You'd think it would eventually come up in a court case.
Granted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky and obvious and would come up.
"Granted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky and obvious and would come up."
It's actually a very common technique known as parallel construction. Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic; I'm not great at reading tone in comments.
The Chinese government should probably check the drinking water as well then...
"it is acknowledged that nearly 14 percent of the city's sewage is discharged into rivers which serve as Shanghai's water sources without being treated."
"At least a million tonnes of raw sewage pours into the waters of Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta in southern China every day...Air pollution is so obvious that everyone can see it,” he said. “But the water problem has not had enough public attention.”
London has a pretty big problem with raw sewage flowing into the Thames too, fortunately it’s not used as drinking water source though.
Each year at least 40m litres of untreated sewage flows into the Thames in London, as the Victoria sewers are at capacity. There is currently an ongoing project to upgrade them which should be launched in 2022:
In Canada our federal government also monitors wastewater for drug use and claims it's a practice from Europe. Though it doesn't carry a "war on drugs" tone.
Seriously, though. Given all the things drug addicts often do if driven to them, is it wise to give them an incentive to, say, poop into a bag and eventually throw it into someone else's trash?
I was wondering whether the technology was at the level where it could track it down to an individual. Struck me as implausible, but then the article says "policing" and that it was successfully used to "help track down" a manufacturer, but further thought shows that "help track down" might just mean "it helped narrow it down to a neighborhood" or something.
I'm sure they wouldn't install in every apartment things that take samples at every different tenant's toilets. But they might take very broad samples, and then, when they find positive results in one area, they could add more sampling to its sub-areas, and narrow it down progressively, and eventually say "We now have cause to search the rooms of everyone in this apartment building for drugs".
I'm curious if this kind of thing would be prohibited in the US on fourth amendment grounds or not, or would be considered probable cause for a warrant.
I'm going to totally guess and say that if the effluence uses public assets (town sewer) then it's okay for gov to monitor and do whatever and thus get a warrant based on probable cause if they get a good hit on location. If you have a septic on private land, then, I presume they can't just come and check your system for tell-tales of drugs.
I would agree. If they can go through your garbage on the curb without a warrant, surely they can look at your sewer lines with permission of the utility company.
Moore v. Regents of the University of California Says that parts of your own body are no longer "yours" after a surgical procedure.
It would not be a long leap to make the argument that since the onus of disposal is on the municipal waste treatment company that your effluent becomes "theirs" as soon as it enters municipal sewage systems.
I'm not saying it makes sense, but I've given up on thinking the government will let something like that stand in their way if they get their knickers in a twist.
And the whole "unless it is in use by the general public test" is blatant overreach. It's just a way to sneak in new ways to get around 4th Amendment protections through creative interpretation.
Doing a multispectral scan of someone's house is a bloody search. "I was just FLIRing" the entire neighborhood on a whim... Right.
California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35 (1988),
was a case in which the Supreme Court of the
United States held that the Fourth Amendment
does not prohibit the warrantless search and
seizure of garbage left for collection outside
the curtilage of a home.
There's (sort of) precedent in the form of court rulings on police search of garbage cans. Apparently, in 1998, the 7th circuit court of appeals ruled 8-5 holding that the individual cannot reasonably expect privacy of their trash left in publicly accessible areas. [1]
There's probably a more reasonable expectation of privacy for bodily waste flushed down a toilet. I think any defense of such a practice would have to be based on the assumption that samples are taken far enough downstream to render individuals anonymous.
Kyllo v United States created a bright line test: new technology used to view "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[1] count as a "search" if and only if the technology is not "in general public use"[2]. Since the general public does not generally use technologies for detecting trace amounts of specific chemicals, this should require a warrant.
Current technologies that are heading towards losing 4th Amendment protection might be IR thermal cameras and trigger-word based audio recording (Alexa et al). The general public is increasingly using both of these technologies. When someone convinces a judge the "general public use" threshold has been crossed, the technology in general (not just a specific product) can be used without a warrant.
There's no physical intrusion or accessing anything on private property with this technology. It's more like law enforcement sifting through a suspect's garbage after he puts it out at the curb, which can be done without a warrant.
I turned off the water in my house over a weekend because our water heater was leaking. That caused the "smart" water meter to not function since it powers itself via the moving water supply. On the following Monday, I had a a city employee in my driveway wanting to inspect that meter because it had stopped reporting back to the city. They made up some cock and bull claim that we had used 33,000 gallons, which by my calculations, isn't even possible due to the pipe diameter and pressure--it would take many days to use that much water. Our meter was out for < 24 hrs. So they're meddling under the cover of protecting my property from a broken pipe or whatever their justification was. I guess they can also tell who flushes when, and how often we leave town, simply based on water usage patterns.
The city has an ordinance that allows them to gain access in order to inspect their meter. I find this an easy way to circumvent the 4th Amendment, however. If the city employee happens to view anything illegal going on in the house while they are inspecting it, they are going to follow up with the police department. There went all my rights, all due to a "smart" water meter. It's smart all right--Orwellian!
The shit going on in China is far worse, but Agenda 21 is worldwide and not to be overlooked. There is a plan for widespread, total control over populations, their property, and every human behavior.
Someone commented about the privacy concerns of monitoring sewage for drugs in the US, and were downvoted heavily. No theory is truly tin-foil in our world it’s beginning to seem.
I think there were objections about the feasibility and precision of these methods, when in reality those concerns just don't matter at all.
Raided the wrong house/neighborhood? I doubt the victim could do anything tangible about it.
Even better, this is another tool in the box of vague reasons to search a place that can be just made up.
The most practical way to prevent detection (if you're that worried) is to do your business in toilets that are in some way public. Your school, your job, the train station (if it has regularly cleaned toilets), etc.
The title implies they're looking for drug users, but the article talks more about drug manufacturing? The city mentioned, Zhongshan, is infamous for meth labs.
> After sewerage testing conducted last year identified skyrocketing rates of methamphetamine use in Kalgoorlie, police launched Operation Horta which saw more than $1 million of ice seized in the first few months of 2017.
It has a NATIONAL WASTE WATER DRUG MONITORING PROGRAM
> Use of new, sophisticated geospatial analysis methods incorporating water treatment catchment maps and 2016 Australian Census mesh blocks gives more accurate and precise consumption estimates.
43 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadGranted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky and obvious and would come up.
It's actually a very common technique known as parallel construction. Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic; I'm not great at reading tone in comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_U...
"it is acknowledged that nearly 14 percent of the city's sewage is discharged into rivers which serve as Shanghai's water sources without being treated."
https://www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/shanghai-water.htm...
"At least a million tonnes of raw sewage pours into the waters of Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta in southern China every day...Air pollution is so obvious that everyone can see it,” he said. “But the water problem has not had enough public attention.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/20...
Each year at least 40m litres of untreated sewage flows into the Thames in London, as the Victoria sewers are at capacity. There is currently an ongoing project to upgrade them which should be launched in 2022:
http://www.tideway.london/
Last year a water company was fined £20m for dumping 2 billion litres over the last few years further upstream:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/thames-w...
If it were, I imagine the incentives to fix this problems would align differently then "Let's maybe get it fixed by 2022."
The same could be said for Victoria, BC, which treats the ocean like a giant garbage dump, where it dumps its untreated sewage.
Seems like Tom Lehrer's Pollution is still relevant - just other countries.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-605-x/2018001/article...
They've been doing this for a while in some European countries, yeah.
I was wondering whether the technology was at the level where it could track it down to an individual. Struck me as implausible, but then the article says "policing" and that it was successfully used to "help track down" a manufacturer, but further thought shows that "help track down" might just mean "it helped narrow it down to a neighborhood" or something.
I'm sure they wouldn't install in every apartment things that take samples at every different tenant's toilets. But they might take very broad samples, and then, when they find positive results in one area, they could add more sampling to its sub-areas, and narrow it down progressively, and eventually say "We now have cause to search the rooms of everyone in this apartment building for drugs".
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-01/sewage-tests-reveal-wa...
"West Australians are using about two tonnes of methamphetamine each year with a street value of $2 billion, wastewater tests have revealed."
But that's just a guess...
It would not be a long leap to make the argument that since the onus of disposal is on the municipal waste treatment company that your effluent becomes "theirs" as soon as it enters municipal sewage systems.
I'm not saying it makes sense, but I've given up on thinking the government will let something like that stand in their way if they get their knickers in a twist.
And the whole "unless it is in use by the general public test" is blatant overreach. It's just a way to sneak in new ways to get around 4th Amendment protections through creative interpretation.
Doing a multispectral scan of someone's house is a bloody search. "I was just FLIRing" the entire neighborhood on a whim... Right.
There's (sort of) precedent in the form of court rulings on police search of garbage cans. Apparently, in 1998, the 7th circuit court of appeals ruled 8-5 holding that the individual cannot reasonably expect privacy of their trash left in publicly accessible areas. [1]
1: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1200020.html
Current technologies that are heading towards losing 4th Amendment protection might be IR thermal cameras and trigger-word based audio recording (Alexa et al). The general public is increasingly using both of these technologies. When someone convinces a judge the "general public use" threshold has been crossed, the technology in general (not just a specific product) can be used without a warrant.
[1] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html
[2] Ibid.
The city has an ordinance that allows them to gain access in order to inspect their meter. I find this an easy way to circumvent the 4th Amendment, however. If the city employee happens to view anything illegal going on in the house while they are inspecting it, they are going to follow up with the police department. There went all my rights, all due to a "smart" water meter. It's smart all right--Orwellian!
The shit going on in China is far worse, but Agenda 21 is worldwide and not to be overlooked. There is a plan for widespread, total control over populations, their property, and every human behavior.
I think there were objections about the feasibility and precision of these methods, when in reality those concerns just don't matter at all.
Raided the wrong house/neighborhood? I doubt the victim could do anything tangible about it. Even better, this is another tool in the box of vague reasons to search a place that can be just made up.
http://www.thatsmags.com/guangzhou/post/19596/police-seize-6...
> After sewerage testing conducted last year identified skyrocketing rates of methamphetamine use in Kalgoorlie, police launched Operation Horta which saw more than $1 million of ice seized in the first few months of 2017.
It has a NATIONAL WASTE WATER DRUG MONITORING PROGRAM
> Use of new, sophisticated geospatial analysis methods incorporating water treatment catchment maps and 2016 Australian Census mesh blocks gives more accurate and precise consumption estimates.
Testing for
methylamphetamine
amphetamine
cocaine
3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA)
JWH-018
JWH-073
mephedrone
methylone
oxycodone
fentanyl
tobacco
alcohol
https://www.acic.gov.au/sites/g/files/net1491/f/national_was...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38328107/london-is-no-...