Putting out the garbage is one of life's duller necessities. Last week that boring chore became a bit riskier. By a 6-to-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police may freely rummage through ordinary household trash left at curbside without obtaining a search warrant. The decision was welcomed by the law-enforcement community, which has learned that garbage contains a lot of incriminating ingredients, but it upset civil libertarians. They read the opinion as a tightening of the judicial noose around the already embattled right of personal privacy.
The court's pronouncement involved the garbage of Billy Greenwood of Laguna Beach, Calif....
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