When you put your garbage out at the curb it becomes fair game for the world to see; you lose all right to privacy. Obviously, that is not to say that if you throw away an old credit card receipt someone can legally collect your trash and steal your identity. But they can legally collect your trash, look through it, and, whether it is the police or the paparazzi, use it against you. If the police suspect you are using or dealing drugs, one of the first things they will do is sneak out at night and steal your garbage. I personally employed this method dozens of times. In fact, I have gone so far as to wear a maintenance uniform and ride on the garbage truck in situations where I believed a suspect took his trash out in the morning to avoid having it stolen by the police the night before.

Sometimes this investigative technique will directly reveal drug activity, such as marijuana seeds and stems, the corners of plastic baggies with heroin or cocaine residue, balloons, syringes or homemade crack pipes fashioned from soda cans. Sometimes there will be indirect evidence such as chemicals used to manufacture illegal drugs, a discarded power bill that suggests a grow light operation or a discarded phone bill that identifies all incoming and outgoing calls. A garbage can is a gold mine of information. I remember reading about a discarded pregnancy test for sale on eBay that supposedly came from Britney Spears’ garbage. Remember, if you don’t want someone else to have it, don’t throw it away.

You might also want to consider that even if you don’t throw out your electric bill or phone bill or internet provider information, such data is relatively easy for law enforcement to subpoena or obtain through a warrant or court order. While the procurement of a search warrant or a wire tap can be painstaking and require a great deal of evidence, less intrusive information can be gathered with much less effort and that information, in turn, can be used to support a full-blown search warrant.

Surveillance

When investigators have nothing else to do, they set up surveillance. Investigators typically have a whole list of people they suspect of criminal activity that they want to watch. Sometimes they catch a criminal. Sometimes they just catch an eyeful... (click here to read more)