Organized Crime groups in Canada are creating a new market in the trafficking of electronic trash such as used computers and cell phones. 

From the Globe and Mail:

The growing amount of laptops, portable phones and other electronics being tossed away in Canada is creating new trafficking opportunities for organized crime, the country’s law-enforcement officials are predicting.

The warning is contained in the 2008 annual report of the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, under a section devoted to emerging and future threats.

“The illicit trafficking and disposal of ‘e-waste’ – computers, televisions, cell phones – is driving a burgeoning environmental and human health crisis in several developing nations in Asia and, increasingly, in Africa,” the report says.

“Criminal networks can profit by collecting e-waste in developed countries such as Canada and selling it to ‘recyclers’ in developing nations.”

Things will get worse between next year and 2011, the report says, because millions of North American television sets will be made obsolete by digital broadcasting.