Germans plant bugs in our wheelie bins (UK)

[struggle4progress]

By MARTIN DELGADO and HANNAH CLEAVER, The Mail on Sunday
Last updated at 22:55pm on 26th August 2006

Electronic spy 'bugs' have been secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.

The gadgets - mostly installed by companies based in Germany - transmit information about the contents of the bins to a central database which then keeps records on the waste disposal habits of each individual address.

Already some 500,000 bins in council districts across England have been fitted with the bugs - with nearly all areas expected to follow suit within the next couple of years.

Until now, the majority of bins have been altered without the knowledge of their owners. In many cases, councils which ordered the installation of the devices did not even debate the proposals publicly ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402439&in_page_id=1770

[Stargazer99]

1. transmitters in your lap tops

if you think that is bad an engineer showed me this gadget in his new lap top that he investigated because it had no apparent use in the system. He found out it allowed some enitiy to capture information from his laptop. Expect more of this type of thing.

[Kickoutthejams23]

2. For some reason this really really creeps me out.

Of course nothing to stop a surgery to remove the annoying devices.

[sweetheart]

3. an ice pick..

And a hammer should sort out any RFID chips right fine!

[SmokingJacket]

4. If you can find them.

How about some legislation preventing corporations using electronic devices to gather information from unconsenting consumers?

[valerief]

5. Legislation to protect consumers? What's that? I've forgotten, what

with this filthy Congress for the past decade.

[Kickoutthejams23]

6. this is the EU they have less rights than we do in many cases.

[valerief]

8. Sorry. I responded sloppily. n/t

[sweetheart]

14. EU focus on garbage is militant

The objective of recycling huge percentages of domestic waste has
set the EU on a mission to study and economically charge its citizens
for acting unsustainably.

A fair garbage system might charge each customer for the total weight of
garbage, and credit them for all recognizable RFID packaging that has been
identified and can be recycled.

We already have huge global databases, and privacy is at risk the planet over,
so the issue is whether the governemnt can oversee such databases, whether
abuses are fairly ajudicated on behalf of common individuals

[Kellanved]

16. huh?

This is foremost the UK, which is a special case - they really have a big brother state worse than any other western country.

As to EU citizens having fewer rights - that's hardly the case. Especially regarding privacy, Europeans have far more rights than Americans.

[Deja Q]

7. And then somebody replaces the unit, or worse...

Besides, the RFID (a passive one) is going to be very, very small. Rather hard to detect.

An active one is said to be the size of a nickel, mostly due to the lithium battery used to power it.

[mr blur]

9. Sorry, but this is just garbage.

This is the Mail - a nasty little right-wing tabloid full of anti-Europe, anti-foreigners, anti-just-about-everybody scare stories. Ignore them, like we do over here, they're still coming to terms with Churchill dying.

[dipsydoodle]

11. Churchill dying

:rofl:

[struggle4progress]

12. Big brother concerns after bins are found bugged (Australia)

Monday August 21, 2006

Finding bugs on garbage bins isn't unusual but the bugs being used in the city of Ryde are an Australian first.

All 90,000 rubbish bins in the city are being fitted with tiny electronic tags — about the size of a 20 cent piece — to help the council keep track of how much trash is being tossed out ..

The council's explanation is that tags identify which house a bin belongs to. The device is scanned as bins are loaded onto garbage trucks and an on board computer weighs the contents. The council's motivation is to gather precise information on how much garbage is being thrown out so it can better target recycling campaigns.

But monitoring garbage is a sensitive issue and residents we spoke to were alarmed that the weight of their garbage was being recorded without their knowledge .. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=123795

Mail coverage may be over-heated; Australian version suggests the underlying story is true.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Germans, Fawlty!

If they were taking the story seriously, they wouldn't have put 'Germans' (a minor detail, of no real relevance) in the title. Here's a non-hysterical version: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6040229,00.html

[dipsydoodle]

10. Sounds to me like

another fairy story from the Mail's Brothers Grimm section. It's not for nothing that Private Eye refers to the Daily Mail as the Daily Lie.

[struggle4progress]

13. RFID - a Great Little Chip (Bremen Sanitation Dept)

Tomorrow Today | 27.08.2006 | 22:30

... The RFID chips from the city of Bremen's sanitation department lead a hard life. Modern technology meets muscle power.

In this pilot project, garbage bins marked with chips can be registered automatically, eliminating the need for tedious paperwork ...

Andreas Bayer, City of Bremen Refuse Collection: "The advantage for households in Bremen is that they will only be billed for garbage or garbage cans that they actually put out. It is already even possible to identify the containers - so if cans have been stolen, we can that account for them and compensate when we do the collection...."

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2145489,00.html

[Kellanved]

17. I guess it is

They're using the chips to identify the bins for billing - which could just as well be done with a barcode. The real scandal seems to be that the chips are German made. :shrug: