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

er... no...

[Wakko Warner]

I thought the 34-cent stamp took care of that pretty well.

I'm not exactly afraid of getting Anthrax in the mail.

- A.P.

What about representatives

[joshtimmons]

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

Re:What about representatives

[spudnic]

...or just have a lot more free time on their hands!

Re:What about representatives

[xmedar]

No, they have assistants that open their mail for them, OTOH what with the economy downturn, if it continues there would be a healthy market for assistants to open your mail, and that would negate the layoffs, you might even reach full employment in the US. If it was me, I'd be more enclined to hit the distribution centres for major companies, imagine if you infected even one days supply of McDonalds buns with anthrax, or if you want to hit the "intellectual elite" just spread it over books in Amazons US warehouse operations. The fact is who ever is sending it one letter at a time obviously doesnt have enough brain cells to figure out how to use the existing distribution mechanisms of society to do the job.

Re:What about representatives

[xmedar]

On second thoughts someone could infect a factory where air conditioner filters are made, that would be even more effective at killing the general population and would be very hard to detect and rectify.

Re:What about representatives

[dj_flux]

The fact is who ever is sending it one letter at a time obviously doesn't have enough brain cells to figure out how to use the existing distribution mechanisms of society to do the job.

Actually, the goal of terrorism is to get draw attention to the cause that the terrorists support, not kill large numbers of people. What better way to get massive media coverage than sending bio weapons to high profile media centers? They could send them to government officials, or even you or I, but the gov't. would most likely sweep that right under the rug to avoid mass hysteria. Hit the media themselves, and you're guaranteed to get a huge media response. It's the same chillingly efficient and minimalist logic behind the WTC attacks. Low tech, low investment, high concept - virtually impossible to detect before it's too late.

Re:What about representatives

[cloudmaster]

Bah, I just changed my A/C filter for the first time in over a year, and it looks like it needed changed before I moved in. That Anthrax would belong dead before I got it.

I still wish someone would send me a copy of Anthrax's "Attack of the Killer B's", though, or perhaps "Return of the Killer A's", as I don't yet have those two albums... (yes, "Keep it in the Family" keeps running through my head whenever a new Anthrax infection shows up).

Re:What about representatives

[Tassach]

Actually, the goal of terrorism is to get draw attention to the cause that the terrorists support, not kill large numbers of people.

Actually, (IIRC) according to traditional (Marxist) doctrine, the primary goal of terrorism is to undermine the public's faith in (and support of) the target government, thereby paving the way for revolution. The desired outcome of a terrorist act is to force the target government to pass ill-considered, repressive laws.

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.

Re:you're more likely to die

[Tooky]

Besides, the digital divide really is too big! Even within the Western World, let alone when you consider international communication! I'm sure there'd be some pretty pissed off people if they couldn't get a letter/postcard from their friends/family in some of the less priveleged parts of the world, where the postal service is slow but the only real means of communication.

Personally, I still use real letters for the personal touch, and I love to recieve a really nice letter from someone I don't see very often. There's jst something special about a letter, its something people take time over and put a bit of effort into. Emails are just too easy, people reel them off all the time!

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?

Re:you're more likely to die

[spudnic]

Not only that, but are people going to stop using UPS and FedEx also? Is their some law stating that you can only send antrax via the "official" carrier (ie, USPS)?

Re:you're more likely to die

[Raunchola]

Hi! How are you? I send you this anthrax in order to have your advice.

See you later. Thanks.

Re:you're more likely to die

[evilviper]

It wouldn't be all the difficult to have guaranteed authentication.

If Yahoo Mail PGP Signed all of it's outgoing mail, then for once we'd know for a fact that a e-mail did in-fact come from that yahoo mail account. But there's no real money in it for them. Another service must do it, and when they see their market-share dropping because of their lack of that feature, they'll suddenly be very interested in what the people want.

Re:you're more likely to die

[Kanasta]

I don't know about how legal snail mail is, but at work we use email for customer authorisations for us to go ahead with work, do changes, have production outages for upgrades, and charge them lots of money.

So I guess it must be good enough for most ppl.

Re:you're more likely to die

[evilviper]

No, what the IP address tells you is that it MIGHT have come from yahoo, OR that the person that sent it is good at forging headers. PGP is much harder to falsify.

Re:you're more likely to die

[rark]

okay, sending something that is likely to *kill* you is possible (though unlikely) with snail-mail and not with email (unless they perfected that 'exploding monitor' virus recently and it hasn't hit /. yet ;) )

other than that, I'm inclined to agree about the hysteria.

Hmm....

[s88]

Can someone help me, im trying to find out how to send a "written" letter using email?

Scott

Re:Hmm....

[thilmony]

How's this?

http://www.thilmony.com/duh/duh.jpg

I would email it to you, but I don't have your email address. Should I print it and snail mail it to you?

Re:Hmm....

[spudnic]

No, because it's far too easy for someone to do this:

http://home.jam.rr.com/netadmin/duh2.html

What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[Sydney Weidman]

I thought they were using powder...

Re:What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[omnirealm]

I meant to type "threat." It's this strange curse, I guess. No matter how hard I try, typo's always seem to slip through...

Re:What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[leviramsey]

Something that Scott Ian wears?

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

Re:What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[budgenator]

surgical instruments get 4000 cGy (RADS), from Co60. I suppose that they test against bacteria that are highly rad resistant. Steam sterilization is test against a bacteria that will not eve grow untill it get to 140 degrees

Re:What is an "Anthrax thread"?

[prizog]

AIDS via mail is not a threat - the virus is not hardy enough to survive outside the body for very long, and it can only be transmitted through bodily fluids.

As Norm MacDonald used to say...

[Tony Shepps]

"Read this, and other stories, in this month's edition of 'Duh' magazine."

Could be a good thing.

[kmcmartin]

In the interest of authentication, perhaps this would be a good thing. If more people used digital signatures, more people would likely find it easier to begin using encryption as well. NAI might be kicking themselves over selling off its PGP division after all. How do you know if the bill you got by email is really from your VISA company, and not from Evil Eve the Eavesdropper?

Most government officials would likely right this off as paranoia, and unnecessary because *nobody* would EVER want to wiretap its citizens and steal their credit card information.

Re:Could be a good thing.

[LinuxHam]

+1, Insightful if I had it.

I never really thought about it, but imagine a business sending a package and printing out a barcode to digitally sign the package with an MD5 of the source and destination addresses. Then when the post office recieves the package, a laser scan of the barcode and visual inspection of the sending and destination address will allow them to accept or reject packages.

Hell, I think they should already reject packages that have way too much postage and weren't dropped off at a post office, especially those without a return address.

Re:Could be a good thing.

[newbiescum]

What stops a person from putting a fake return address now versus having no return address?

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.

Re:What about authentication?

[morcheeba]

Actually, regular old mail has some pretty darn good authentication. The FBI didn't have much on the unabomber until they compared the DNA from the saliva on the back of a stamp to David Kaczynski's DNA, and verified his fears that his brother Ted may be the guilty one. That's a lot stronger evidence (and much harder to deny) than an ill-placed private key. Of course, this authentication is usually just restricted to law enforcement...

Re:What about authentication?

[xmedar]

Thats why I use a wet sponge and wear gloves whenI mail my...err.. never mind...

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.

With all the talk of a new police state.....

[ainsoph]

You would think that the FBI would do a lot better than this with regards to the Anthrax "crisis".

I think it is pretty damn scary that they can ignore something like this for as long as they did.

FBI did not test suspect NBC package for 2 weeks


NEW YORK: The FBI failed to test the suspicious powder sent to an NBC employee in New York for two weeks and it was a private doctor who raised the alarm over the new case of anthrax, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The report said that the FBI was notified about the powder on September 25, picked it up a day later but did not do any laboratory tests on the powder or take skin samples from the NBC employee who handled the package.

The report said that it was only after the NBC staffer - identified as 38-year-old Erin O' Connor - developed a sore on her chest, visited several doctors and was diagnosed with skin anthrax that the powder was tested.

The powder was eventually found to be negative. New York FBI chief Barry Mawn said that it was "unfortunate" the tests were not conducted immediately. Mawn said that the FBI had investigated dozens of suspicious substances since the September 11 terrorist attacks.


Unfortunate, yes but for the first few days that this was coming up they really tried to downplay it like it was not going on. On 'Politically Incorrect' a replublican strategist said they were thinking of suing CNN for falsly creating a Anthrax scare.

Doesnt look false to me.

Re:With all the talk of a new police state.....

[Picass0]

You might consider that the FBI (especially in the NYC area) has alot to do right now. Ever since 9-11 the FBI has been charged by the President with the task of prevention of further attacks. I imagine the FBI is spread thin between the "Ground Zero" investigation, the hunt for evidence to link a state to these acts, and the pursuit of protecting the public from further attack.

Yes, 2 weeks is a long time, but The Sun employee who died in Florida was the wake up call that made everyone start looking for Anthrax in the mail. That was last weekend when he died.

Re:With all the talk of a new police state.....

[Picass0]

We have yet to respond specifically to the Anthrax attacks. At the time, the Feds have not officially linked the Anthrax to terrorism.

We are bombing as a respose to the Taliban's failure to meet the demands of the US as issued by President Bush on 9-20.

Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over all leaders of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization to U.S. authorities, close its training camps in the country and surrender "every terrorist and every person in their support structure" to appropriate authorities. Also the US would have unconditionion rights to inpects training camps to insure they were longer in operation. He said the demands were not open to negotiation or discussion.

Re:With all the talk of a new police state.....

[markmoss]

they didn't test it for two weeks, well, my question is why would two weeks matter? Why would Anthrax have completely disappeared in that small amount of time? Anthrax spores are still potent after two _decades_, but that isn't the point. By delaying, the FBI risked the lives of everyone in that office.

If the terrorists had been competent at preparing the spores (making a fine enough powder to get into the lungs, instead of just infecting the skin), prompt testing would have been a matter of life and death. Inhaled anthrax can be treated -- if you get massive shots of antibiotics soon after being exposed. If you wait until you get sick, it's too late: death rates are at least 99%. Given the Florida incident, any suspicious letter should be immediately tested for anthrax, and if positive then anyone who might have breathed in a bit of the powder should start maximum-strength antibiotic injections immediately.

Of course, if your agency's primary goal is to grab headlines rather than protect the citizens, then you can wait until you've got a room full of corpses. It doesn't affect the forensic evidence, and the headlines are bigger. But that doesn't describe any agency of our gov't, does it? ;-)

Hysteria

[Bud Dwyer]

Why should we let terrorists change the way we do business? Isn't that exactly what we don't want?

So far, we have reports of three letters supposedly laced with Anthrax. One death has resulted, and no more deaths seem likely. These are hardly numbers warranting an end to snail mail.

The news media seriously needs to stop trying to incite hysteria in the American public.

Snail mail won't be entirely lost

[ruszka]

While many people may have to switch to e-mail if this anthrax scare continues, I doubt it'll completely kill snail mail.. People are sentimental, or at least I am. I love receiving handwritten letters from my friends and family.. not to mention photos I can hold in my hand and hang on my wall.. e-mail won't replace this for me..

Great...

[Russ Steffen]

Great. I'm looking forward to a whole Inbox full of "I send you this anthrax to have your advice...".

Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[falloutboy]

As much as anything under the heading of "biological warfare" is scary, the idea of getting anthrax doesn't send me into a fit of panic.

I found a bunch of interesting and reassuring information on Heathlinkusa.com.

The fact is, there exists both a cure for anthrax and even a vaccine. There's an article on ABCNews that explains how anthrax works, and that if caught early enough, it can be treated with penicillin.

My theory is that the anthrax infections we've been reading about are not the responsibility of terrorists, but just some nutcase somewhere in the country who is trying to scare the hell out of everyone, although I cannot fathom why.

Re:Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[jallen02]

The "so called" vaccine is really just a toxin they pump into your body that kills the bacteria. Its not a true vaccine in the regular sense. You can't really vaccinate (in the traditional sense) against bacteria.

The affects of the "vaccine" are debatable, I know people who left the military (dishonorable discharge) over not taking an antrax vaccine. It also involves a series of shots over several weeks followed by a shot every year to keep the toxins up in your body. Cure worse than disease?

Anthrax is anthrax, if you happen to breath it you die.

You won't really know you have it until your dead.

Another intersting fact that should bother everyone here some... The case of inhaled anthrax is the first documented case of anthrax in the last 25 YEARS

Not just here, anywhere. Of course now everyone will be looking for it so cutaneous may get identified more readily but still... 25 years and not one inhaled case and all of this sudden three cases in two completely different geographical regions?

A letter sent to microsoft with Anthrax?

No I doubt anyones gonna send me anthrax, and no im not worried about anyone using anthrax to kill people

Anthrax is now popularized in the media, there are scarier things out there than anthrax.

Jeremy

Re:Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[dachshund]

The fact is, there exists both a cure for anthrax and even a vaccine. There's an article on ABCNews [204.202.137.111] that explains how anthrax works, and that if caught early enough, it can be treated with penicillin.

The vaccine is currently reserved for US Military personnel. The company that produces it isn't even capable of meeting the military's needs. Plus, there are a lot of fears about the side effects; some people think it's at least partially responsible for Gulf War Syndrome.

Pulmonary Anthrax can be treated with antibiotics up to a point. After serious symptoms develop, antibiotics aren't particularly effective. Treating the disease requires knowing that you've been exposed (or may have been exposed), then getting medicated ASAP. In a serious attack, there's no guarantee that these things could happen quickly enough to avoid a good number of deaths.

My theory is that the anthrax infections we've been reading about are not the responsibility of terrorists, but just some nutcase somewhere in the country who is trying to scare the hell out of everyone

It's a good theory. But it's still scary to think that there's somebody in the country who's a) got Anthrax, and b) is willing to use it on innocent people. It's not a huge step from there to releasing it in a public place. At this point, our best hope is that they don't have a good mix of the stuff.

Re:Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[einhverfr]

As much as anything under the heading of "biological warfare" is scary, the idea of getting anthrax doesn't send me into a fit of panic.

Inhaled or ingested anthrax is not pretty or very treatable. However, if contracted through the skin, it is relatively easy to treat.

The thing is it is not very contagious. Therefore, it is not the "good weapon" that you speak of because the target area is so small. How many unsuccessful attempts to infect people with Anthrax were there that we don't know about? Probably a very large number.

However, it is not destruction or death but fear that these people want to provoke. Anthrax IS a good tool for that because it is a boogey-man.

Re:Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[xmedar]

Thats why the British Government tested on an island of Scotland during WWII, see here

From the article -

Despite attempts to disinfect Gruinard Island, the spores left by the experiments kept the island in quarantine for 48 years.

The final WW II report on the Gruinard Island tests suggested anthrax could be used to render cities uninhabitable "for generations".

Re:Anthrax: Not really a good weapon anyway

[unitron]

Some of the hijackers went to a strip club the night before. When your religion basically tells you "Don't think about sex." chances are that that will result in a lot of sexual obsession.

Also, they probably included the pictures to be sure to get the people who saw the letter to spend a lot of time looking at it and handling it and showing it to others, even if it was just "Hey boss, look what kind of filth was in this returned letter.".

Of course, since it was returned, it never got to the addressee, and since it was sent to a country with lots of censorship, maybe it was mailed out with that stuff in it, opened at the P.O. in Indonesia, the porno was seen, and the envelope was re-sealed and sent back to MS-Reno.

Yeah, whatever

[Logic Bomb]

This is one of the more extreme examples of ridiculous predictions over how life will change in the US after 9/11. The tons of reasons people have used actual written/printed communication in the past continue to exist, and will not easily be supplanted by *anything* electronic. (Think about all the documents we use that require witness signatures or notarizing and then are kept in archives for decades.)

In other words, this article is just one big troll.

Someone will come up with a snail mail virus scann

[mesocyclone]

Look at the money to be made! Maybe Symantec or McAfee can come up with a "virus" scanner for Snail Mail. Clearly its needed.

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).

... where we've been used to virus-mail for ages..

[torpor]

... well, at least that's been the case in the United States of Microsoft.

Where do I get one?

[flacco]

the new anthrax thread in our snail-mail is going to be a major catalyst

Hey, where did you get the threading snail-mail client?

Everyone has e-mail?

[jinx90277]

It certainly seems like everyone and their grandmother has an email account now (even if they don't have a computer or internet access in their home, an internet cafe or library or such near them almost undoubtedly does).

I don't know everyone, but I do know my grandmother, and she doesn't have an e-mail account. My mom has access to e-mail, but that's because my dad is nice enough to print it out and show it to her. Many people in this country either do not have basic computer skills to let them use e-mail, or even the economic status to allow computers to be an item in the monthly budget. Those of us who are debating this question need to realize that we are privileged.

Perhaps I have a Luddite streak in me somewhere, but I also have an irrational fondness for "old" media: LPs, newspapers, printed books. I suppose someday I can spend a Sunday morning at the local coffee shop reading over the electronic version of the Los Angeles Times on my Palm XVIII, but it won't be the same, and I will miss getting newsprint on my fingers. But I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, and it will be used as justification to avoid change. E-mail has many advantages, but it belongs to a new generation, it seems. My mother might learn, but my grandmother never will.

Re:Everyone has e-mail?

[dstone]

I do know my grandmother, and she doesn't have an e-mail account. My mom has access to e-mail, but that's because my dad is nice enough to print it out and show it to her. ... My mother might learn, but my grandmother never will.

Your desire for past romantic and technically simpler times is touching. But your mom and grandma have a choice here and maybe this is an opportunity for them. Society makes changes during times of war, and it's not all bad. New technologies are born, new customs, new neighbors and friends are made, new skills are learned. Maybe your grandmother can exercise a few neurons (with your help), learn how to read and write an e-mail and expand her horizons. Maybe she'll go to a chat room and meet a new friend. Maybe the internet is what she's been looking for to publish some of her thoughts. In my opinion, more good wisdom could be spread thru e-mail, chat rooms, web sites, online journals, etc. But we need the old, wise people to contribute just as much as the young, spastic geeks!

Re:Everyone has e-mail?

[unitron]

The other day I had the pleasure of handing my mother a letter in her late mother's handwriting, one which had been received, opened and read in 1969 and then used as a bookmark. It languished in that book for the next 30+ years until I chanced upon it.

I don't think finding an old file in a long ignored sub-directory would have been quite the same.

By the way, that Levy guy works at Newsweek and the article is posted at MSNBC, not NBC.

How crazy is this?

[sharlskdy]

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.

This suggestion reminds me of the panic surrounding the unibomber. People were afraid to send and receive packages, although millions of packages were sent through the FedEx, UPS and the mail every day.

It is upsetting that mail is something we can't implicitly trust after the events of the last week, but it is an extremely useful and, I think, necessary tool. Air travel is still quite safe and I expect to continue to fly when I need to without much thought of what if...

I refuse to live my life worried every minute about what might happen.

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.

Re:How crazy is this?

[dgroskind]

... it does seem that some things are being grossly overstated, such as the risks of anthrax.

The implications of what your are saying, if there are any implications, is that people shouldn't worry about anthrax until more than 41,611 people are infected per year. Reasonable people do not look at risk this way.

People typically make a rough risk/reward calculation when they take an action. The benefits of driving are high and the risk fairly low. If there are alternatives to using airplanes and the mail and thereby reduce the risk, however remote, the reasonable thing is to use them.

In addition, the perceived risks of driving and terrorism are not comparable. Drivers can take reasonable precautions to reduce their risk such as obeying traffic laws, not drinking, keeping their car in repair, etc. There are no similar ways for prudent individuals to reduce the risk from hijacking and bioterrorism except not flying and not using mail.

So far, the level of panic resulting from the terrorist attacks and the threat of bioterrorism has been low, perhaps unexpectedly low, both in the general public and in public officials. So far, the American public should be complemented for their coolness, not mocked, with irrelevant statistics.

Re:How crazy is this?

[dgroskind]

There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions which are not necessarily effective...

Actually the reactions are extremely effective. Not flying completely eliminates the personal threat of hijacking. Grounding all airplanes was the completely reasonable reaction when the hijackings first occurred and people can reasonably take their cue from that act. Similarly, not using mail completely eliminates the threat of catching a horrible disease from the mail. Many large corporations x-ray parcels in their mailrooms because of the remote possibility of bombs. Until similar methods can be devised for regular mail, individuals must take whatever precautions they can.

...and the economic effects of wholesale eschewment of mail and air travel are pretty widespread.

The idea that one should increase one's risk of dying for the benefit of airline industry or the economy in general is surely one of the least helpful suggestion since Mayor Guiliani suggested everyone go shopping.

Changing one's behavior when faced with a new threat is a reasonable thing to do. Once the full extent of the threat is known and some countermeasures are in place, people may change their behavior again. The dumbest reaction would be to proceed as if nothing had happened.

Re:How crazy is this?

[Ian Bicking]

The implications of what your are saying, if there are any implications, is that people shouldn't worry about anthrax until more than 41,611 people are infected per year. Reasonable people do not look at risk this way.

No, the implication is you (personally) shouldn't worry about anthrax until the danger to your demographic is non-negligable. For almost all Americans, the risk of anthrax is negligable -- that is, it is many orders of magnitude less likely to hurt you than many other dangers in your life.

Similarly with flying, it would take far more than four planes to bring the risk up to levels for driving. Admittedly, you can reduce your risk while driving, but I suspect that still, flying is a far, far, far safer manner of long-distance travel.

Trains and buses are still viable, safe alternatives. As with cars, you have to consider the benefits of these various methods with their risk.

Re:How crazy is this?

[Jeremi]

I think it would be safe to say that risk of contracting anthrax from your mail was negligible, and is now larger than it was. What the public doesn't know is how much larger that risk is now; that depends on how many mad anthrax-spreaders there are out there, and how skillful/clever/evil they are. Given that, I think a certain amount of concern is reasonable.

Re:How crazy is this?

[markmoss]

The idea that one should increase one's risk of dying for the benefit of airline industry or the economy in general is surely one of the least helpful suggestion

You _really_ missed the point. What increases your chance of dying is when you go into a panic about a few hijackings or plane crashes and drive instead.

Re:How crazy is this?

[prizog]

"I think you mean that the only way to eliminate the risk is not to drive"

No. Pedestrians get hit and killed by cars all the time.

Re:How crazy is this?

[markmoss]

The risk that caused the shutdown of airports wasn't to travellers, but to people in large buildings on the ground... I don't have statistics right handy, but I suspect that even on 9/11 there were more people killed on the roads than the few hundred killed _in_ airplanes. (Lots more were killed _by_ airplanes, but that's a risk you take by being on the ground, not by flying.) Grounding the planes until they could be sure no more would be flying into the great big obvious targets America has provided was rational; driving instead of riding after they went back into service is NOT. (OK, there are many cases where all that extra security means you can get there faster by ground -- but it's still riskier by far.)

Not to mention that the airplanes could be a lot safer if the gov't and media hadn't spent decades training Americans not to resist criminals, even when their little bitty knives barely qualify as weapons. If the passengers had just rushed the hijackers right at the start, chances are the only ones dead would have been the hijackers...

Re:How crazy is this?

[geekoid]

But, if the number of people who die from eating big macs jumped the same percentage from last year to this year, was the same as anthrax victims, don't you think the media would grossly overstate the dangers of big macs?

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.

Re:Mail beats Email

[einhverfr]

Lets see-- just over 10 people per day die in automobile crashes... After a concerted effort, 1 man dies of Anthrax and several are treated...

These terrorists are playing on irrational fears.

Re:Mail beats Email

[Fnkmaster]

On #8, that is true in the US, but not necessarily elsewhere - in Canada, for example, the courts have established the equivalence of digital signatures on email to physical signatures (I know the team that made the Candian Post Office's web delivery system).

Re:Mail beats Email

[maggard]

No, not true in Canada either. I can't send an email to some aol.ca user and tell the court "They've been served."

Digital signatures have been legally supported in both the USA & Canada but they've nothing to do with delivery.

Re:Mail beats Email

[prizog]

Lets see-- just over 10 people per day die in automobile crashes..

Um, over 100 people a day die in car crashes, in the US alone.

Source:
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/

Re:Mail beats Email

[Fnkmaster]

Your point is irrelevant to the facts. The fact is that a digitally signed document is equivalent to one delivered via physical mail and returned signed. You give an example where the relevant issue is proving that a document was received (i.e. delivered by registered mail). I do not know that this level of delivery service has a legally recognized electronic equivalent, but email appears to be recognizable as a legal equivalent to mail delivery in Canada, as it can be used in the same way mail is with supporting technologies. Contracts that require "notification in writing" and delivery to physical addresses may not yet be fulfillable by email delivery, but that's a point of contract law, not of the government giving legal status to mail itself.

What does metal music have to do with this?

[jmauro]

I mean first, metal music was forcing kids to kill themselves, then metal music was forcing kids to kill their parents. Then, Tipper Gore thought metal music was destroying America. Now, Anthrax is killing the USPS? Who'd of thought. I always thought the RIAA wanted to prevent music transfered over the internet. Now others want Anthrax transmitted over email. How weird.

In other news, Anthrax is going to change it's name to "Basket Full Of Puppies"

feh.

[motherhead]

Insane. A handful of jackasses mail a handful of poison apples and one writer has an epiphany that an America will now forsake using the postal system.

I send or respond to hundreds of emails a day, as I am sure quite a few of us do, personally I find it is the differences between email and snail mail that make it cornerstone of society.

Email lets me communicate to someone using electronic representations of words or images. Powerful stuff, certainly powerful enough to conduct business and maintain strong lines of communication with family and friends.

But snail mail allows my kids, my wife, to create something for me physically and to send it thousands of miles away for me to hold in my hands, if you ever got a perfumed letter from your woman when you have been jonesing for her for weeks, you realize why email is not a final postal solution.

Never mind that I do 60% of my shopping online and receive parcels in a timely fashion from all four corners of this country and from a couple others. Never mind that if an old acquaintance wants to contact me the odds of him finding my physical address is greater then him stumbling into my email address. Never mind that letters written by pen usually have greater value both in terms of the thought that went into them and to the appreciation of the reader.

Yeah junk mail sucks ass and needs to be addressed and destroyed. I am not saying snail mail is not silly with flaws. What I am saying is this is horseshit. We lived through the unibomber and if you are old enough you might remember that in the early seventies mail-bombs were flying around in a near epidemic. Unibomber-boy (teddy K) did not invent it. And hey look, the problem is so bad most of the kids on slash dot won't have a clue about it.

Man when bored journalists with deadlines write shitty pieces I don't get upset, I know a job is a job. But responding/reacting to it is just plain stupid.

Re:feh.

[rlowe69]

Man when bored journalists with deadlines write shitty pieces I don't get upset, I know a job is a job. But responding/reacting to it is just plain stupid.

Don't you find this just a little ironical? ;)

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

[garett_spencley]

Okay, I'm very sick of the media and government trying to scare people by making them believe that they are at threat from biological and chemical weapons used by terrorists.

The fact of the matter is that biological and chemical weapons just aren't practical. They are pretty fucking dangerous, I won't argue that. But they are very impractical as weapons of mass destruction.

For example, out of the thousands of people in the subway in tokyo where a bunch of wacko's sprayed sarin gas only 12 people were killed. 12 out of thousands. A success? I say no.

You see, first of all it takes a lot of money and people with very huge educations just to produce the stuff. Then it is incredibly hard and dangerous to transport it. You run the risk of infecting yourself.

But the real reason that we aren't going to see a whole lot of these attacks is because the payload just isn't high enough. After spending millions of dollars to produce the stuff, expending a couple chemists who died in the shitty-ass lab in afghanistan producing it you've only killed a couple people. It's much cheaper, easier and kills a lot more people to just set off a bomb in some building.

But what about just making people sick? After all there was something like 5500 people pooring into the hospitals in tokyo after the sarin gass. Well what they didn't tell you is that 90% of those people were just people who panicked because they were in the subway that day and wanted to get checked out.

And don't forget that before that incident the same terrorist group had tried to use anthrax. They sprayed the shit off a building onto a group of civilians and no one was infected by it.

I read a good article about this written by a phd in microbiology. It contains many more facts that I haven't discussed. You can read it here.

--
Garett

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

[styopa]

Anthrax may not be all that effective because it is very hard to distribute but that doesn't mean that A) it should be ignored and B) that we should dismiss the potential danger of other biological weapons. If small pox were to be re-introduced in several cities at once, that could have a devistating effect on the population. Everyone after (I believe it is) 1975 are not immunized against it. It is possible that the Taliban may have gotten a former Soviet scientist from some lab in Kazakstan or Uzbekistan who had a vial of the stuff.

Anyway, the several reports of anthrax have caused quite a panic in Florida. Accoriding to NPR one pharmacy normally only fill 20 perscriptions of the antibiotic that is used to fight anthrax daily, and they have seen that climb to 300! Salon magazine has a decent article about the Anthrax scare.

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

[dazed-n-confused]

I read a good article about this written by a phd in microbiology. It contains many more facts that I haven't discussed. You can read it here [villagevoice.com].

The author, George C Smith, has other techy-related achievements more relevant to many Slashdotters than "a phd in microbiology" -- author of The Virus Creation Labs, compiler of The Crypt Newsletter, frequent contributor to the Virus Myths stupidity-debunking site vmyths.com...

And he's dead funny, too.

BTW, "virus" throughout the above links refers to our old friend, malicious code, and not some new terror attack. (And anthrax ain't viral).

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

[jaapD]

But the real reason that we aren't going to see a whole lot of these attacks is because the payload just isn't high enough. After spending millions of dollars to produce the stuff, expending a couple chemists who died in the shitty-ass lab in afghanistan producing it you've only killed a couple people. It's much cheaper, easier and kills a lot more people to just set off a bomb in some building.

They can do it cheaper if they make heroin. People would be paying them to get it! The killrate isn't high but when you have your customers hooked they will keep trying to kill themselves.

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

[garett_spencley]

whoa there buddy slow down.

I'm not trying to say that their deaths didn't matter. By "only 12" I mean that if terrorists are trying to kill a whole bunch of people then chemical and biological weapons just aren't what they need.

Out of thousands there were 12 who died. From a terrorists perspective this would be a failure if their goal was to kill "a whole shit load of people". Just look at the Oklahoma city bombing, and the Sep. 11 attacks. They were much more effective than any biological or chemical attack to date.

I feel bad for anyone who dies at the hands of someone else. I was not trying to say that because only 12 died that it didn't mean anything as you seemed to have interpreted.

--
Garett

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

[markmoss]

Anthrax is one of the easiest biological weapons to produce. There are plenty of purified samples out there -- and in 3rd world countries, you can still find infected sheep herds. Then, it's a bacterium, so it's not too hard to grow it in a culture. This poses a high risk of infecting yourself, but there are vaccines. If the vaccine isn't perfect, you are still much safer working in an anthrax lab than driving around with a truckload of explosives or trying to hijack an airplane...

It gets a little harder once you have grown tubs full of anthrax culture. You've got to get the bacteria to form spores, isolate the spores, form them into a very fine powder (so it will go into the lungs rather than getting filtered out by the nose), and stabilize the powder so it doesn't clump up before it is released. Apparently the terrorists didn't get one of the last two steps right -- I think 4 letters, just 1 where the powder became airborne at all, and only 1 lung infection. (Lung infections are fatal unless you start massive antibiotic injections _before_ symptoms appear; other infections are generally treatable.) But this is only their first try.

Finally, you've got to deliver the stuff. Letters loaded with white, soapy powder aren't going to work anymore. From here on, a half hour after opening anything suspicious, people are going to be in the hospital getting tests and shots. But how about dressing up like a furnace repairman, filling a toolbox with powdered spores, and dumping it into the air ducting?

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

[geekoid]

The thousands of people Sadium gased would probably disagree with you, but there dead.

Anthrax take some knowledge in order to make it a threat to humans, specificaly you have to get the spore size correct.
The incident where it was sprayed was ineffective due to the spore size. Had it been correct, 1000's would have died.
IT is cheap to create anthrax. Somebody knowing what to do could create a sizeable amount for a few thousand dollars.

If you knew about some of the stuff the US produces, you would relize that there great weapons of mass killings.

Re:something last night happened like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Last night at my high school they recieved a shipment of SAT books for this mornings tests. Apparently they had some kind of powder on them and a squad was called in to investigate and contaminate a possible threat

So, how'd you do on the test?

the most important question is..

[Dr. Awktagon]

What does Anthrax (the band) have to say about all this? And even more importantly, when is somebody going to sue them for mental distress after seeing their name?

(Just saw on their web site they are actually still touring! Yeesh!)

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:your reps are all spammed out

[Alien54]

Unfortunately, one solution warks in the direction of a US Government Digital Passport (not the MS solution) where the rep or senator only accepts emails from constituents, from his list of constituent ID numbers. Processed similar to a credit card.

The problem all along is here we are with a solution the regulates the law abiding people, because some jerks want to abuse the system.

This goes back to my idea of a spam licensing system, so that the pressure is put on the spammers, not the decent folk.

Snailmail is dying? Sounds kinda like *BSD... n/m.

[Scoria]

Snailmail is in no way "dying." E-mail doesn't have a reliable method of authentication (unless you count packages such as PGP and GPG, which almost nobody utilizes), so that makes it pretty much impossible to convert its legal equivalency to that of snailmail's.

Sorry. Please stop with the "Snailmail is dying" trolls. ;)

It's a conspiracy!!!

[UnAmericanPunk]

Ok, let's see, now that congress is passing all these laws that make it ok for the government to read everyone's e-mail (carnivore) it really makes you think. Anthrax isn't that easy to come by from what I've heard (even though it does occur naturally), but government labs seem to have quite a bit of it. Considering all the rights people are giving up already we might as well just add this to the list. Seriously, this kinda stuff scares me more than the terrorists do.

So when you add everything up, we'll have armed military guards in the street to "keep the peace", we'll have flying video cameras to record our every move, our phone conversations can be tapped, and now they want to force everyone to use e-mail. So it seems that the government will be able to know your every move if they want to.

It wouldn't be hard to play off a terrorist thing in order to get political power over everyone. Hitler did the same thing. Those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it they say, it's just too bad most people didn't learn.

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:Forms of snail Mail that won't go away

[Angst Badger]

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.

Levy's remarks about e-books replacing real books eliminated what little credibility he had failed to squander with the rest of the article. E-books deserved to be ranked with "Internet appliances" and communism as ideas that look dumb on paper (or e-paper) and even dumber in practice.

• Books are much cheaper than e-books. (When was the last time you had to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for a machine to read a paper book?)
  
• Books are more convenient than e-books.
  
• Books are not harmed by electromagnetic fields or temperatures under 451 F.
  
• You can even get books wet without rendering them unreadable, though I wouldn't recommend it.
  
• Books don't require electricity or recharging.
  
• Books are readable from a wide range of angles.
  
• You can drop books. You might even drop them on purpose, just for effect.
  
• Books formats never become unusably obsolete. The default platform for book-reading has not changed since the human species evolved. Even obsolete formats, e.g. scrolls and clay tablets, are still readable with the latest hardware.
  
• Airport security will not ask you to boot your books at the gate, nor will the pilot ask you to turn off your books during takeoff and landing.
  
• Best of all, there's no digital rights management BS with respect to books, which means
  
  • You can check them out from libraries for free.
    
  • There is no license to agree to and no rights to surrender.
    
  • You can usually return them without a hassle.
    
  • No company will ever revoke your ability to read a book because they don't like the way you use it.
    
  • You can legally criticize books.
    
  • You can resell books because you actually own them after you pay for them.
    
  • You can loan books to friends without acquiring a site-license.
    

Much of the same applies to mail.

Re:Forms of snail Mail that won't go away

[Jeremi]

Every one of your criticisms is valid with respect to what they are currently (trying to) sell under the name "e-book". The concept of an electronic display replacing paper is a good one though, and I think you can expect in the future to see models which address all of those problems. (I'm specifically imagining a solid state device that has a high-quality electronic-paper display, some static RAM, a wireless internet connection, and an HTML renderer)

The USPS cannot die!

[mrBoB]

Keep in mind folks, the USPS is chartered in the United State Constitution. See Article 1, section 8, "The Congress shall have the power to: ... establish post offices and post roads." Check out usconstituion.net. Now I wouldn't be surprised if the USPS ends up having to purchase fancy devices to look for questionable substances being shipped in letters and packages. Of course any changes made to their business will impact our service. Most obvious being an increase in the price of stamps ;-) I don't think the Supreme Court would find an amendment putting the USPS to sleep being Constitutional. That would be like Congress passing an Amendment that the office of the President of the United States be removed... Just look on the bright side; the USPS is going to _HAVE_ to do _SOMETHING_ to deal with this threat. Hopefully in the near future you won't have to be concerned about being infected with Anthrax through the Postal service. Now ensuring your drinking water is safe is another story ;-) -Bob

Re:The USPS cannot die!

[einhverfr]

if ("shall have the power to" == "shall be required to") {
printf ("You are right.");
}
else {
printf ("What are you talking about?");
}

// somehow I think that Congress has the power to
// determine how and when they use their
// constitutional powers...

Re:The USPS cannot die!

[Velox_SwiftFox]

[...]Now I wouldn't be surprised if the USPS ends up having to purchase fancy devices to look for questionable substances being shipped in letters and packages.[...]

Maybe they should irridate all snailmail with gamma rays...

Of course, you'd have to slap that "irridated food" label on all fruitcakes mailed at Christmastime.

I think. Do Christmas fruitcakes count as food? Oh well, most deserve some kind of warning label anyway.

Re:The USPS cannot die!

[mrBoB]

Do you recall the 18th amendment? Regarding prohibition, liquor manufacture and sale is outlawed. Subsequently repealed with the 21st amendment. For 14 years drinking was illegal by virtue of an _AMENDMENT_ to the _CONSTITUTION_ (i.e. a federal crime!!). That's pretty steep. IMHO, the 18th amendment represents poor judgment on behalf of congress (and those states that ratified it) in that they chose to make alcohol consumption a _federal_ crime. I could understand if a city or state wanted to be dry; they could enact _LOCAL_ laws, like a few cities/counties in this country do, to outlaw sale of alcohol. So my point is that some amendments can be unconstitutional, and thusly need to be repealed.

Anyhow, I'd hate to see the Postal Service disbanded by any act of this or a future congress by Constitutional amendment. I'm not sure it could happen anyway. How in the world would the IRS get my tax payments? Keep in mind, amendments are intended to be additions to the Constitution. However, when ignorant or illegal changes are made, only by subsequent amendment may they be removed. I don't trust most of our congressmen to have the scruples to properly change the Constitution and that is the only way the USPS could be disbanded. I hope that congress sticks to US Code where they are intellectually capable of making changes. To be honest though folks, we shouldn't even be thinking this way. Everyone is having reactionary feelings and concerns about the attacks. It really is to be expected, however our representatives in Washington have a responsibility to us (civilians, citizens) and to the future of these Great United States. Devaluing the power of the _Constitution_ with ridiculous changes will only do harm to our freedoms. Changing the Constitution during this time of great distress would be a crime against all Americans, past, present and future.

No changes to the Constitution will change the fact that Al-Qaida and Bin Laden want to kill every American, and more correctly, every non-Muslim. This war _he_ has started against us is because we are the most free peoples on the planet. He has called for Jihad and yet we are called the Crusaders... I have great difficulty dealing with this kind of logic. He is unhappy that Muslims, Christians, Jews and atheists can and do live relatively peacefully in this country. In no other country in the world can this be claimed; certainly not in the Middle East. It is because of this that we must respect and uphold our freedoms, even in this time of terror as proof to the world that we can remain free. -Bob

Re:The USPS cannot die!

[unitron]

An ammendment to the Constitution, once ratified and in force, becomes part of the Constitution, and as such, cannot be unconstitutional. It may conflict with previously in force parts of the Constitution, but that's what ammendments are for, to make changes and additions.

Of course the example you cite, the 18th Ammendment, is excellent proof that a ratified ammendment isn't necessarily a good or smart ammendment. We in the U.S. are free enough, however, to institute changes in our constitution whether they are good for us or not. (I freely admit that whether or not they are good for us is a matter of opinion and subject to unending debate.)

This is happening....

[MasterOfDisaster]

Mostly in NY, but I know of several places that have told me and others that I know "Dont send us snail-mail. We wont get it. Hard to say exactly what will happen, but this isnt isolated.
I'm guessing the price of the stamp is going to go through the roof, however

Re:Isn't snail mail already dead?

[firewort]

A nice thought, but my University will only accept submissions for my classwork on paper. I'm in the States, they're in England, so I must print and pay Airbone Express to handle them.

I have a script that I'm collaborating on with a person cross-country- he uses a typewriter. We send via-USPS.

I write and fax my legislators.

Sending physical pieces of paper may not be cost effective, but it's the only way to satisfy these particular communication needs.

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.

How come...

[jd]

Eight cases of Anthrax could destroy the postal system (when only one person actually suffered any kind of catastrophic system failure from it), and tens of millions of Microsoft systems, causing potentially billions of dollars of damages in lost time, is merely a "system admin problem"?

Besides, milions more are infected, and tens of people killed, from common diseases passed around the classroom!

Re:Nothing Important

[LinuxHam]

Same here. For the last few cars I bought, I would literally go home and setup automatic payments to go out for the life of the loan. (wiping hands) Done. I love it, too, because the loans all picked up on the fact that I pay the bill on the same exact day with a cashier's check (or electronically - I let the bank work it out) and I *never* include the payment coupon. After even just one payment, the never send me a bill.

Now if my freaking mortgage could conceive of that concept, I'd have a little less paper coming in. Hell it would help greatly if I could get the supermarkets to stop sending me the crap that goes right in the can. Anyone know how to do that?

Good.

[Mustang Matt]

While I think that's b.s. and we won't be THAT affected by Anthrax. This could be good if it would force lawmakers to get off their lazy butts and pass some decent anti-spam laws.

Or just pass a law that says it's illegal to forge headers. That would be a start. Then I could handle spam in my own ways.

Re:on top of NBC....

[einhverfr]

I have a number of friends that work for Microsoft. They have asked me whether Microsoft is likely to be the target of a terrorist attack, and after thinking about it, I had to answer, "no." Terrorists are interested in attacing things that Americans identify with. Coca Cola headquarters would be a better bet.

However on second thought, there are some areas of the world whick may associate Microsoft with foreign dominance and so the company could be a target, but not a serious one because its main function would be to secure more funds from discontented wealthy folk. I would be more concerned about the subsidiaries in the Middle East than at Redmond...

That is why I wonder about it being sent to the licnesing department. If there is one area that could represent foreign dominance, that would be it.

Won't be safe for long...

[joshwa]

TO: Joe User
FROM: TrendMicro ScanMail Exchange Edition
RE: Re: Weather Report

Your attachment, ANTHRAX.DOC.PIF , has been intercepted by the firewall. Please contact your system administrator.

Please mention ticket number 0682090701ABS3724365.

Re:What about the Unabomber?

[LinuxHam]

More people have received attempted anthrax infections in weeks than the unabomber hit in 10 years. And this is a general public thing.. not just Computer Science professors.

Interesting comments

[einhverfr]

Re; Aum Shinrekio (sp?) the sarin gat attack was actually their tenth attack using chemical and biological agents. It was the only one anybody actually noticed or died from. 10 attempts and 12 deaths. Not very effective.

But-- the threat is more dangerious than the disease. Would YOU drink the water if someone claimed to have dumped biological agents in it?

Re:Interesting comments

[Bob Uhl]

Would YOU drink the water if someone claimed to have dumped biological agents in it?

I do, nearly every day. Massive amounts of biological agents are dumped in our water. Fish make love in it, you know...

Killing mail? What about people?

[deebaine]

I don't mean to sound like a troll or one of the incessant writers of flamebait, but I'm a little disappointed in Slashdot for this one. If this anthrax is an honest attempt at an attack, and it succeeds even in part, a lot more than snail mail is in serious danger.

I just told a good friend who told me she had flu symptoms to phone the ER and see if she should go in, so I apologize if a dip in snail mail seems a bit on the trivial side at this moment.

-db

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[OmegaDan]

its a silly supposition that people will stop sending mail ... and this is why:

You don't *choose* what medium communications *TO* you take. If I get a CC bill in the mail, I mail a check. If I get a phonecall, I return the call. if I get an email I send an email. You can only choose the medium of conversations you initiate :) So the only way sending e-mail instead of snail mail is going to reduce your risk of getting anthrax is if you are the person mailing antrax to people :)

The only thing that could help would be for potential victims (companies apparently) to declare they only will accept email.

Sheesh

[G-funk]

First metallica killed napster, now anthrax is killing the postal service? Damned punk teenagers and their devil music.

Re:It's not just one case

[LinuxHam]

I'm sure you've been caught up by now, but it's actually at least three.. American Media in Florida, NBC News, and Microsoft Licensing in Reno, Nevada.

I hope the FBI sets up a website much like the "Y2k incidents" page where we can track in real time the reported suspicious events and the results of testing, if any. I'll never forget the one Y2K listing from Texas where, when the lights didn't go out at midnight, some drunk (guy) went out with his shotgun and started shooting out the street lights. Now THAT'S funny!

Scaremongering

[flegged]

Fact 1: A few people got diagnosed with Anthrax.
Fact 2: One of them opened a letter.

And so suddenly it's a worldwide conspiracy by Emmanuel Goldstein^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HUsama Bin Laden and Eastasia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe Taleban. Who actually believes this shit? You might as well blame CJD on Saddam Hussein or Gulf War syndrome on the CIA. Ermm...

Fact 3: Noone in the US postal service contracted Anthrax.

The most likely explanation is that the people who got Anthrax bought some dodgy cocaine. Maybe if the .gov.us (it should NOT EVER BE .gov - the US dosn't run the world (although it tries hard)) used it as propaganda against drugs, then noone would take them. If only they would stop tripping out on their own holier-than-thou attitude, they would stop supplying weaponry to known terrorists. Maybe they'd eliminate the debt they and the world bank are pushing onto most of Africa. Maybe if they'd stop trying to police the rest of the world and cram their 'American Way' down the throat of people who really don't want to have anything to do with America, this whole sorry mess of crap would never have happened.

I just wish the .gov.us and their bitches would quit their hardon for the US and let everyone get on with lives, without having to listen to their bullshit, being spied on, or having advanced weaponry raining on their heads.

I am not a troll (braces for a karma plummet). It's just that the US scares me far more than a handful of middle-east extremists who
1) were given weapons by the US
2) were never proven to have attacked the US (read the so-called evidence yourself. There is not a single statement which could not have been falsified. Nor which proves Bin Laden ordered the suicide attacks.)
3) don't have the resources necessary to defend themselves against even one storming by the SAS. And yet are said to have chemical weapons. Right. Let's see those satellite pictures of where Goldstein is hiding. Which one of those caves has the chemical weapons plant?

Offtopic? Whatever - I'm far more worried about security in email than snail mail. I use GPG, but if the US outlaw it, that will make me a terrorist. Thanks US. I can sleep easier now.

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

So, genius boy, who attacked the US? Let me guess: you think it was the Israelis, right? Or do you think the entire attack didn't happen and that it was all misinformation?

I hope the next attack kills someone you love. I'll just say that they were cokeheads who got bad stuff. Or that they aren't actually dead, just faking it.

-jon

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

Somehow, morally offending those who side with someone that called a bunch of people intentionally infected with a disease (including one person who was murdered) cokeheads makes me feel good about myself. Writing that somewhere slightly more public than Slashdot would easily be construed as Libel.

And I think it troubles you that the US could be RIGHT. You (and your political kin) don't like the fact that maybe, just maybe, the US are the good guys, since you've spent so much time and emotional energy convincing yourself that all of Western Civilization (especially the US) is the root of all evil in the world. The fact that these same people enjoy the luxuries and freedoms provided by the society they claim to hate is an irony that is left unexamined by these freethinkers.

The same people who can concoct the most cocamamie conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence won't believe that Bin Laden and his group are responsible for the terrorist attacks on NYC and DC without a signed confession from Bin Laden and 200 of his closest associates. The evidence released so far is easily grounds for indictment. We've got means, motive, and opportunity. The phone records are facsinating. We've got the guy placing a call to his step-mother the day before, letting her know something big was going down. We've got calls by him and his associates RIGHT AFTER the attacks saying "We hit two of the targets."

And that's not all. We have his son, interviewed by favorable press in Pakistan, saying that Bin Laden and 300 of his followers went into hiding on the 10th of September, sending most of his family to Pakistan. There are records of bank transactions from known associates of Bin Laden to the people who did the attacks. What more evidence would you want? Video of Bin Laden describing the plan while petting a white cat?

The real answer is that you and your fellows are cowards. You know who is responsible, but you won't admit it because you're afraid. Rather than face the enemy, you hope that if you hide and pretend he isn't the enemy, he'll go away. He won't. You'll blame the CIA or Israel because, in your heart of hearts, you know they didn't do it, and that they would NEVER commit such an atrocity. They're fake, safe targets.

No matter how much you and your fellow chickens try to appease Bin Laden, he's going to try to kill you and destroy your society. Luckily, the vast majority of people in the US know what the right thing is to do and cowards like you aren't going to divert us.

-jon

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

Barry Goldwater? Winston Churchill? FDR? JFK?

They all made similar statements when facing similar evils.

-jon

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

Do you even read what you are responding to?

Here's the line from the post I replied to:

The most likely explanation is that the people who got Anthrax bought some dodgy cocaine.

That asshole called a buch of sick (and one dead) people cokeheads, with zero information other than his own obvious hate for the US. That's libel. You took the asshole's side. What does that make you?

Doing harm to anyone is wrong.

Bullshit. There are plenty of people who deserve lots of harm done to them. Putting rapists, murders, and thieves in prison is certainly doing "harm" to them. Many people think it's more "harm" to take away someone's freedom and let them rot than it is to execute them. In your ideal fantasy world, do criminals roam free, lest harm is done to them? Or do people skip around, loving each other and doing no wrong?

You claim the moral high ground because you spout pacifist nonsense. I say that all it takes for evil to succeed is for the good to do nothing. The US has been doing NOTHING for nearly 10 years in response to attacks by bin Laden. Attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, and the embassies in Africa were low-level police investigations. Doing nothing was just encouragment to the killers. Now there are nearly 6,000 people dead in the US and most Americans are awake to the danger. People like you are still in denial, hoping it'll go away. Maybe when you lose someone close to you, you'll drop the faux pacifism.

-jon

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

I heard on the news that they got Anthrax from a 'white poweder'. I jumped to a conclusion. My bad. Sorry.

Shock of all shocks; someone as ignorant as you is ill-informed.

The US has been doing everything it can to get it's own way, from Vietnam

So, you think the US invaded Vietnam to get bin Laden? You're stupider than I thought.

There is, as yet, no evidence on who destroyed the WTC

Horseshit. There's tons of evidence that's been made public. I cited in an earlier post. To a non-moron, it's a pretty damn good case. Furthermore, the non-public information was good enough to get both the French and the Russians aboard. The French are even promising GROUND TROOPS. The Russians are giving the US maps, and have dropped all objections to the US using bases in the former Soviet Asian republics. Think about that for a minute, pinhead.

Yes, by sitting here doing nothing, I am encouraging someone to kill thousands of people. Great logic.

Is there anything you aren't too stupid to twist into nonsense? Doing nothing when you are attacked encourages attacks. Let's try a thought experiment. Say I walk up to you and punch you in the head. You do nothing. Maybe you ask some powerless third party to condemn me. Does this stop me from punching you again? Or does it tell me that you are an easy target?

Arguing with morons like you is getting annoying. Just admit you're a coward and we can stop this.

-jon

Re:Scaremongering

[TWR]

I said the US pushes it's weight around all over the world, and cited numerous wars the US has started. And you took it to mean that Vietnam had anything to do with Al Quiada. Who exactly is stupid here?

I had said that the US had done nothing for ten years in response to attacks from bin Laden's groups. You then cited Vietnam in response. Either you have no sense of history, or you cannot read. Which is it?

It's either the Afghans or the Israelis.

Pay attention, ill-informed boy. The rumor in the Middle East is that the Mossad (Israeli secret service; someone as dumb as you might not know that) attacked the WTC. Of course, the same idiots who say this also say that it is the US' pro-Israel policy which led to the attack. I wish they'd get the story straight.

And it's not Afghans who did the attacks. It's the Arabs who are HOSTED by the Afghans in exchange for at least $100Million who did the attack.

Let me know if I'm using words that are too big for you to understand; I'll try to drop to single syllables.

And you believe unquestionably that the US is right to bomb the hell out of third-world nation because of this?

I don't give a fuck if it was a first world nation or a third world nation. Afghanistan is harboring the people who planned the murder of 5,400 of my countrymen, who attacked my country's embassies, attacked my country's Navy, and who have taken credit for attacking my country's soldiers when on a UN-supervised humanitarian mission in Somalia. All of these actions are acts of war.

The thugs who run Afghanistan have been presented evidence of these crimes in the past, including the attacks on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. They did nothing. And the people who aren't revolting against the Taliban? Fuck them. Not doing anything is complicity in the crimes of their leaders. There are certainly Afghanis who are rebelling; why aren't there more?We should be dropping neutron bombs, not food.

If you want a good historical analogy, study up on the Barbary pirates who controlled Libya in the early 1800's. Very similar situation to what is happening now with Afghanistan.

Your thought experiment proves one thing : that you believe that violence solves everything.

Of COURSE violence solves everything. Only a ninny thinks otherwise. Where are the Pics who used to live in England? Why exactly is your royal family descended from French invaders? Why are V2 rockets not landing on your countrymen's heads anymore? Violence. How did the British Empire get to be so rich? Violence. And here's something for you to think about: what is it that backs up the non-violent decisions made by civil courts in Western nations? The fact that violence would be done to the person who ignored the decision.

Now that you are living in amazing luxury (compared to 99% of the human race, past and present), you can sniff your nose at the violence which has enabled your easy life. That's hypocracy and cowardace. You think it's OK for people to have killed on your behalf, but don't let anyone else do it for themselves.

-jon

Re:What about the USPS?

[spudnic]

If they got rid of junk mail I doubt they would make enough money to not ask Congress for huge subsidies.

Re:Killing mail? What about people?

[ergo98]

I just told a good friend who told me she had flu symptoms to phone the ER and see if she should go in, so I apologize if a dip in snail mail seems a bit on the trivial side at this moment.

Phone the ER because of flu symptoms? Sorry, but here in Ontario people going into their local ER because they had trivial things like a common cold or a regular flue is directly responsible for thousands or tens of thousands of deaths per year (because the guy who actually does have a problem gets deferred while the person with the headache gets treated). If you are saying "Stop the mail! Someone might die!" then that is absolutely, positively, grossly ridiculous and knee-jerkish: Did you know that every consumer good you buy has a "human cost" to it? Why not ban car travel, air travel, hell human interactions in general because people might die undertaking any of those? 96 people died building the Hoover dam? Do you think about that when you turn on your computer? The Empire State Building took 5 lives directly in its construction, and countless more in the mining, smelting and rolling of the metal to build it, in the transport to get items to and from the construction site, etc.

"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for all of us is 0." Fight Club - Narrator (Jack) The human condition is one where death is part and parcel with the terroritory.

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[spudnic]

I actually like getting those in the mail lately. Now that they come in those nifty DVD hard cases I'm working my way through all my DVD's that came packaged in a cheapo cardboard case and moving them over.

Now if I could find an easy way to get that darn mailing label off the back of them.

Intel is well prepared to handle this...

[frleong]

"Only the paranoid survive..."

They have those scientists with pretty silver suits to handle snail mail with viral attachments...

Re:Anthrax-laced mail to hit M$ ?

[hedgefrog]

Story here. It was sent to the licensing division offices in Reno Nevada. (I have to wonder if it was really terrorism or just somebody upset with their new licensing system)

Threat of bioweapons hugely overstated

[Sanity]

The dangers of Anthrax and other bioweapons is hugely overstated. Anthrax is virtually harmless unless in powder form, and it is hugely expensive to create powdered Anthrax. It is also very difficult to deliver it, it tends to simply blow away and become so dispersed that it is harmless. Can Anthrax kill? Of course, but there are thousands of cheaper ways to kill people (letter bombs, guns, etc).

Re:Threat of bioweapons hugely overstated

[Arlet]

Maybe the people behind the anthrax letters are only trying to get people scared (even the authorities are now warning people to be careful with handling mail), and it looks like this is a fairly effective way. Even though the number of letters sent with anthrax is insignificant compared to the total amount of mail, a lot of people are worried that they may be the next target. Also, if a large terrorist group is behind this, they have shown that they can create anthrax, and maybe they'll find better ways to deliver it. The fact that a lethal dose of anthrax is very small, means that it could be anywhere, especially if the goal is only to kill a few people here and there.

We're all going to switch from snail mail to email

[miahrogers]

sort of how we all switched away from UPS and FedEx when people started sending mailbombs?

That's funny

[roystgnr]

I agree with your conclusion, but almost none of your arguments:

Postal mail creates jobs

So did iceboxes. The ice men found new jobs.

packages - What's the point in all this e-commerce if nobody has anything delivered anymore?

I've had at least a dozen packages ordered online and delivered. Some used UPS, some used FedEx; none used the postal service.

Utility Bills - Until some laws are changed you must be provided with an invoice for your purchase and written notification of money owed.

I'm sure laws here vary from state to state, but I no longer legally have to get paper confirmation of every single stock trade I make, for one example, I just had to formally agree that email confirmation alone would be acceptable. There are a lot of non-utility services that are willing to go without sending you a written bill if they have a credit card number or checking account transfer information, and there are ways to pay many bills on line more manually if you feel the need to personally authorize each transaction. This is a good reason, but not a show stopper.

Taxes - Like anything done by the government, this ones going to be done the old world way for a long time.

Yeah, by people who want to do it the old world way. The IRS at least has been accepting electronic submissions on their most commonly used forms for years.

Books and periodicals - Some people (myself included) prefer to read anything of great length on paper.

Me too. But that's just an eyestrain thing with me; I'm really looking forward to seeing some of these "electronic paper" technologies being prototyped. Besides, most of my books come from a bookstore and most of my periodicals come online, nowadays.

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.

You have an odd sense of pride - this is really the sentence that prompted my response, as your psychology fascinates me. I have a couple untouched books on my shelves, but generally that status is a source of shame, not pride.

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.

This you may be right about. Frankly, digital signatures are much harder to forge than the old-fashioned kind, but way too permanently stealable. Can you imagine if every instance of ILOVEYOU had installed a keyboard sniffer to grab passphrases?

Re:That's funny

[Bob Uhl]

I've had at least a dozen packages ordered online and delivered. Some used UPS, some used FedEx; none used the postal service.

The unfortunate thing is that almost everyone uses UPS, and that UPS is the worst carrier out there. They damage goods--and never pay the claim! Their delivery system is atrocious--three tries, and then I get to drive two hours from where I live in the heart of Denver, the capital city of Colorado and largest town for about 8 hours in any direction.

But what upsets me most is that they will not deliver easily to my apartment building. The post office can enter, but UPS cannot. So I have to have things delivered care of my landlady, who may not always be home. And then I get the joy and fun of driving two hours out.

I'd take USPS for a buck more a package and another two days delivery time any day of the week. At least my packages make it to my door.

Lest we forget why e-mail sucks...

[Guppy06]

Hi! How are you?

I send you this anthrax in order to have your advice.

See you later. Thanks

Seriously, though. Just about everybody with a computer has a modem, and a slightly smaller number of those people have a scanner. So why does he believe that e-mails are more advantageous than faxes?

Re:Anthrax-laced mail to hit M$ ?

[Velox_SwiftFox]

The first test was positive. The second was negative. The third was positive.

Wonder what the fourth test will show?

USPS still has its uses...

[Guppy06]

As long as I still keep getting checks made out to me here in Florida and my bank sits in Texas, I'll always have at least one use for the USPSl.

In other news...

[morcheeba]

207,882,000,000 anthrax-free parcels were delivered by the usps last year (that's 1/5th of a Trillion). Yeah, I think it's both pretty safe and here to stay.

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[jonbrewer]

I disagree somewhat.

I get bills in the mail, and pay them electronically. If the vendor does not support electronic transfer, my bank takes care of the check-printing and mailing for me, without my knowledge.

I get phone messages at work. (a nice button on my phone keeps it from ringing about 80% of the time.) I return those messages via email.

So when you say you return correspondence in the way initiated, I say you don't have to.

I certainly don't!

Junk Mail vs. Spam

[Guppy06]

I get junk mail. I get spam. Personally, if I had to choose one or the other, I'll go with the junk mail any day.

The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that, for the recipient, junk mail is free. It may not be wanted, but I don't have to pay $20+ for the privledge to download it.

Secondly, there is an appreciable cost for the advertiser to send junk mail, while a spammer only needs an internet account. The fact that the advertiser needs to worry about costs means that they'll be more careful with who to send the advertising to. I don't think I've ever gotten junk mail, for instance, that wasn't in English.

If you get suckered into some shady deal through spam (bogus contests, pyramid schemes), about all you can do is ask their ISP nicely to please remove their account. If you get suckered into something similar through junk mail, the USPS has their very own law enforcement arm to hunt people like that down and prosecute them.

And speaking of postal laws, there are legal limits to what unsolicited mail can advertise. I can't count the amount of spam I get for sex sites, while the closest I've gotten to unsolicited pornographic junk mail was the ol' Victoria's Secret catalog (and even then I think it was addressed to the former occupant).

So, even though junk mail may kill the rain forests and is aided by the USPS itself, I still find it infinitely better than the spam that even now flods my e-mail boxes.

Re:Junk Mail vs. Spam

[Jeremi]

The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that, for the recipient, junk mail is free. It may not be wanted, but I don't have to pay $20+ for the privledge to download it.

You do have to pay to dispose of it though (one way or another), and eventually you'll have to pay for the environmental costs incurred by the creation and transport of so much useless paper. You also spend a certain amount of time every day sorting the "real" mail from the "junk" mail; inasmuch as time is money, that is a cost for you. Given all that, I prefer spam to junk mail (at least I can set up an automatic spam filter for my email)

circumvention devices

[einhverfr]

Seriously, if USPS took some gamma ray emitters (i.e., the kind they use to sterilize food, hospital equipment, etc--Cobalt 60, I think) and "nuked" every letter before it got to the destination, wouldn't that solve the whole Anthrax/letter based bioterrorism problem?

OK. So do you irradiate packages too? If not, then the pathogens get sent in packages. OK. So you irradiate packages. Now you cause problems for certain types of packages, so you deliver these in protective containers. OK. So now the pathogen gets delivered in these protective containers...

Sanil mail was already slowing in usage

[WyldOne]

The internet is doing it, not Anthrax. Considering that lots of people still do have access to e-mail, regular mail will not end any time soon.

Furthermore; there will always be a need for regular mail for packages, and larger items and some secure communication.

Re:What if the diseases were on paper money?

[einhverfr]

Be too difficult to pull off without killing most people IN your terrorist organization.

I suspect that this is why Anthrax is used--it is not that contageous... But this is why bioterrorism is likely to be limited.

Re:Killing mail? What about people?

[deebaine]

Hindsight is always 20/20. Unfortunately, knowledge of whether she's the person with the headache or the person with the problem is difficult to come by in advance. I'll spare the gory details, but suffice it to say that this isn't a runny nose.

Ultimately, they didn't ask her to come in, but they didn't tell her she was ridiculous and also suggested that they would notify her if their opinion changed. I also believe you have misdiagnosed the issue; several EMTs with whom I am friendly warn of how dangerous a phony or unwarranted 911 call can be, but I've never really heard of a phone call to the emergency room costing lives, certainly not in the numbers you suggest.

Your post interests me, but I am afraid I don't quite understand the link between it and "human cost." My sole point was that in the face of something which may kill dozens or hundreds of people, a jump in the number of emails seems unimportant to me.

-db

Both mediums are hurting...

[batobin]

Anthrax is hard to come by, and easy to treat. Small penalty for using the postal service.

Carnivore, hackers, and new govermental controls (passed only this last week by Senate and House) are going to happen much much much more often, and there's no way to "treat" it.

Plus, unlike Anthrax, you have no idea you've been violated using e-mail. At least when you develop a rash, you know something isn't the way it should be.

Overblown

[Animats]

This anthrax thing is way overblown. One person is dead, and they were quite old and thus more vulnerable to infection. Anthrax is not contagious. It's treatable if diagnosed early. This is way down in the noise compared to auto accidents, AIDS, etc.

Testing Positive for Exposure..

[hacker]

Please be aware that testing positive to exposure to Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) does not mean that you have Anthrax. Testing positive means that your body tests positive for the presence of antibodies that are used to fight this particular bacteria. It does not mean you have the spores on your skin (cutaneous), in your lungs (pulmonary), or in your gastrointestinal tract (GI).

There is one case of an Anthrax infection that has been reported so far. One case, and that person has died. That particular case involved a non-GMO (Generically Modificed Organism) version of the Anthrax bacterium. The other cases are a completely different variety of the same bacterium (cutaneous). The one in Florida may very well be a completely natural infection which occured. Yes, there has not been a single case reported in the U.S. of an Anthrax infection in 25 years, and within one week, there are over 7 cases on the books, so you can guarantee that it's intentional, but do not continue to spread the FUD without some knowledge behind you.

The others may not be, but nobody else has been infected with Anthrax to date except this Florida case. The other people you are hearing about have only tested positive for the antibodies which the body produces naturally to fight off the presence of Anthrax.

There's too much FUD in the news right now.

Lastly... there's an interesting quote from al-Queda spokesman Suleiman Abu-Gheith today saying:

"...Muslims in the United States and Great Britain should not fly or live in high buildings..."

This is far from over. Please feel free to print and post this mail warning in high-traffic mail areas within your business if you believe you may be in one of the "Icons Of America" that these letters seem to be hitting.

Re:Testing Positive for Exposure..

[markmoss]

First, the Dept of Agriculture has done a very good job of eliminating the sources of anthrax (infected farm animals). So it's very unusual for Americans to be exposed to anthrax in the first place, unless they work with sick sheep or in a lab studying it. Many of those positive tests are going to turn out to be erroneous, but there is real reason for concern whenever someone who has never done agricultural work really has anthrax antibodies.

There is only one species of anthrax bacterium. In humans, it takes three forms of anthrax depending on where it enters the body. Pulmonary (lungs) is the least likely form to occur (you have to breathe thousands of spores right down into the lungs), but 99% fatal (to the non-vaccinated), unless you know you've been exposed and get injections of all the antibiotics you can stand _before_ symptoms appear. Cutaneous (skin) is slow-acting so there is time for antibiotics and vaccinations to work -- and usually wouldn't kill you anyhow. Intestinal (from eating infected meat) is also treatable with antibiotics, and doesn't seem to be a practical route for weapons use anyhow. (Unless your target is people so hungry they'll eat an obviously sick sheep...)

The letter senders no doubt intended that the powder be breathed into the lungs so it killed, but making powder that fine and stabilizing it so it doesn't clump in transit is difficult. Apparently the first letter was only partially successful (got one person, and didn't get past the nose in others), and the other letters were even less successful. Since the one pulmonary case was in Florida and the origin of the letters is thought to be Florida, it probably is a case of the powder clumping up with time so it probably wouldn't even become airborne in NYC. Someone who was handling that letter had a break in the skin, and the anthrax got in there.

Solution: irradiate all snail-mail

[Dr. Zowie]

Irradiation of hand-written mail would sterilize anything passing through the irradiator and leave no radioactive residue. It would mean an end to sending live things (I've traded sourdough via email) and radiation sensitive items like electronic parts or film would have to be marked specially or sent another way -- but routine irradiation would make it much, much harder to sneak live anything into someone's mail.

Re:Solution: irradiate all snail-mail

[The Fun Guy]

This is madness. I irradiate bacteria for a living... I couldn't find any data for anthrax spores, but for irradiation of Clostridium botulinum spores, the D-10 value (dose needed to kill 90% of population) is something like 2 kiloGray. The FDA requires 5 logs for a food treatment, and if you're talking about sterility, that's 9 logs, or 18 kGy, a dose transit time of hours, even in the most powerful irradiators available.

Paper is essentially wood pulp, and a stack of mail has a density about twice that of water, 2g/cc. How many thousands, millions of kilograms would need to be irradiated every week, and to get the right max/min ratios to assure kill, the doses would have to be up in the 40-50 range.

I wish I had moderator status to mod this suggestion as "-1 Knucklehead".

Re:Solution: irradiate all snail-mail

[geekoid]

Thats a little harsh. maybe Igorant.
When someone from outside your specialty has an opinion, I would suggest not calling them names.
I wisj I could moderate you to -1 grouchy.

You are right, we should not dismiss bio attacks

[FreeUser]

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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.

Actually, there are three kinds of anthrax (two of which have occurred in the United States, probably delivered by US Mail). However, all are caused by the same type of spores. The difference in only one of how the disease is contracted, i.e. through a cut or scratch in the skin vs. inhilation vs. consumption of diseased meat. Only one type of spore was delivered (though whether all the attacks were of the same strain or not remains to be determined).
You are absolutely correct about the viability of cantagious agents such as smallpox and plague, particularly given the fact that the terrorists are perfectly happy to die in the delivery of the product. Imagine bus boys sprinking a tasteless powder on meals in a restaurant. Several hundred people in a single city infected in a single night. Depending on the incubation period and period of contagion we could be looking at tens of thousands of infections, scattered around the country, before even a hint of the outbreak reaches the CDC.

We are, in many respects, lucky it was only anthrax, which is not contagious between people.

There is reason and evidence enough to be concerned. Panic stricken, no, but concerned, yes. Dismissing the notion of biological attack merely because the idea is unpleasant is silly -- attacks are possible, and delivery on a wide scale using unconventional means (infecting terrorists and having them move about through crowds, spraying infectious substances on doors or escalator handholds, dusting food in restaurants, etc.) are all eminently feasable and potentially deadly.
Some degree of reasonable vigilance and diligence is both constructive and warranted. Denial and blithe dismissal of the possibility are both foolish and unproductive.
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One flaw in the logic.

[BlueTurnip]

There is a flaw in Mr. Levy's reasoning. He claims that with people will switch from snail mail to e-mail to avoid the risk of getting anthrax in the mail.

But the person who determines the mail format (e- or snail) is the sender not the receiver, and I don't see how you would get anthrax sending mail (unless, of course, you were mailing anthrax, in which case e-mail wouldn't be an option anyway.)

So I don't see how the anthrax scare could be responsible for an increase in e-mail and decrease in snail mail.

By the way, how long do you think it will be before some hacker figures out how to send anthrax as an e-mail attachment. With all the security holes found in Outlook to date, it wouldn't surprise me if people start dying. Wasn't one of the Florida anthrax cases caused by bacteria found on the keyboard? Something to think about.

Re:One flaw in the logic.

[JohnG]

Well aside from sending poison as an email attachment, I agree completely. :)
Not only that but I trust my friends, family and anyone else I would email not to lace their letters with Anthrax. It's the junk mail that might be poison, and they are the ones contacting me, not vice-versa as you pointed out.
I don't use snail-mail at all for sending, but I fail to see how one person dying in Florida is going to cause people all across the country to be afraid of their friends.

That's what Ashcroft wants...

[jmorse]

...because now he can use his new super powers to deploy carnivore to your ISP (without a warrant, by the way) and spy on *all* your correspondence.

This terrorist hysteria is far too convenient for the reactionary elements of our country. I smell a rat.

Re:Killing mail? What about people?

[Detritus]

Influenza kills 10-40 thousand people per year in the United States. It may not be a big deal if you are young and healthy, but it is a serious illness for many people.

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[Jeremi]

Well, I keep trying to think up reasons why someone couldn't do a mass-mailing of anthrax, and I can't think of any. Businesses do mass-mailings all the time, what would stop someone evil from adding a few spores in with the spam? The toughest obstacle would be the production of that much anthrax, AFAICT.

Re:What if the diseases were on paper money?

[Graymalkin]

Smallpox is a pretty wellknown disease and while a few people might end up infected and maybe die it would die out pretty quickly. If something was really widespread the CDC could engineer Salk or Sabin like vaccine they could stick in Big Macs. You go to McDonald's and pick up a McCure for 1.99$ with fries and a Coke andblamo you're innoculated. To get decent infection rates you'd need to lace thousands of dollars worth of bills and put them in a bank. That's pretty ineffective because the money would probably remain in storage long after the virii's outdoor lifetime.

I thought email had already eclipsed snail mail

[leereyno]

I thought email was the primary means of written communication nowadays. Snail mail is of course still used for business letters, especially form letters, contracts, junk mail, etc. Email is the preferred medium for just about everything else though. Why would anyone want to send a paper letter to someone when they didn't have to? If you ask me, email ranks up there with the invention of the radio, television, telephone, and written language itself.

Replacing snailmail with email requires....

[Llanfairpwllgwyngyll]

...encryption technology. Reliable. Without backdoors.

Why?
- Because legally binding digital signatures are the only way to shift much snailmail to email.
- Because strong encryption is the only way to achieve anything like the same level of expected privacy

Oh, hang on - the USA was about to outlaw encryption, wasn't it? Never mind, better stick to snail mail.

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[Kanasta]

Not only that.

Given the hour+ wait times on telephone help numbers for just about every single company I need help from, and given that the same companies do NOT have any online feedback forms at ALL, it's actually a lot less painful to send them a letter and ask them to call you.

Plus those phone operators usually don't have the knowledge/power to help you and put you on hold again while they ask a supervisor!

end of USPS... more likely

[passion]

It's far more likely that the US Postal Service will be pushed over the brink of bankruptcy, as people will not want to send letters anymore. They've been in severe economic troubles for years now, and the government continues to bail them out as a service to the nation.

I see stamp prices rising to 50 cents (like payphone calls), or even a dollar or two.

No, but...

[ColGraff]

Fedex and UPS have better security in some ways, better email and web notification already of when packages are about to arrive, and are more expensive. All of these things make them less attractive to terrorists.

Re:I thought this was supposed to happen years ago

[unitron]

The stuff I get on eBay arrives sooner and for a lower fee via USPS than it does via UPS. If the only shipping offered is FedEx, I don't even bid because of the higher fees, might as well go to the store and buy it new.

What if this is just a test case?

[ColGraff]

Think about it. The idiots doing this - be they terrorists or regular homegrown wackos - would have a hard time knowing how effective their production process is. Wouldn't sending samples of the powder through USPS be a good way of testing effectiveness? It's not a large enough outbreak to cause the sort of massive response that might get them caught faster, but it WOULD make the news, so the perps could know what had worked and what didn't.

Based on that information, couldn't they then refine their process and launch a more massive attack? For example, consider "Sick Building" syndrome - basically, highly advanced circulation systems in office buildings and skyscrapers blowing germs all through the building. There was a Robin Cook novel (don't laugh) based on the idea of terrorists using building circulation systems to distribute anthrax powder - could this be done? I know, getting the powder fine enough to cause a really nasty case of inhalational anthrax is a bitch, but just making it fine enough to make a lot of people very sick ISN'T that hard. With a few thousand people in a building, people - delivery guys, contractors, janitors - walking in and out all day, how long would it be until someone realized there was a problem? And even though anthrax cannot be communicated directly from person to person, couldn't someone in the offivce building get the spores on their coat, and just track them all over the place?

Of course, there's a difference between making a few grams and a few kilos of anthrax powder, but it's not really a fundamental one - just one of scale. In fact, couldn't the relative crudeness of the anthrax powder simplify the production process? If it isn't fine enough to cause inhalational anthrax, then the terrorists (or whoever) might be willing to risk exposure to the powder, and just trust a course of high-powered antibiotics to keep them safe.

I am not an MD, or any sort of medical professional. In fact, I am simple a pimply-faced youth. But are any of these thoughts legitimate?

Re:What if the diseases were on paper money?

[einhverfr]

Yes, but that is in suicide attacks. It os one thing to have someone blow himself up, but to kill most of the people in one's organization with, say, smallpox is no way to win a war. These people see themselves as resistance fighters. They are not going to do something that will jeopardize their ability to carry on.

Electronic Sigs for Physical Packages

[DickBreath]

What we need is some kind of electronic signature for physical packages. This way, I can know which packages come from a trusted/known source. If I order something from Acme, I can at least tell that this package came from there.

You can then give more scrutiny to packages that you're [a] not expecting, and [b] don't come from a trusted source.

Furthermore, even in a corporate environment, shouldn't you perhaps be susipcious of a package that you're not expecting? What if you could notify the mail room that you're expecting packages from 1) Geek-Master, 2) Computer-Wizbang, and 3) Porn-World. Then when a package arrives, that isn't on your "expecte" list, they don't forward it to you without asking you if you are expecting this package. Unexpected packages should always be treated with more scrutiny.

A World War II love letter

[T1girl]

You are so right. After my grandfather died earlier this year at age 87, my grandmother found among his effects a love letter he had written in 1942. They had just been married in California three days before his unit was shipped out to the South Pacific. She had riddden the train out there by herself from her home in the Southeast U.S., a big undertaking in those days. The letter was rejected by military censors because it described the traditional merrymaking and ceremonies when the ship crossed the Equator. (No one was supposed to reveal their location; in fact, they were headed to New Caldedonia.)In the letter he talked about how much he loved her and that he was glad they were married, and how nothing, not even death, could ever separate them. Finding this letter after his death was a powerful comfort to her. (They had burned all their other love letters after the war to preserve their privacy) I don't think an ephemeral email could ever have topped this.

wunderful...

[samantha]

NOT. Let's get all those dirty potential terrorists (aka citizens) to switch to e-mail where we've established the infinite right of the Fed to snoop at will. In the meantime lets start an Anthrax scare and then pass it off as the next country we want to bomb the hell out of (Irag) being the perpetrator.

SIGH. The plot sucks but the people are infinitely gullible and utterly apathetic.

Depending of your goals

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

But they are very impractical as weapons of mass destruction.

For example, out of the thousands of people in the subway in tokyo where a bunch of wacko's sprayed sarin gas only 12 people were killed. 12 out of thousands. A success? I say no.

Yeah, but I can spell Shoko Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo, while I don't remember any manga or anime artist. Maybe it doesn't kill many people but it sure frightens them and helps making your name and ideas (distorted) well-known.

tracing

[csbruce]

I thought occurs to me that suspicious letters would be easier to trace back to their origins if each mail-sorting machine stamped letter it sorts with its unique identifier and the time of day. This would be better than just the city & date and would allow tracing back to approximate pick-up routes.