorized on August 10th, 2005 by gunner | RSS 2.0 |