
China expands surveillance of sewage to police illegal drug use - dsr12
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05728-3
======
emptybits
In Canada our federal government also monitors wastewater for drug use and
claims it's a practice from Europe. Though it doesn't carry a "war on drugs"
tone.

[https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-605-x/2018001/article...](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-605-x/2018001/article/54922-eng.htm)

~~~
ryanlol
>claims it's a practice from Europe

They've been doing this for a while in some European countries, yeah.

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jpatokal
The title implies they're looking for drug _users_ , but the article talks
more about drug _manufacturing_? The city mentioned, Zhongshan, is infamous
for meth labs.

[http://www.thatsmags.com/guangzhou/post/19596/police-
seize-6...](http://www.thatsmags.com/guangzhou/post/19596/police-seize-66kg-
of-crystal-meth-1-6-mill-in-guangdong-drug-raid)

------
King-Aaron
Report from Australia about monitoring this kind of thing:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-01/sewage-tests-reveal-
wa...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-01/sewage-tests-reveal-wa-drug-
problem/7677296)

"West Australians are using about two tonnes of methamphetamine each year with
a street value of $2 billion, wastewater tests have revealed."

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codezero
The US uses this kind data for epidemiology studies. Wouldn’t be surprised if
it was used for law enforcement purposes too.

~~~
duxup
You'd think it would eventually come up in a court case.

Granted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming
up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky
and obvious and would come up.

~~~
sueders101
"Granted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming
up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky
and obvious and would come up."

It's actually a very common technique known as parallel construction.
Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic; I'm not great at reading
tone in comments.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_United_States_Drug_Enforcement_Administration)

~~~
duxup
Doing it for say drugs in a sewer would seem to be a much harder deal I would
think. You gotta come up with a better excuse than say a car stop.

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madrox
I'm curious if this kind of thing would be prohibited in the US on fourth
amendment grounds or not, or would be considered probable cause for a warrant.

~~~
pdkl95
Kyllo v United States created a bright line test: new technology used to view
"details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without
physical intrusion"[1] count as a "search" _if and only if_ the technology is
_not_ "in general public use"[2]. Since the general public does not generally
use technologies for detecting trace amounts of specific chemicals, this
should require a warrant.

Current technologies that are heading towards losing 4th Amendment protection
might be IR thermal cameras and trigger-word based audio recording (Alexa _et
al_ ). The general public is increasingly using both of these technologies.
When someone convinces a judge the "general public use" threshold has been
crossed, _the technology in general_ (not just a specific product) can be used
without a warrant.

[1] [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-
court/533/27.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html)

[2] Ibid.

~~~
nradov
There's no physical intrusion or accessing anything on private property with
this technology. It's more like law enforcement sifting through a suspect's
garbage after he puts it out at the curb, which can be done without a warrant.

~~~
vageli
This is not true in every state in the US.

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baybal2
First used in Shenzhen a decade ago, to detect people flushing PCB etchants to
sewers

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codeisawesome
Someone commented about the privacy concerns of monitoring sewage for drugs in
the US, and were downvoted heavily. No theory is truly tin-foil in our world
it’s beginning to seem.

~~~
throwvondannen
I remember this comment.

I think there were objections about the feasibility and precision of these
methods, when in reality those concerns just don't matter at all.

Raided the wrong house/neighborhood? I doubt the victim could do anything
tangible about it. Even better, this is another tool in the box of vague
reasons to search a place that can be just made up.

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rubenbe
This method is used to determine the "coke capital". In 2016 the city of
Antwerp in Belgium took the first place from London.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38328107/london-is-
no-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38328107/london-is-no-longer-
europes-cocaine-capital-with-antwerp-taking-over)

------
praptak
How practical would be to treat your urine so that the metabolites become
undetectable?

~~~
krageon
The most practical way to prevent detection (if you're that worried) is to do
your business in toilets that are in some way public. Your school, your job,
the train station (if it has regularly cleaned toilets), etc.

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deltadeltadelta
The Chinese government should probably check the drinking water as well
then...

"it is acknowledged that nearly 14 percent of the city's sewage is discharged
into rivers which serve as Shanghai's water sources without being treated."

[https://www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/shanghai-
water.htm...](https://www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/shanghai-water.html)

"At least a million tonnes of raw sewage pours into the waters of Guangdong’s
Pearl River Delta in southern China every day...Air pollution is so obvious
that everyone can see it,” he said. “But the water problem has not had enough
public attention.”

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-
politics/article/20...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-
politics/article/2087815/southern-chinas-million-tonne-raw-sewage-problem)

~~~
fyfy18
London has a pretty big problem with raw sewage flowing into the Thames too,
fortunately it’s not used as drinking water source though.

Each year at least 40m litres of untreated sewage flows into the Thames in
London, as the Victoria sewers are at capacity. There is currently an ongoing
project to upgrade them which should be launched in 2022:

[http://www.tideway.london/](http://www.tideway.london/)

Last year a water company was fined £20m for dumping 2 billion litres over the
last few years further upstream:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/thames-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/thames-
water-hit-with-record-fine-for-huge-sewage-leaks)

~~~
vkou
> fortunately it’s not used as drinking water source though.

If it were, I imagine the incentives to fix this problems would align
differently then "Let's maybe get it fixed by 2022."

The same could be said for Victoria, BC, which treats the ocean like a giant
garbage dump, where it dumps its untreated sewage.

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merinowool
If someone had invented inexpensive drug monitor that could be installed in a
waste pipe outlet, then they could make billions.

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sn41
Ironically open defecation now seems like a good privacy move :)

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waterhouse
Seriously, though. Given all the things drug addicts often do if driven to
them, is it wise to give them an incentive to, say, poop into a bag and
eventually throw it into someone else's trash?

I was wondering whether the technology was at the level where it could track
it down to an individual. Struck me as implausible, but then the article says
"policing" and that it was successfully used to "help track down" a
manufacturer, but further thought shows that "help track down" might just mean
"it helped narrow it down to a neighborhood" or something.

I'm sure they wouldn't install in every apartment things that take samples at
every different tenant's toilets. But they might take very broad samples, and
then, when they find positive results in one area, they could add more
sampling to its sub-areas, and narrow it down progressively, and eventually
say "We now have cause to search the rooms of everyone in this apartment
building for drugs".

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mr_spothawk
flush twice & piss out the window

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wavefunction
If only they could expand their surveillance to all the fentanyl and
carfentanil their country is exporting :(

