Bin Brother is Watching You.



About 500,000 trash bins across England has been fitted with an electronic bug that monitor the homeowner’s waste disposal habits:

With the bugging technology, the electronic chips are carefully hidden under the moulded front ‘lip’ of wheelie bins used by householders for non-recyclable waste. As the bin is raised by the mechanical hoister at the back of the truck, the chip passes across an antenna fitted to the lifting mechanism. That enables the antenna to ‘read’ a serial number assigned to each property in the street.

A computer inside the truck weighs the bin as it is raised, subtracts the weight of the bin itself and records the weight of the contents on an electronic data card.

When the truck returns to the depot, all the information collected on the round is transmitted to a hand-held device and downloaded on to the council’s centralised computer. Each household can be billed for the amount of waste collected - even though they have already paid for the services through their council tax.

Of course, it’s all hush hush. Must be part of the war on terror. The terror of stinky garbage, that is:

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.

Link - via Fortean Times

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Posted on August 30, 2006 at 9:16 pm by Alex
Category: Politics



6 comments to "Bin Brother is Watching You."

  • imasayer
    August 31st, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    What a wonderful way to reduce waste. When can we implement that here in the states? Maybe if people where charged by the pound, they would think about what they threw away. If they thought about what they threw away, then maybe they would think about what they bought! Pretty soon global warming would start to reverse. Well, at least maybe people would throw away less crap.

  • Tsitsi
    September 1st, 2006 at 5:54 am

    Some towns in Belgium actually implement this system: pay disposal tax according to the weight of your trash. There’s nothing secret about it, though, which I guess makes all the difference.

  • kungfublood
    September 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Be on the look out for O’mama Bin Loder.

  • Thebes
    September 16th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    The problems, as I see them, with this system are:

    It bills people twice for trash disposal. Once in their taxes, and a second time when the trash is collected. This is unfair, basically it amounts to an undebated raising or taxes.

    The second problem is that data. With that data, a trash-person could know information about households. For example, if almost no trash was collected, they might presume that the household is on holiday and break into it. These sort of things have happened in the past with new and unique data.

  • Doug@usa.com
    September 16th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Think “Unintended Consquences”.

    If people have to pay for the weight of their trash bin, they will dump their trash elsewhere. Save that heavy old metal bit from the car and just toss it onto the side of the highway in the middle of the night when no one is watching.

    Also, people will find other ways of disposing of their waste, such as burning it (and harming the air quality) or flushing it down the toilet (and causing blockages and breakages in the sewer system). Those living on the coast can just dump their waste into the ocean, saving money and polluting the coastal areas. If you live near a river, you can just dump the waste in the river.

    This is just government trying to get more cash to pay for more illegal and immoral activities. As with most things thought of by government and indeed as with any effort to get “free” money, this has some nasty side-effects, which will prove worse than the initial “problem”/excuse.

  • nostrafarious
    September 26th, 2007 at 1:38 am

    I can’t wait to fill my goddamn neighbor’s bin to the brim every garbage pickup! Or how about reprogramming that chip to transmit the code for the my landlord! Viola!

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