Anthrax To Kill Snail Mail

omnirealm writes "Steven Levy over at NBC expressed his opinion that the new anthrax thread in our snail-mail is going to be a major catalyst to a general switch to e-mail as the primary means of written communication."

Comments

you're more likely to die

[mj6798]

from an infected paper cut. Pardon me while I'm not worried. And until E-mail gets the same legal standing as snail mail (complete with legally recognized notarization, authentication, and proof of delivery) we can't replace snail mail.

Mail beats Email

[maggard]

There a couple of serious impediments to abolishing mail.

1. Universal penetration. Everyone in the USA has a postal address. Park benches are legitimate delivery addresses (yes - tested in court.) Only a fraction of the population has email or will likely have such in the near future.
2. Universal transmission. I can send a postal letter around the world and assume that the recipient will be able to recieve it. From major world capitols to off-the-map slums postal service has a reasonably good tradition of getting through. Email again requires that the recipient haave the same or some alternative last-mile system - not at all typical.
3. There are no good address-lookup or general-delivery mechanisms for email. If I want to contact Somebody at BigCorp I can look up BigCorp's address and send a letter to Somebody there, it'll generally get manually routed properly. If I know the town Somebody lives in I can often simply look them up in a ubiquitious phonebook or online and assuming they're listed and have a sufficiently unique name I've got their address. There are some services that attempt to provide this for email but they're mostly useless.
4. There's a large body of law concerning the privacy of letters, the delivery of such, etc. This is NOT the case for email. Frankly I trust the folks of the USPS to transport my mail securely & reliably far more then I do the monkeys at my ISP and the servers between me & my email's destination.
5. While there are encryption and authenticaion mechanisms for email they're about useless as far as the general population or even most businesses are concerned. Postal mail has no authentication but it does generally get delivered to the right place securely.
6. Most postal addresses are good for both letters & package deliveries, neither of which is true for email.
7. Postal mail is free to recieve and only costs the sender some change. Email requires either a computer system and ISP or access to a public facility offering this.
8. Courts don't recognize email as a delivery mechanism and certianly not for material that must be signed for.

   Frankly with 1 case of transmission of anthrax by postal mail I think the whole topic is foolish and a sad attempt by a columnist to get some attention.

Forms of snail Mail that won't go away

[Picass0]

No matter how much you may think mail sent to you on dead trees is outdated, there are reasons the old fashoined mail is not going away for a good long time.

• Postal mail creates jobs
• packages - What's the point in all this e-commerce if nobody has anything delivered anymore?
• Utility Bills - Until some laws are changed you must be provided with an invoice for your purchase and written notification of money owed.
• Taxes - Like anything done by the government, this ones going to be done the old world way for a long time.
• Books and periodicals - Some people (myself included) prefer to read anything of great length on paper. Also there is a certain pride in owning a handsome book, admiring the cover as you put it away on a shelf, where you will never touch it again.
• registered mail - any sort of mail that requires a signature is coming to you the old fashioned way. I know, there's a million technical solutions that would make this work as digital, but your written signature is an important legal tool that people will continue to hit you over the head with forever.

If the day comes when the government says snail mail is going away, watch out. If you think Uncle Sam has opinions about your computer and the software you run now, wait until you see the regulations that will be imposed on email.

One thing that may happen as fallout is small business may get out of the private delivery business. The mail is now going to need to be x-rayed and electronically sniffed. Business such as a Mial Box Express or Joe's overnight delivery are not going to have money for the new array of equiptment that they will be told they must own.

The things that will work to reduce the amount of snail mail - Mail is about to become slower and less reliable. When a pathogen is discovered in the mail, any parcels that may have physically contacted it will need to be destroyed.

People are now uneasy to open a package or parcel they were not expecting. This will make it less likely for advertisements to continue to be sent via mail. Expect to see an increase in Spam, and a relaxation in laws that control it.

Re:I'm sick of this anthrax bullshit.....

[dgroskind]

The fact of the matter is that biological and chemical weapons just aren't practical.

In fact, there has already been a successful biological attack on American soil. It was carried out in 1984 by a bunch of amateurs, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who poisoned over 700 people with botulism that they spread on salad bars in Oregon.

The 9/11 terrorists have shown themselves to be resourceful, if not practical, and ruthless enough to use biological weapons. One could have once argued, with equal logic, that hijacking airliners and crashing them into skyscrapers "was just not practical".

If news reports are to be believed, the U.S. mail has already proved to be viable way of spreading two different kinds of anthrax. The only constraint of using the mail is the thousands of dollars involved in postage for a mass mailing.

It's much cheaper, easier and kills a lot more people to just set off a bomb in some building.

On a cost per thousand basis, there's nothing cheaper than biological weapons, particularly if you use a contageous one like smallpox, as the article you cite suggests at the end. The writer of that article seems to think the fact that the terrorists themselves might be at risk is a deterent.

Although there may be some technological hurdles, the payoff both in terms of casualties and creating terror is unbeatable.

If people are complacent about the threat of biological terrorism, the terrorists have already overcome their biggest obstacle.

Re:What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[budgenator]

I was an NBC, Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Defense NCO before I retired so here goes. Note I don't know your actual needs, threat levels ect. so your milage may vary, these are My own opinions and don't reflect any org's official policies, this is not intended to be authorative info so do your own research ect.

• Spores are used because they are more hardy than active bacteria, basicaly spores are desicated bacteria. That's why 70 percent alcohol is used to disinfect stronger alcohol would dryout the bacteria and actualy make them harder to kill (anthrax spores remain viable for as long as a half century)
• To get the spores, you need to grow the bacteria, use generaly use agar, beef brooth or something simmilar (I'm not sure what you would use for anthrax, but it can't be that hard to find out)
• once you get the bacteria grown, you dry out the culture media, maybe freeze-dry or something now you have a very concetrated source of bacteria spores. typicaly this is powdered and has a color similar to the culture media a brown, tan or dried blood color depending on the original culture media
• dilute the concentrated spore powder with a carrier like talcum powder to an appropriate working strength
• dust the carrier with the powder and deliver

To defend against this:

1. publish a policy that all mail to your organisation maybe open in the mail room, set up so a random number of pieces are checked, and anything suspicious.
2. open the mail in an isolation enviroment, look at OSHA's Bloodborne pathogens standard for guidelines on doing this
3. watch-out for powders, things that are fluorecent, maybe consider spraying with luminal to detect blood, unexpected arivials or thing that are out of character; why would you get porno pics in your biz mail ect.
4. Still unsure consider using ethylene-oxide sterilization of the mail

Actualy considering the threat from natural stuff like hepitius-B Aids, and even cold-flu viruses, these proceedures may actualy save lost time expenses from natural illnesses too.

Personaly I consider that mail to people in your distribution channel to be at higher risk than other employees, because they handle thing that are in turn redistributed to others. Given the long incubation times between contact and symptoms for most things, a problem here would spread long before any one would know there is a problem. Its not that hard to get your janitor to put disinfectants in his cleaning solutions, use vacuumes with HEPA filtrations ect.

I'm a dental technician now and we have to recieve bio-hazardous material routinely and follow the osha standards at work, the result is I always catch my cold from the wife and kids first! this stuff works. If your org expereinces a lot of absenteeism due to illness, infection control training may actualy be profitable due to reduced absentee expenses