If you live in a cash-strapped city as I do then you know that municipalities are hurting for every dollar. In my city, employees have faced  unpaid furloughs, extensive layoffs and city reorganization designed to save tax dollars.

Except here’s one agency that isn’t feeling the effects of cutbacks.

The Recycling Police!

That’s why Watchdog Nation finds it interesting that in our home city, Fort Worth, Texas, it takes three — count ‘em 3 — city employees to check your recycling bin to make sure it doesn’t have trash in it.

We watched as three members of the Recycling Police went through our neighborhood today.

One was the driver, and the other two hit both sides of the street.

When I asked why, they said someone in the neighborhood had contaminated the stream, meaning somebody along the route was ruining the recycling collected by putting in ILLEGAL GARBAGE. OMG.

Here in this video is what it looks like if the Recycling Police come to your house and check your bin and, lucky for you, you pass this most intrusive inspection.

Watch video here.

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Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER, ON ITUNES (AUDIO), KINDLE AND IPAD

By Dave Lieber

Nobody advertises more than LifeLock.com.

You hear their ads on the Rush Limbaugh radio show, done by Rush himself.

You know company founder Todd Davis’ Social Security number (457-55-5462) because he broadcasts it everywhere to show he’s not worried about someone stealing it (even though a Fort Worth man did just that a few years ago here).

But some of that advertising might have gone a little too far, according to legal documents filed in a settlement announced March 9 by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and 34 other states.

Under the terms of the agreement, LifeLock Inc. “agreed to more accurately describe its ID theft protection services.” The company also agreed to pay $11 million in restitution to eligible customers.

As part of a joint investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the states, LifeLock “unlawfully exaggerated its range of services and ability to prevent ID theft.”LifeLock is NOT allowed to state that its products:

- provide “complete protection” against ID theft

- prevent unauthrorized changes to customers’ address information

- constantly monitors activity on its customers’ credit reports

- ensure a customer will always receive a phone call from a creditor before a new account is opened.

Watchdog Bytes contacted LifeLock after the settlement was announced. Spokeswoman Cortney Lanik released this statement from Davis:

“LifeLock is pleased with this agreement, which works to set advertising standards for the entire identity theft protection industry. As FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz stated … the FTC has ensured that LifeLock has a legitimate business model going forward with honest advertising.  Notably, as part of its just-concluded investigation, the FTC reviewed both the LifeLock service and LifeLock’s current advertising to confirm that LifeLock is in compliance with all applicable legal requirements. We will abide by the terms of this consent decree because we intend to continue to be true to our core mission — to help protect you, your family and your friends from identity theft.

“We welcome federal and state efforts to regulate our industry because, at the end of the day, doing so helps to protect consumers from the risks of identity theft. Because of LifeLock’s marketing efforts, many more Americans now know of the risks of identity theft and the need to take effective action to protect themselves. LifeLock is committed to developing and applying the most advanced technologies available to help protect consumers from the consequences of identity theft. We will continue to work very closely with federal and state regulators on regulatory and best practices to protect individual consumers.

“Nothing changes as a result of this settlement because it was based on activities from over two years ago. We agreed to settle this matter in order to quickly put this behind us so we can get back to doing what we do best – helping to protect our members from identity theft.”

Some of LifeLock’s advertising claims were “unlawfully exaggerated” according to a legal settlement in which the company agrees to pay $11 million in restitution. Hey, if you can’t trust your ID theft protection company to be straight with you, who can you trust?

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

But after Sept. 11, 2001, that kinda went out the window, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s Inspector General.

One particular piece of this story, as reported by former Star-Telegram reporter Marissa Taylor, now working for our McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau, struck me:

“In some cases, FBI agents didn’t even bother with the letters and simply asked in e-mails or Post-It notes for records related to more than 3,500 telephone numbers.”

Watchdog Nation wonders what those Post-it Notes looked like. Here are some possibilities:

All of this is too informal for us.

The Founding Fathers used much larger paper for their writings.

They created something called the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber