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

What about authentication?

[jimhill]

It's interesting that Levy thinks the end of snail mail is in sight when digital means of authentication are rarely used -- when available. Now that Sen. Gregg and his like-minded compatriots have launched another offensive on crypto software, expect the issue to get even more snarled. It takes more than "Sincerely, Jim" at the bottom of an email to make me trust its source.

I thought this was supposed to happen years ago ..

[aliebrah]

Really, the average person doesn't need to be worried about getting anthrax in the mail. I don't think its much of an issue - at least its not for me.

People forget that snail mail is still very important to having an effective communications, as in many cases it can't be beat. The quickest way to get something physical from one place to another (barring courier services) is by mail. To say that the USPS is dead because no one will want to mail stuff is not only premature and unrealistic, but also quite sensationalistic. In most cases, this one especially you can tell when someone is making stuff up to make the headlines rather than writing stuff that actually makes good sense. Having read this article, it makes very little sense at all. As much as I use computers/email, I for one would be majorly pissed if one day I found mail service was no longer there.

People say time and time again the mail is dead. But just look ... its still there and doesn't show any sign of disappearing.

Re:Crude as this sentiment is....

[dhogaza]

Like on the good 'ole USA? (There's no proof thus far that these cases are the result of any external terrorist group. It could well be a good 'ole boy here in the US pissed of at "the libral media's showing Osama bin Laden's videotaped propaganda" or the like).

your reps are all spammed out

[Alien54]

At least that would mean that our representatives in government might start actually reading email.

uh, no.

Simply put the reps are all spammed out. Every single interest group in the country country can send thousands of email to a rep, complete with slightly varied names and subject lines, and content. It is a trivial programing problem to generate sentences and paragraphs out of a database with calibration for education level and other demographics. Any programmer competent in databases could set something like this up.

So the only way reps can verify that the input is legit is if it is postmarked from their district, hand written, etc.

You think you get Junk Mail? multiply what you get by a factor of a thousand or two for snail mail, especially if you live in an important district.

So the odds of them actually reading email are slim and none. Think of them being under a continous DDOS attack for the past 5+ years, if not more. They probably pick out one out of every 100 or 200 or so at random, and use that as a sample of what they get

Re:How crazy is this?

[ergo98]

Someone targets airplanes, and people stop flying. Someone targets mail, and people stop using mail. Is this kind of a response reasonable? There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions which are not necessarily effective, and the economic effects of wholesale eschewment of mail and air travel are pretty widespread.

Yet in other areas people are so incredibly complacent. People will put off travel despite an impossibly remote possibility of being a victim of travel, but they'll happily hop on the local highway without regard for hundreds of 20,000lb transports hurtling down the road at 75mph all around them, any of which could crush them to death in the slightest instant if the driver just flicked the steering wheel the tiniest bit. 41,611 people were killed in automobile accidents alone in 1999 on US roads. 430,700 people died per year between 1990 and 1994 from cigarette smoking alone. It's quite stunning really the fear that the media can drum up when we come to live with enormously costly things like the millions that die every year because of voluntarily choosing to eat Big Macs and other high saturated fat foods.

I'm not saying that dying at the hand to terrorists is comparable to voluntarily undertaken risks, but it does seem that some things are being grossly overstated, such as the risks of anthrax.

Not the end of snailmail, the end of junkmail

[Col. Panic]

Someone is only going to fear opening a package when they don't know who is sending the letter/package. We will still open letters from family and friends since we recognize the return address. Likewise, when we order things by mail we are expecting them to arrive and can be reasonably sure of their safety.

I think the columnist may have an argument when it comes to *unsolicited* snail mail. This may have an impact on public figures who regularly receive unsolicited mail from lots of people, but that could be a positive impact. Right now a written letter to one's Congress-critter is considered more effective than email, but maybe this unfortunate situation will make public officials consider email more legitimate now since they might be reluctant to receive "real" mail.

Re:you're more likely to die

[einhverfr]

Of course, that is exactly the danger from cutanious (sp?) anthrax-- the infected paper-cut.

I have argued that disasterous bioterrorism is truly prohibitive. This current attack is not very effective at causing large numbers of deaths BUT it is bisible and makes people very nervous. If they wanted to kill people, explosives would be much better weapons, but that is not their goal. Instead it is to intimidate many people and make them FEAR death. And to this end, this little stunt may be very infected indeed. This is why lovebug, et. al. have not caused people to switch from Outlook, but this scare might impact the USPS-- the fear is not purportionate to the risk (I still consider using Outlook to be a bigger risk than snail mail).

But although email is already my primary means of written communication, there are some times when it is not as good as an old-fassioned letter. So I am not terribly concerned except to consider snailmail to be as dangerious as email...

Re:you're more likely to die

[cwhicks]

Yes. This is the stupidest premise I've heard in a while. First off, only the people who send mail can switch to email, and why would someone sending antrax want to switch? Secondly, how would switching help unless companies say they will only accept email, and no more snail mail. That sounds like a business ending decision. There is a large amount of stuff sent between businesses that is much more conveniently done through snail mail. Every business is going to buy scanners, have everyone get their electronic signature, purchase and instruct everyone in encryption, etc? All this because four, count em, four companies have received antrax email? How many companies have received mail bombs before this? And they still use mail? Wow!
My last question is why was this article posted to begin with?