USPS To Provide Personal Identity Certification

Zentalon writes "The United States Postal Service has announced that it will provide In-Person Proofing (pdf) to physically authenticate individuals before a digital signature certificate is issued to that person. This has a bunch of interesting ramifications; for instance, I could create a simple spam filter that only accepts mail from individuals and organizations that have an authenticated certificate. It could also allow for more secure financial transactions. Anyone know if any other national postal services are planning the same thing?" Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ...

Deutsche Post did that

[sebmol (217013)]

Shortly after digital signatures became legally equivalent to regular signatures in Germany, Deutsche Post (the German postal service) offered digital authentication. Last time I heard about it, it was being scrapped due to a lack of demand.

Canada too...

[conner_bw (120497)]

Canada too...

http://www.epost.ca/ [epost.ca]

Canadapost, canada's gov snail mail institution, is doing something similar with email where you can pay bills and other such commercial exchanges using their "Electronic Postmark (tm)" technology.

Re:Deutsche Post did that

[BlueWonder (130989)]

Shortly after digital signatures became legally equivalent to regular signatures in Germany, Deutsche Post (the German postal service) offered digital authentication.

Maybe I misunderstand the Federal Register text, but I think the USPS doesn't intend to act as a CA itself, but to verify the identity of people for other CAs. The closest Deutsche Post equivalent to that would be PostIdent. [deutschepost.de]

The Post Office? Seriously?

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

Of course, your certificate will be snailed to you on the back of a postcard. 10% of them will be lost. Complaints will be handled by people too slow to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And although they'll only cost $0.37 to start, their price growth will outstrip inflation. When a competing company starts doing the same things with better service and prices, they'll whine that they're losing business and raise prices again.

Other than that, I'm sure it'll be great. When will my local branch (literally in a small town in Nebraska) have their PKI training day?

Postal employees better than you think

[SuperBanana (662181)]

Complaints will be handled by people too slow to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I repeat the following story every time I hear someone insult a postal worker.

One day I needed to get something in the mail THAT day, and I wasn't able to get down to the post office. I caught the mailman as he was driving up to the mailbox, and handed him the letter. Except I didn't have enough postage- I had forgotten about the rate increase that had happened recently.

Now, if the guy had wanted to be an asshole, he could have refused it- but he said "you got any change? I'll put the extra postage on it when I get in" I had a quarter on me, gave it to him, and was happy that I had probably still spent less money than the gas it would have taken to get to the post office and back.

What bowled me over was that the next day, he parked, came to the door, and handed me change. I was blown away that he bothered for such a small amount, and had expected him to (rightfully, far as I was concerned) pocket the 15-20 cents for the trouble of having to 'buy' and slap on an extra stamp for me.

NOW, if you want to see how patient postal employees are, see what these guys did [improb.com]. It is incredibly funny(the part about the sender trying to argue they should get money BACK for shipping a balloon is hilarious), but there's a serious message in their absurd little experiment(which involved shipping bricks, hammers, dead fish+seaweed, etc), and I'll include their conclusion here:

First, this experiment yielded a 64% delivery rate (18/28), an almost two-thirds success rate. (For our purposes, "delivery" constituted some type of independent handling by the USPS and subsequent contact regarding the object, regardless of whether we got to see or keep the object or whether it arrived whole.) This is astounding, considering the nature of some of the items sent. This compares with a 0% rate of receipt of fully wrapped packages from certain countries of the developing world, such as Peru, Turkey, and Egypt. Admittedly, those were international mailings, and thus not totally comparable; nevertheless, the disparity is striking.

Second, the delivery involved the collusion of sequences of postal workers, not simply lone operatives. The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.

Finally, our investigation team felt remorse for some of its experimental efforts, most particularly the category "Disgusting," after the good faith of the USPS in its delivery efforts. We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small box of chocolate.

We, and all scientists, owe a debt of gratitude to these civil servants. Without them, we would have had but little success in pushing the envelope.

Re:Postal employees better than you think

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

I repeat the following story every time I hear someone insult a postal worker.

That's a good story. I like the mailman that comes to my house; he's a nice guy, and I imagine he'd probably do the same thing for me. In fact, the whole post office in my small town is staffed by genuinely nice, friendly people and I feel kind of guilty about lumping them in with my other generalities.

However, I've also been into post offices where I really wished I was armed to protect myself from both the patrons and the

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[jonnythan (79727)]

Yeah?

Get FedEx to pick up a letter in White's City, NM and deliver it to Buttfuck Alaska in less than a week for 40 cents.

Ask UPS to deliver some RAM from your home in the middle of nowhere in Vermont to suburban Seattle in two days flat for $3.85.

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[Martin Blank (154261)]

Delivery of a two-pound, 20"x15"x2" package from California to London:

UPS: $66 (2-5 days)
FedEx: $65 (4-5 days)
USPS: $15 (4-6 days)

You can guess who I went with. It took four days to get there.

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[legLess (127550)]

Quoth the poster:

And although they'll only cost $0.37 to start, their price growth will outstrip inflation. When a competing company starts doing the same things with better service and prices, they'll whine that they're losing business and raise prices again.

There's truth to what you say, but not as much as you think. The USPS is required by law to deliver to every address, every day (in some really small places they skip Saturdays, I hear). UPS, FedEx, etc. have to make a profit, which means that

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

Definitely Verisign. The USPS doesn't think it's funny when they accidentally release your property to someone else (see also: sex.com). In fact, rumor has it that having the Postal Inspectors storm your house is not as funny as it sounds (i.e., 30 guys in attack armor carrying assault rifles vs. 5 guys like Cliff from "Cheers").

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[Daetrin (576516)]

My grandfather used to deliver mail back in the 60s or something, and my parents told me that at the time, you did NOT fuck with the Post Office. Don't know if that's more or less true nowdays, although the PR about it doesn't seem as good anymore.

Sounds like...

[Klev (684090)]

Sounds like an opourtunity to charge us. This seems a lot like the door opening for the postal service's charging to send emails. Why else would they be offering to develop this amazing technology? To make our lives better?

Re:Sounds like...

[t0ny (590331)]

The post office proposed offering email as a provided service long ago. But your complain has little merit, because many spam-stopping plans already propose adding a "cost" to email, even if it is a nominal fee such as $.01/message. A corportation would shrug at having to pay $8/day for email, but would a bulk mailer sending millions of messages per hour?

The problem with people complaining about paying is that, for things that are worthwhile, its not about the money. Eventually you will have to pay for something, you are better off spending money on what you want, as opposed to getting what you dont want for free.

Is this the start of it?

[Blaine Hilton (626259)]

Is this how they are going to roll out a national database system? Saying it will help in the fight against spam and forgery? Not that I'm "totally" against such a system, but it seems like they are misrepresenting the true nature of this.

Re:Is this the start of it?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Is this how they are going to roll out a national database system? Saying it will help in the fight against spam and forgery?

Look, anything that can possibly improve the situation that someone picking up my social security number and date of birth and a few other simple facts about me can end up stealing my identity is a good thing. We're increasingly reliant on computers and digital information yet we have no decent national digital signature infrastructure in place. It is a very sad state of affairs when my mother's maiden name can still be expected to be used as some kind of secure authenticator to protect my bank account information.

Re:Is this the start of it?

[Guppy06 (410832)]

You see, unlike certain private businesses [slashdot.org], the USPS takes your privacy a little more seriously, if for no other reason than because they're required to by federal law. When you give them information, being that they are an arm of the federal government (more or less), there is a notice they are required to show you that explicitly spells out what they can and cannot do with your information, who they can and cannot give it to, and under what circumstances.

eBay will give out sellers' information to whomev

But tell me...

[mhore (582354)]

what good is a digital signature verified by the Post Office if you are unable to.......... speak?

Mike.

Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[DaRat (678130)]

Just a comment about the "Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ..." remark.

Have I had mail lost? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes.

But, think about how amazing it is about what the USPS does right. It moves billions of pieces of mail every day, and almost all of it (percentage wise) gets to where it should be going in spite of the fact that not every piece of mail can be automatically routed and multiple people end up looking at it at one point or another. And, in spite of the price increases, I can still send a letter anywhere in the US for 37c and it'll usually get there within a 2-3 days.

Sure, dealling with the post office is a pain occasionally, and they do lose some mail. But, when I think about the scope and scale of what they do right, it does boggle my mind.

Re:Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[jdcook (96434)]

Mod parent up. I love how /. editors make fun of the post office for an almost imperceptible error rate in billions of pieces of mail but cannot even post a hundred stories in a row (I'm guessing) without a dupe or other obvious error.

Re:Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[El (94934)]

Actually, USPS refuses to drive up my driveway to deliver a package, then leaves a postcard in my mail box telling me they attempted delivery. Of course, when I take that postcard down to the post office, they tell me they can't let me have my package because the carrier is still driving around with it... look, if you're not going to bother even checking to see if I'm home, why not just leave the damn package at the post office?

Re:Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[zenyu (248067)]

Actually, USPS refuses to drive up my driveway to deliver a package, then leaves a postcard in my mail box telling me they attempted delivery.

Heh, my mail carrier doesn't even bother to buzz my doorbell, about two feet away from the box. Yet he still says he takes the package with him. What is the point in that? What really annoys me is that my post office arranges their packages by day of arrival instead of address so there is always a huge line, then you get up there and they can't find the package.. th

Re:Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[egburr (141740)]

Strange, my postman walks down my driveway to deliver packages that require a signature or are too large for the mailbox. My driveway is 200 feet long and the center is 15 feet lower than either end, so he literally does have to walk uphill both ways. Despite that, he is not out of breath (I usually am after walking it twice to haul the garbage to the curb) and has had a smile on his face every time.

You might talk to your local postmaster and see if there is some reason he doesn't knock on the door.

Who am I?

[fm6 (162816)]

Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ...

I suppose that was meant humorously, but there's a serious point here. It doesn't matter whether the PDF (they better find some other initials) accurately describes the person it's issued to. You can take it for granted their will be a high fraud rate -- as there already is in the domain registry records.

What's important is that the PDF is unique. Once it becomes clear that a PDF is associated with a spammer, the PDF will become useless, no matter who it claims to belong to.

email anonymity and spam

[I Want GNU! (556631)]

This sounds potentially like a great method to prevent spam or at least to allow verified mail, but it still doesn't sound like a complete solution. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Internet is that it allows people anonymity. If only emails with digital signatures are allowed then anonymous email won't get through. On the other hand, if verified email were possible, it would prevent false positives for spam and Bayesian filters could handle the rest of email. This way emails wouldn't be falsely designated as spam and everything would get through.

Seriously.

[American AC in Paris (230456)]

Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ...

I hear ya there.

The USPS could learn a thing or two about accuracy and error-prevention from Slashdot.

fnord

Re:Seriously.

[DMDx86 (17373)]

If Slashdot ran the post office, you'd receive four copies of the same letter or package, often on the same day.

Not only that, Michael would open your mail, insert spelling mistakes, and write [ed. note - no it isn't] by stuff in your letters

Certificates

[KeyserDK (301544)]

I recieved my official danish digital certificate(x.v509) by getting two pin codes. One via snail mail and the other when I ordered the certificate via the web. Both had to be typed in to recieve the certificate via mail.

Seems pretty secure to me.

The only thing it works for so far is tax stuff, and mail.

Re:Certificates

[NearlyHeadless (110901)]

I recieved my official danish digital certificate(x.v509) by getting two pin codes. One via snail mail and the other when I ordered the certificate via the web. Both had to be typed in to recieve the certificate via mail.

Seems pretty secure to me.

That verifies your snail mail address, not your identity.

Ramifications

[the_pointman (143482)]

The USPS' idea for certified proofing for digital signatures is in the right direction for securing financial transactions, helping to prevent spam (in the case of accepting emails only e-signed from registered people), but initiating such a project will bring the US closer to a National ID card.

By attaching services such as online tax refunds or filings, the public will be /required/ to register with the USPS in order to take advantage of the online filings with the IRS. Sure, but what if people just file in paper? Without a doubt, the government will then ad a fee to paper filings to encourage taxpapers (everyone) to register with the USPS service.

Let me see your papers, please!

Patriot Act Tie In

[Fred IV (587429)]

2.1 Eligibility For a Certificate Authority (CA) to use IPP, the CA must incorporate the U.S. Postal Service In-Person Proofing Policy into their Certificate Policy. Conformance to the Postal policy includes: 1. Use of a Patriot Act compliant database vetting process to gain initial assurance of an applicant's identity before sending the applicant to the Postal Office for IPP.

Yay, more data to shove into the Patriot Act machine. What a bargin!

USPS User Experience

[by Anonymous Coward]

User enters post office. Waits 20 minutes in line. Gets to front of the line.

Agent: (slowly) May I help you?
User: I'd like to get a certified digital ID.
Agent: (slowly) Okay, please go to the back of the room and fill out form 2219. When you're done, please bring it back to the front.
User searches a while
User: Where's the form?!
Agent: (slowly) If it's not there, we're out. You can always call 1-800-ASK-USPS for more information.
User: But they told me to come here! You have to verify my ID!
Agent: (very slowly) I'm sorry, you'll have to speak to the manager. He's gone for the day. You'll have to come back Monday at 10 am.
User: AAAAIIIEEEEEEE!!!!! runs screaming from the post office

Yeah, this will be a big hit.

Like a PGP key signing party--

[ccmay (116316)]

Like a PGP key-signing party -- remember those? -- but without the party, and only a surly union-slug postal clerk instead of dozens of new and interesting techie friends. Too bad it never really caught on except as a way to check your open-source downloads.

I am concerned that what begins as a voluntary initiative will one day become quasi-mandatory, like carrying a driver's license.

-ccm

I need a vacation... Oh! I'm starting one! :-)

[HarveyBirdman (627248)]

The United States Postal Service has announced that it will provide In-Person Proofing

I swear on my grandmother grave that I saw "In-Person Shooting" when I first read it.

A few less FPS games for me, I think. More Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing for a while.

Well, I have a 5-day weekend ahead of me. You all play nice.

Yes!

[fireboy1919 (257783)]

This is just what I've been looking for!
(start playing the sad story music, if you have any - Michael Jackson stuff will work real well here)
You see, I've had sort of an identity crisis - not really sure who I am. The post office can finally change that. They can authenticate me, and authenticate who I am. No more wandering willy-nilly.

(at this point please begin playing some patriotic music to get the full effect of the message)
With the post office as my guide, I will rise to the brink of a better tomorrow and boldly go forth to face my dreams because I am authenticated!

Thankyou, US post office. The world is in your debt.

couple of concerns...

[tx_kanuck (667833)]

1) How well will this work with other authtication techniques? (ie. if other postal systems start this, will there be interoperability? If so, who coordinates this?)

2) How good is the procedure to replace a lost/stolen certificate?

3) What good is this for people not in the US?

4) If someone lives in the US, gets one of these, and then moves, can it still be updated/replaced?

5) I forget the other question.

Granted, I only skimmed the article, so I may have missed the answers, but still....

non-USA email

[innocent_white_lamb (151825)]

Not all email that doesn't originate in the USA is spam. Using this as a spam filter would balkanize Internet email and make it "domestic USA mail only" for US residents, and available internationally only for those who live elsewhere.

But the USPS won't issue the certs, correct?

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

After reading the article (hey! There's a first for everything!), it seems as though the USPS will only be providing official ID verification to 3rd-party CAs who will use it to determine whether they, not USPS, will issue the cert. In other words, the USPS will only be vouching for you to the CA - they won't be authenticating you to the public at large.

Great. Just great. Now I get to deal with the Post Office and Verisign when I want to lock down an SSL site.

Please shoot me.

I hate X.509

[Sloppy (14984)]

Forget this X.509 crap, I want [e-mail] to sign my PGP key!

I hate X.509. It's cumbersome and weird (that extra 'cert request' step), while also being functionally lame (only one signature, and you have to either completely trust it or not). Why anyone would want to use that when there's something so much better available (OpenPGP), is beyond me.

Red Alert!

[twitter (104583)]

A number of top quality private sector business have masterd the technology around the use of secure digital signatures...

Market droid talk. If they are so good why does the post office need to get into it? Other talk about "demand", "unique service opportunity" and trusted computing has my back up. It's all so Microsoft sounding. But that's just the beginning.

They are going to use "comercial database checking", and the databases must be "Patriot Act Compliant". While the commmercial database check looks like coroprate welfare, it the Patriot act part looks like a land grab. What, besides any old G-man clerk having the athority to look at all of your data, constitues Patriot Act Complience?

The authentication method is first class mail. and a file that dissapears in four years. I'm not going to think very hard about all the ways to defruad the post and defeat this system, but mail fraud is still a common problem. The dissapering file is the real clincher. What "top quality private sector bussines" has a patent on DRM OS and has been touting files that expire as a means to "trusted computing"?

Having a certificate athority is good. Using that need as a means to nationalize software, usurp private databases, funnel tax money into private hands and foce everyone to use propriatory software is not good. The system needs to be run on proven free and open standards in a non-revocable manner.

The USPO is going to have to do better than that to win my trust. I've got one Microsoft machine for talking to an old camera and a scanner. I don't let it see the internet because it's so easy to break and own. Any plan that would force me to use software I don't trust for ecommerce is a plan I don't trust or want.

Two years ago, some moron told me that the US government would make it illegal to run anything but Microsoft software. He actually thought this was a good idea and was convinced it would happen. I told him that would violate the first amendment rights to free speech, and effectivly nationalize general purpose computing and such laws were laughably unAmerican. I'm not laughing anymore.

Someone tell me I'm just paranoid, please.

Old News, but Interesting

[shiflett (151538)]

I was actually one of the developers of this project (three years ago), and it is funny to see that they are finally "announcing" it.

The idea is simple, and it is actually a useful service that the USPS has the resources to provide, if they actually go through with it. Whereas SSL only authenticates the server (among other things, of course), the allocations for client authentication in SSL are optional and very rarely used. All the client needs for this is its own digital certificate, just like the server has its certificate.

So, to get an SSL certificate, we (whether we like it or not) trust the various CAs to make certain that they are granted to the rightful owners. When it comes to client certificates, the scope of the problem becomes much larger, because you are authenticating people rather than domains. If you fail to properly identify someone before issuing the digital certificate, the point is lost.

The USPS has post offices all over the US (their only country of concern in this case), and this fact provides the perfect platform for authenticating people. Just as with Passports, you must prove your identity in person before being authenticated.

How do the pieces fit together? Well, it is fairly simple, but it involves a lot of existing systems, some of which are aging. You register online (providing much personal information, including what forms of ID you will be bringing with you). This generates a letter that is sent to your address (verifying your address in the process). You take this letter to the post office, and if you pass the in-person proofing, the clerk scans the barcode on the letter. This scan makes its way back to the system in about 24 hours, and then your digital certificate is generated. An email is sent to let you know, and you can then download it from the Web site after logging in.

At any rate, I still think the general idea is a good one, and this would be a useful service for a lot of people. I hope it is successful.

Don't blame just the USPS, geez

[EvilStein (414640)]

"Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ..."

No, not very funny. Rather clueless. Did you know that the USPS has domestic airlines carrying mail?
I can't even count the times I've found stray (or lost) bags of mail in aircraft. One of my many job functions when I worked for a ground handling company was to make sure that mail for Anchorage actually got *on the right aircraft* and didn't wind up on a flight to Miami. We'd actually check behind the belly toolbox on that old nasty DC-8 looking for mail bags.
Ever seen a 55' truck back up to a DC-6? Yes, folks. Bulk loading 33,000lbs of mail into a friggin DC-6 bound for northern Alaska.

Sure, mail gets lost sometimes, but it's not always the fault of the USPS.

is it ironic

[geekoid (135745)]

that slashdot would slam the USPS for its incredibly rare mistakes?

If the people who ran /. ran the postoffice, my mail would only get handled correctly about 4 out of 10 times. the good noes is, I would regularly get the same package twice.

Hong Kong's SmartID Project does this....

[shri (17709)]

http://www.smartid.gov.hk/en/index.html

and so does Hong Kong Post.

http://www.hongkongpost.gov.hk/product/ecert/typ e/ smartid/index.html

require one of these for a change of address form

[option8 (16509)]

the last (several) times i have moved, I've gone down to the post office, picked up an official postal change of address form, filled it out and mailed it back in.

as far as i can tell (and the USPS may have updated their policy since the last time i moved) there's no ID, or any kind of proof of identity for that matter, involved in filling out a change of address form. that, and no confirmation after the fact that it had been accepted and processed - other than your mail showing up at the new address with a big yellow sticker over the address. i.e. nothing to prevent someone filling out a form for somebody else

in fact, i read several years ago in a book of "dirty tricks and practical jokes" that a fun little prank to pull on someone you don't like was to fill out a change of address form for them - forwarding their mail to an address in another state. another fun one was to send a threatening letter to 1600 pennsylvania ave with their return address. postal inspectors *and* secret service when the prez is in town. fun for the whole family!

now, tell me they've updated this procedure - which used to be done with a simple mail-in form - or else tell me how i'm supposed to trust this same organization as an authority regarding someone's identity.

Illegals ID themselves for jobs, so can this work?

[John Jorsett (171560)]

If we can't screen out millions of illegal aliens who manage to come to the U.S. and present documents that are good enough to let them satisfy the government's requirements to prove to an employer that they are eligible to work in the U.S., how is this going to be better? If the answer is "better documents," how come we aren't requiring those better documents to be presented to the employers?

Hong Kong has it

[lamj (153635)]

Hong Kong Post office is teaming up with the government to offer the same thing, this has been available for over a year now. Refer to this link [hongkongpost.gov.hk].

The Hong Kong Government has recently roll out a renew plan for all citizens to renew their ID card (mandatory, must be on the person at all times). This new ID card is a smart card which also allow storage of digital cert.

Because of this mandatory ID, the cert roll out plan (storage and distribution) is relatively easier than other countries.

Re:great!

[Ever Dubious (686307)]

Actually a division of the US DOD? Bullshit. From the USPS web site:

United States Postal Service

The Post Office Department was transformed into the United States Postal Service, an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States. The mission of the Postal Service remained the same, as stated in Title 39 of the U.S. Code: "The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, e

Re:Uh-huh...

[hbo (62590)]

No, the certificate authority would sign your personal certificate, just like they do now. The USPS would have an arrangement whereby they would prove that you are who the certificate says you are through a visit to your local Post Office. The central certificate repository would be at the CA.

The Big Brother aspect comes in the arrangement between the USPS and the CA. As noted above, the CA would be required to check your identity against a Patriot Act database before passing the request on to the Post Off

Re:Australia Post

[ZenJabba1 (472792)]

Australia Post actually did issue X509 certificates, I still have the floppy disk. I think in the end they issues around 500 certificates because nobody was using them as nobody had the hardware needed to support the backend processing (AP wanted dedicated links in the backend servers to the ROOT cert).

It eventually failed and has never been heard from again. I do remember them sending me a email telling me it was going to be dismantled and I had 12 months more use of my certificate for free.

They also use

Re:Postal Workers

[Sloppy (14984)]

"Sorry, this AK47 is not registered to this user. Please call the Kalashnikov Corporation customer service hotline at 1-800-COMMUNISM and have a credit card ready..."