February 10, 2005
One man's trash...
..is another man's evidence:
SANTA CLARA, February (www.cubanet.org) - Many a morning, when the municipal garbage pickup personnel in my neighborhood just don't show up, my garbage is the only one in the whole block that is never left at the curb.I never thought much of this, since every once in a while I had noticed a young man in a bicycle who sped by my house, often at night, and snatched the plastic garbage sack. I had speculated the man perhaps expected to find something useful or marketable among my discards, and let it go.
Until recently, that is. I was at a friend's home, doing some work, and I asked my friend's mother to throw some papers in the garbage for me. She very nonchalantly replied that she would burn them as she did all papers since she had seen some character picking up her garbage sack in front of her house some time past. And that's when it dawned on me; my personal garbage man works for the government, but not necessarily for the municipal waste service.
All of a sudden I remembered the wrinkled documents reproduced in the book The Dissidents, put out by the government security services over a year ago to discredit the dissident movement they say barely exists. I remembered the listening devices placed by the government telecommunications company, ETECSA, in the home of Laura Pollán and her husband Héctor Maseda, now in prison, and the several discovered by human rights activist Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas throughout his home.
Most, not to say all, government opponents and dissidents take it as a given that their phones are bugged. Recently we had news of a device called the "Voice DNA machine" installed at phone company central offices, which can identify 36 distinct parameters of the human voice and automatically record those it has been programmed to recognize, no matter where the calls originate.
As a journalist, my goal is to disseminate my work to the widest possible audience; what secrets the powers that be expect to find in my discards is beyond me. But maybe they just want to insure my garbage is picked up in a timely fashion lest I expose the deficiencies in municipal services.
Posted by Val Prieto at February 10, 2005 08:04 AM
Comments
More likely he is "shopping" for some bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or something with drivers license or social security number on it.
Do your friendly credit card companies ever send you offers to "transfer your balances with these blank checks"?
Don't think zebra, think ass.
Posted by: homebru at February 10, 2005 09:25 AM
Boy these schmucks aren't subtle at all, are they? Reminds me of my pal in Beijing who works for a US government news agency.
Recently, he told me he went to the US on home leave for Christmas and when he returned, he discovered all the showerheads, doorknobs, light switches, and television remotes had been replaced, all shiny and new. He asked the maids if anyone had ordered this or sent a bill. The maids didn't know a thing and no, there was no bill. He knew where the Red Chinese communist bugs were after that.
Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at February 10, 2005 01:10 PM