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Comment by heinrichf | Hacker News Reader

Almost exactly a year ago, someone unsuccessfully tried to steal Zuckerberg's trash: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16745057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723595

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You can't legally steal someone's trash. The courts have ruled that once you've put it in public it's abandoned and fair game.

The police do this all the time to suspected criminals. They just pick up their trash and if there's evidence there it's admissible in court.

> You can't legally steal someone's trash. The courts have ruled that once you've put it in public it's abandoned and fair game.

This article specifically disagrees:

"Trash picking is illegal in California — once a bin is rolled out onto the sidewalk the contents are considered the possession of the trash collection company, according to Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, the company contracted to collect San Francisco’s garbage. But the law is rarely enforced."

And SCOTUS disagrees with the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Greenwood

No it doesn't. The case wasn't about ownership of the trash. The case was about whether the search was unreasonable. Did the person that disposed of the trash have an expectation of privacy. In that specific case, the police asked the waste company to set aside the trash allowing it to be examined and they did this without a warrant.

There are different jurisdictions and a difference between no-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy and fair-game-for-the-taking.

USA law is uniform since Greenwood.

Presumably you are referring to California vs Greenwood. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/486/35/

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