U.S. Postal Service To Develop 'Intelligent Mail' 345
securitas writes "The President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service's final report (PDF) has recommended that the USPS and the Department of Homeland Security develop sender identification technology for all U.S. mail. The commission said Intelligent Mail could bolster security and let consumers track the progress of all mail they send, which has been a top consumer demand in surveys. The report released July 31 reads, "Each piece of Intelligent Mail will carry a
unique, machine-readable barcode (or other indicia) that will
identify, at a minimum, the sender, the destination, and the class
of mail... Intelligent Mail will allow the
real-time tracking of individual mail pieces." Privacy advocates like the EFF and Center for Democracy & Technology are understandably concerned. The Final Recommendations are available in PDF format. More at Direct Marketers News and pro-privacy/civil liberties magazine Counterpunch."
Jamie adds: This confuses me, because I read a news story in late 2001 which matter-of-factly explained that authorities would be contacting recipients of letters which went through a particular post office around the same time as an anthrax envelope. The implication, which I haven't seen any discussion of then or since, is that records are kept of every letter's travels through every post office. Anyone know anything about that?
Update:
mec does.
Big brother going postal? (Score:2, Insightful)
how would this be possible? I assumed they were expecting recipients to get in touch with them.
Inconvenience is overwhelming (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember folks... eternal vigilance is the price.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we turn lazy and complacent, the price will be our own freedom.
tracking every peice of mail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now all they need are (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:UK mail (Score:5, Insightful)
13 unions (Score:2, Insightful)
management is also a serious problem. he was telling me that when a circumstance that requires a manager comes up, they all hide. when its over, they come out. ridiculous.
So what? Oh, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
From page xvii of the report:
"Intelligent Mail could allow the Postal Service to permit mail-tracking and other in-demand services via a robust website..."
So it seems like they're going the UPS/FedEx route, and making it a useful tool for users of the postal system.
However, later on in the report (pp. 147-148):
"Intelligent Mail's Security Applications Should be Aggressively Pursued"
"Requiring all mail to identify its sender would likely have a negligible impact on most users...[they] would consider such a requirement a relatively modest concession to ensure their safety"
They're using the same flawed argument that they used in many post-9/11 dealings, including the Patriot Act. Great.
"consumer demand" (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, when they say "consumer demand" they're really talking about businesses' demands, but calling it "consumer demand" makes it look less like a privacy issue.
Re:RFID (Score:3, Insightful)
There are privacy concerns, but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's look at a certain detail and some historical fact:
The information meant to be encoded isn't anything that is not already available on the front of the envelope.
The USPS has a history of telling the government to go fuck itself when the government says "we want to do <some privacy violating activity>". For example, the Postal Service said "no" strongly to the government's request to inspect packages and have the USPS engage in TIPS. (Anyone care to fill int the details here?)
Yes, there's plenty of ways this system could be abused. But when it comes to the USPS, I would say not likely.
I am a US Postal Employee (Score:5, Insightful)
How the badly addressed mail process works in short:
Mail is brought to the General Mail Facility, where it is run through machines that attempt to read the addresses. The software isn't perfect, quite a few aren't readable to it. The digital image is sent to various Remote Encoding Sites in which people (like me) try to decipher the addresses and input them properly. The information is sent back to the GMF, barcode is printed on, and the piece goes its way. If we cannot decipher it, the image gets rejected, and the mailpiece goes to manual sorting.
Why it takes so long sometimes
A tremendous amount of people do not know how to address. They do not include directionals. They do not include street suffixes. Transposition of zip codes, or downright incorrect ones in contrast to the city destination. If you want your mail to get somewhere fast, place a Zip+4 and make sure it is correct. That is the first number we look at.
Directionals and suffixes are important. An especially frustrating case is the Kansas City metro area. Where there can be a 31st Street, Place, Avenue, Road, Circle, Court, Terrace. On top of that, North/South/East/West.
Abbreviation of streets and cities is another frustrating issue. I work in Wichita, KS. We receive images from facilities in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and New York. Some street in Minneapolis with a long name that is routinely abbreviated by residents is foreign to those 800 miles away. Please write the street in full.
Zip Codes. These are very important. The computers read these first. We read these first. An irritating tendancy for people in the northeast is to drop off the 0 in their 5 digit zips. This is especially true in Connecticut. Ever wonder why sometimes it really takes 7-9 days for something to go across town? Because its getting sent to Kansas City and run through the system before it gets straightened out and sent back.
Lastly, bad handwriting. Try to be careful about 5 and S, Zero and O, and 9 and 4.
Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Boggle.
I am waiting for the moment when it occurs to these people that it's too easy to use the USA road system for criminal or terrorist activity. Or just sidewalks, for that matter.
Thank god that they don't have any idea that computer networks exist. If they are that apprehensive about a postal system, just imagine the hysterics they'll have when they discover the Internet...
Re:RFID (Score:3, Insightful)
That would mean no more stamps from a vending machine, and probably no more stamps from the convenience store (since the barcode-printing setup would probably be too expensive/cumbersome to install).
Also, if there is indeed some kind of identification database for all users, then you are putting your trust in the person checking ID. What if Joe AlQueda Sleeper works at the USPS, or the convenience store that does have a system? He could use fake IDs to generate stamps, or circumvent the trust in other ways.
Finally, what about international mail destined for the US? I'm Canadian
My opinion: if this is voluntary, it will fail because no one will want the hassle (or the cost will go up too much). If it is mandatory, it will fail miserably for the same reasons.
Time to buy stock in UPS or Fedex.
Re:It's not quite that bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly how is this going to work? No more corner mail boxes? You now have to go to the post office and present an ID to mail a letter? Or you have to present an ID to get stamps encoded with a particular bar code? No more stamp machines, and it's illegal to loan a stamp to your neighbor?
I routinely mail envelopes with no return address. If I do this in the future, am I going to be a criminal?
Re:Vigilance in Security is in Dire Need (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Ben would dissagree with you. [pbs.org]
Re:It's not quite that bad (Score:1, Insightful)
At best you can expect such a system to raise first-class postage rates dramatically.
Currently we can send mail anonymously, and we would presumably lose that ability. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Certainly anonymous mail can be abused. The concensus seems to be that anonymous communication is more beneficial than harmful to society. Is it good, then, to give up yet another medium for anonymous communication?
Then again, mail isn't purely a medium of communication. It can be used to communicate, but it also can be used to transport physical goods... or as a means of attack (letter bombs, biological agents, etc.).
Even with sender identification, I suppose someone could (unless it were deemed illegal) set up an "anonymous message relay" service. Then again, as they would be deliberately circumventing source identification for mail they sent, they might take on liability for what gets sent. The service would thus have to exert a certain amount of control over what they send; at a minimum, they'd want to make sure it was just communication (and not anthrax). Of cousre, now that they're examining what they're sending, they take on more liability, and so they might have to filter out harmful/illegal content, shooting the whole purpose of the system in the foot...
So now you'll have to show ID (Score:2, Insightful)
Or to subscribe to a "subversive" newsletter?
Everything going to your house will be machine readable which
means that machines WILL read who gets what and store that information in a database.
Admiral P0intyhead is having wet dreams over this. TIA dead?? Think again.
They just keep throwing all these schemes out, like trolling.
They see who squeals, how many squeal and how loud.
After awhile people get numb to all the numbskull schemes and
they just begin to ignore them. That's when they quietly implement them..
Watch for some doubleplusgood input on this idea from Professor Warwick..
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
EXACTLY. You hit the nail on the head.
Seriously, look at it this way - I need you to take these pieces of paper, deliver them across the country, in less than a week, to Upper Moosejaw, Montana. My uncle Steve's house.
He lives at the end of a dirt road, somewhere. I think. Past the shell station, on the left?
So, yeah. To do this, I'll give you $.37.
Hey, I consider that a deal. =)
Re:I am a US Postal Employee (Score:5, Insightful)
What about kiosks at post ofices where you can enter an address and it either asks for clarification (did you mean Main Street or Main Boulevard? Is is South Main Street or North Main Street) or gives you the zip+5
Re:I am a US Postal Employee (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the US postal office has access to lists of people and their addresses--if someone writes "1234 31st Street" instead of "1234 31st Avenue", then that should be easy to correct since there is unlikely to be a "Peter Clark" living at both places.
Maybe the US postal system should advise cities to change street names, or maybe it should introduce something more mnemonic and redundant than ZIP codes. Using a meaningless nine digit sequence of numbers to help route mail has to be one of the more stupid decisions; even phone numbers have mnemonics, and at least with phone numbers, you get immediate feedback when you transpose two digits.
It's easy to blame the user, but the postal system has to work for customers, not the other way around. People do transpose digits, they do write "5" and "S" indistinguishably, and that just isn't going to change.