Did you catch the NY Times story this week about your friendly local post office?
You might be surprised by this.
“”…Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year.
Here’s a link to the Times story (“U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement“).
And here’s the explanation of the program in a nutshell, again from the NYT.
The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.
“In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be, ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”
From a story on GovernmentExecutive.com:
That’s pretty much what the NSA can find through digital tracking, as explained here, but the mail surveillance program is even worse from a privacy advocates standpoint because there is zero oversight. “You just fill out a form,” Wedick explains. The U.S. Postal Service grants or denies the request withoutany judicial overview — there’s not even a secret court involved. And it’s all okay, say courts, because people shouldn’t expect privacy for the outside of their mail. Which: sure, anyone can look at the outside of a given envelope. But, is that the same thing as someone rifling through our mail every single day? Apparently.
One reader called this issue to my attention in an email:
I was extremely . . . I can’t even find the right word to describe it, bothered, upset, disillusioned, but more than that . . . to find out that the U.S. has been spying on residents for years.
Another friend wrote:
on our warrants for first class mail
no name
only a number
we respect your privacy
Here’s a quote that reflects how the postal service would like to think of itself, rather than as a network of creepy government snoops. It is carved in the building that formerly served as the Washington D.C. post office, now the site of the National Postal Museum.
Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common LifeCarrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations.
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The Postal Service is in deep financial trouble. It wants to stop Saturday delivery, it closes post offices, it wants to raise stamp prices yet the clowns have the resources for this?
And in the old days surveillance was about stopping something from happening. Now this system is about capturing the bad guys after law enforcement has failed to protect. It is for the convenience of law enforcement, not for public safety.
America goes through periods of national paranoia when we go overboard when faced with a perceived or real threat. Sad that we seem to be living in one now. I had hoped for better.
I’m also wondering who bears the cost of this. If the it’s part of doing business for the USPS, that might partly explain its financial difficulties.
Of course, this brings up the obvious question of whether the government is also getting all the package delivery info from FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.
of late, i am concluding “paranoia” is not a fair description of one of America’s core problems.
i think the word “guilt” is much more accurate.
Why guilt? People do extreme things when they are afraid. They may feel guilty afterwards but I am not sure how guilt would allow the creation of a new secret court that almost parallels the Supremes (according to NYT today) or spying on all of us.
why?
summary: America has a Guilt Culture. the country was founded upon it, thanks to christianity. you do not need to know much about basic American history to know this.
every time America invests in legal investigation and enforcement, someone freaks out. the boy has cried “wolf” way, way, way too many times and the slope is always “slippery”. if the slope gets any more slippery, we may no longer need shoes. paranoia is a medical problem that only a few people suffer from.
so why do so many people in America freak out about new legal investigation and enforcement, in each and every form? i think “guilt” makes much more sense. the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) gave birth to American culture. We are a Guilt Culture. cultural impacts can remain for centuries.
http://books.google.com/books?id=SaFdpGdjvtoC&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285#v=onepage&q&f=false
paranoia is a medical problem; it is NOT a social explanation. if you cannot understand this, i am not explaining again.
I find this terribly upsetting. It is so wrong for our government to do this.
Here’s a biz notion. Why not print a print a stick-on label with the words:
“Ain’t Got No Ricin.”
Or envelope paper that is unphotographable, yielding only blank or blackened images.
I *like* the idea.