USPS To Provide Personal Identity Certification

Zentalon writes "The United States Postal Service has announced that it will provide In-Person Proofing (pdf) to physically authenticate individuals before a digital signature certificate is issued to that person. This has a bunch of interesting ramifications; for instance, I could create a simple spam filter that only accepts mail from individuals and organizations that have an authenticated certificate. It could also allow for more secure financial transactions. Anyone know if any other national postal services are planning the same thing?" Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ...

Comments

Deutsche Post did that

[sebmol]

Shortly after digital signatures became legally equivalent to regular signatures in Germany, Deutsche Post (the German postal service) offered digital authentication. Last time I heard about it, it was being scrapped due to a lack of demand.

Don't blame just the USPS, geez

[EvilStein]

"Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ..."

No, not very funny. Rather clueless. Did you know that the USPS has domestic airlines carrying mail?
I can't even count the times I've found stray (or lost) bags of mail in aircraft. One of my many job functions when I worked for a ground handling company was to make sure that mail for Anchorage actually got *on the right aircraft* and didn't wind up on a flight to Miami. We'd actually check behind the belly toolbox on that old nasty DC-8 looking for mail bags.
Ever seen a 55' truck back up to a DC-6? Yes, folks. Bulk loading 33,000lbs of mail into a friggin DC-6 bound for northern Alaska.

Sure, mail gets lost sometimes, but it's not always the fault of the USPS.

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[Martin Blank]

Delivery of a two-pound, 20"x15"x2" package from California to London:

UPS: $66 (2-5 days)
FedEx: $65 (4-5 days)
USPS: $15 (4-6 days)

You can guess who I went with. It took four days to get there.