U.S. Postal Service To Develop 'Intelligent Mail'

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.

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UK mail

[danormsby]

Mail in the UK often bears red dotted bar code that give key info to automated readers on where the letter is supposed to be going. The dots get put there by an OCR reader and saves having to re-OCR everything.

Not sure how you are going to identify the sender AND have postboxes where anyone can post a letter.

Logistics?

[daoine]

Aside from the cost and privacy issues, is this even logistically possible? According to the USPS, they'll have unique identification for every sender and receiver of mail. (Which, will apparently save them $2 billion by not having to forward mis-addressed mail)

Really, if we can't keep Social Security organized, don't know who has entered the country, and allow thousands of people escape paying taxes every year, are we going to be able to keep track of every single person living in the country via the Post Office?

I don't know -- I can't see this being very useful. If I want to track a mailing, I'll use Fed Ex. I just don't see the "consumer demand" for this, and I can't see it being at all useful for making our mail "safer".

Re:Remember folks... eternal vigilance is the pric

[CB-in-Tokyo]

"If we turn lazy and complacent, the price will be our own freedom"

If you live in the US, I think the bulk of that price has already been extracted. Now it is just a matter of tightening the screws, and cleaning up loose ends.

Take a step back and look at everything that has happened over the past few years. From rigged elections to people being held without charges being laid to the Patriot Act just to name a few.

Fortunately the freedom to leave is still available, but I think that is because it is too expensive to build a wall that long.

USPS already has some systems that help track mail

[EriktheGreen]

USPS already has some systems that help track mail, including the one that puts those little bar-code like things at the bottom edge of the envelope (they're more or less translations of zip code information).

Didja know that USPS uses Linux systems to do OCR on address information? It's the only serious use of Linux at USPS, mostly due to anal government service employees who barely managed to finish high school and who can't be fired due to union seniority.

Actually, USPS has been looking into a mail tracking system since just after 9/11 (I worked there on and after 9/11 for a while) and this report will just help them get funding for that system.

Really, this isn't a terribly bad thing. If you think about it, it just verifies what post office the mail came from. The information about the sender is going to be the information that the sender presented at the post office of origin for verification.... to a non-trained government employee who probably could make more cash working at mcdonalds (no bull, I have a great deal of respect for those letter carriers... out in all weather, and most get paid about $20k a year).

I also can't imagine that there will be human checks of the sender information in a lot of cases, since there are drop boxes all over the place for mail, and there's no way they can either remove those or staff them with people.

Yet another easily subvertable federal system meant to make us safer, but really just another way to spend gobs of your tax dollars on things we need less than more prisons and better schools.

Erik

Some people still rely heavily on Snail Mail...

[thung226]

I work for an organization that sends information to over 20k low income families all over the US. One of our biggest complaints here in the office is a family claiming stuff must have been "lost in the mail", so we end up spending thousands of dollars just resending the same information to them throughout the year. This system would help us keep our records up to date and cut our overall mailing costs. Plus, I suspect it might keep people in our program longer and reduce our attrition rates. I'd be curious to find out how many families we lose based solely on the fact that we don't have the right address for them or some Mail center in Arizona or Alaska seems to always 'lose' our mail.

Re:The Old Mail system.

[3terrabyte]

Ordinary citizens have gained a lot on new technology and the possibillity of anonymous communication such as mail through their ISP

What do you mean by this? anonymous emailing through your ISP? Surely you jest. You can trace headers to find out where the email came from. You can send a subpoena to the ISP like the RIAA to get name-address from an IP number. ISP's hold on to your email "forever" even if you "delete" it.

Maybe you're thinking of encrypting an email. Well sure, you could, but you can just as easily encrypt a message in the snail mail you send.

SO I'm a little confused what you mean by anonymous communication through one's ISP!

Re:Now all they need are

[mrsam]

that they can't do anything outside of exactly what they're supposted to do.

My experience shows quite the opposite. They have no clue whatsoever what they're supposed to do.

I went to my post office the other day. I wanted to get a mailbox. First, they told me that they'll send a registered letter to my home address, and that I'll have to bring it back to the post office to prove that I did not give them a fake home address.

So, a few days later I don't get the letter, but a notice to go back to the post office to pick up the letter. Over there I had to sign for the letter, and show my ID. I open the letter, with the original application inside it, but I still can't get my mailbox. No, now those asswipes want to see a utility bill.

So I go back, and come back with my phone bill. No, the telephone bill isn't good enough. They want to see my electric bill. Still no mailbox.

I've had enough by then. I make sure that my middle finger becomes intimately familiar with that asswipe; tell him to go and screw himself; get into my car; drive to another post office four miles away; and show the dude over the same phone bill that wasn't good enough for the first dude. The second dude doesn't ask for anything wlaw, and doesn't try to spin any bullshit with any registered letter, whatsoever. I get a mailbox key five minutes later, right there on the spot.

P.O. already keeps image of each envelope

[mec]

Some more link whoring ...

Postal Theory: Mail Sorter Acted as Mill for Anthrax [ucla.edu]

Read down towards the bottom:

Potentially telltale mail was identified using masses of computer data recorded as each letter entering the highly automated sorting centers is scanned for an address, given identifying bar codes recording its time and place of posting, and sent on its way.

The data include digital images of almost every hand-addressed envelope, which optical scanners cannot easily read, postal officials said.


The big question is: will the post office stop delivering mail that doesn't have a valid return address?

In the time of the Unabomer, the PO stopped delivering mail that weighs over one pound and came from a collection box. Mail that weighs over one pound has to be brought in person to a post office.