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.

The Post Office? Seriously?

[Just Some Guy]

Of course, your certificate will be snailed to you on the back of a postcard. 10% of them will be lost. Complaints will be handled by people too slow to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And although they'll only cost $0.37 to start, their price growth will outstrip inflation. When a competing company starts doing the same things with better service and prices, they'll whine that they're losing business and raise prices again.

Other than that, I'm sure it'll be great. When will my local branch (literally in a small town in Nebraska) have their PKI training day?

Sounds like...

[Klev]

Sounds like an opourtunity to charge us. This seems a lot like the door opening for the postal service's charging to send emails. Why else would they be offering to develop this amazing technology? To make our lives better?

Re:Sounds like...

[t0ny]

The post office proposed offering email as a provided service long ago. But your complain has little merit, because many spam-stopping plans already propose adding a "cost" to email, even if it is a nominal fee such as $.01/message. A corportation would shrug at having to pay $8/day for email, but would a bulk mailer sending millions of messages per hour?

The problem with people complaining about paying is that, for things that are worthwhile, its not about the money. Eventually you will have to pay for something, you are better off spending money on what you want, as opposed to getting what you dont want for free.

Is this the start of it?

[Blaine Hilton]

Is this how they are going to roll out a national database system? Saying it will help in the fight against spam and forgery? Not that I'm "totally" against such a system, but it seems like they are misrepresenting the true nature of this.

Re:Is this the start of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this how they are going to roll out a national database system? Saying it will help in the fight against spam and forgery?

Look, anything that can possibly improve the situation that someone picking up my social security number and date of birth and a few other simple facts about me can end up stealing my identity is a good thing. We're increasingly reliant on computers and digital information yet we have no decent national digital signature infrastructure in place. It is a very sad state of affairs when my mother's maiden name can still be expected to be used as some kind of secure authenticator to protect my bank account information.

Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[DaRat]

Just a comment about the "Funny, they don't seem to always know where to deliver so-called first-class mail ..." remark.

Have I had mail lost? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes.

But, think about how amazing it is about what the USPS does right. It moves billions of pieces of mail every day, and almost all of it (percentage wise) gets to where it should be going in spite of the fact that not every piece of mail can be automatically routed and multiple people end up looking at it at one point or another. And, in spite of the price increases, I can still send a letter anywhere in the US for 37c and it'll usually get there within a 2-3 days.

Sure, dealling with the post office is a pain occasionally, and they do lose some mail. But, when I think about the scope and scale of what they do right, it does boggle my mind.

Re:Amazing what the USPS does do with mail.

[jdcook]

Mod parent up. I love how /. editors make fun of the post office for an almost imperceptible error rate in billions of pieces of mail but cannot even post a hundred stories in a row (I'm guessing) without a dupe or other obvious error.

Seriously.

[American AC in Paris]

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

I hear ya there.

The USPS could learn a thing or two about accuracy and error-prevention from Slashdot.

fnord

Re:Seriously.

[DMDx86]

If Slashdot ran the post office, you'd receive four copies of the same letter or package, often on the same day.

Not only that, Michael would open your mail, insert spelling mistakes, and write [ed. note - no it isn't] by stuff in your letters

Certificates

[KeyserDK]

I recieved my official danish digital certificate(x.v509) by getting two pin codes. One via snail mail and the other when I ordered the certificate via the web. Both had to be typed in to recieve the certificate via mail.

Seems pretty secure to me.

The only thing it works for so far is tax stuff, and mail.

Ramifications

[the_pointman]

The USPS' idea for certified proofing for digital signatures is in the right direction for securing financial transactions, helping to prevent spam (in the case of accepting emails only e-signed from registered people), but initiating such a project will bring the US closer to a National ID card.

By attaching services such as online tax refunds or filings, the public will be /required/ to register with the USPS in order to take advantage of the online filings with the IRS. Sure, but what if people just file in paper? Without a doubt, the government will then ad a fee to paper filings to encourage taxpapers (everyone) to register with the USPS service.

Let me see your papers, please!

USPS User Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

User enters post office. Waits 20 minutes in line. Gets to front of the line.

Agent: (slowly) May I help you?
User: I'd like to get a certified digital ID.
Agent: (slowly) Okay, please go to the back of the room and fill out form 2219. When you're done, please bring it back to the front.
User searches a while
User: Where's the form?!
Agent: (slowly) If it's not there, we're out. You can always call 1-800-ASK-USPS for more information.
User: But they told me to come here! You have to verify my ID!
Agent: (very slowly) I'm sorry, you'll have to speak to the manager. He's gone for the day. You'll have to come back Monday at 10 am.
User: AAAAIIIEEEEEEE!!!!! runs screaming from the post office

Yeah, this will be a big hit.

Re:The Post Office? Seriously?

[Just Some Guy]

Definitely Verisign. The USPS doesn't think it's funny when they accidentally release your property to someone else (see also: sex.com). In fact, rumor has it that having the Postal Inspectors storm your house is not as funny as it sounds (i.e., 30 guys in attack armor carrying assault rifles vs. 5 guys like Cliff from "Cheers").

I need a vacation... Oh! I'm starting one! :-)

[HarveyBirdman]

The United States Postal Service has announced that it will provide In-Person Proofing

I swear on my grandmother grave that I saw "In-Person Shooting" when I first read it.

A few less FPS games for me, I think. More Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing for a while.

Well, I have a 5-day weekend ahead of me. You all play nice.

But the USPS won't issue the certs, correct?

[Just Some Guy]

After reading the article (hey! There's a first for everything!), it seems as though the USPS will only be providing official ID verification to 3rd-party CAs who will use it to determine whether they, not USPS, will issue the cert. In other words, the USPS will only be vouching for you to the CA - they won't be authenticating you to the public at large.

Great. Just great. Now I get to deal with the Post Office and Verisign when I want to lock down an SSL site.

Please shoot me.

Postal employees better than you think

[SuperBanana]

Complaints will be handled by people too slow to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I repeat the following story every time I hear someone insult a postal worker.

One day I needed to get something in the mail THAT day, and I wasn't able to get down to the post office. I caught the mailman as he was driving up to the mailbox, and handed him the letter. Except I didn't have enough postage- I had forgotten about the rate increase that had happened recently.

Now, if the guy had wanted to be an asshole, he could have refused it- but he said "you got any change? I'll put the extra postage on it when I get in" I had a quarter on me, gave it to him, and was happy that I had probably still spent less money than the gas it would have taken to get to the post office and back.

What bowled me over was that the next day, he parked, came to the door, and handed me change. I was blown away that he bothered for such a small amount, and had expected him to (rightfully, far as I was concerned) pocket the 15-20 cents for the trouble of having to 'buy' and slap on an extra stamp for me.

NOW, if you want to see how patient postal employees are, see what these guys did. It is incredibly funny(the part about the sender trying to argue they should get money BACK for shipping a balloon is hilarious), but there's a serious message in their absurd little experiment(which involved shipping bricks, hammers, dead fish+seaweed, etc), and I'll include their conclusion here:

First, this experiment yielded a 64% delivery rate (18/28), an almost two-thirds success rate. (For our purposes, "delivery" constituted some type of independent handling by the USPS and subsequent contact regarding the object, regardless of whether we got to see or keep the object or whether it arrived whole.) This is astounding, considering the nature of some of the items sent. This compares with a 0% rate of receipt of fully wrapped packages from certain countries of the developing world, such as Peru, Turkey, and Egypt. Admittedly, those were international mailings, and thus not totally comparable; nevertheless, the disparity is striking.

Second, the delivery involved the collusion of sequences of postal workers, not simply lone operatives. The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.

Finally, our investigation team felt remorse for some of its experimental efforts, most particularly the category "Disgusting," after the good faith of the USPS in its delivery efforts. We sought out as many of the USPS employees who had (involuntarily) been involved in the experiment as we could identify, and gave them each a small box of chocolate.

We, and all scientists, owe a debt of gratitude to these civil servants. Without them, we would have had but little success in pushing the envelope.

Old News, but Interesting

[shiflett]

I was actually one of the developers of this project (three years ago), and it is funny to see that they are finally "announcing" it.

The idea is simple, and it is actually a useful service that the USPS has the resources to provide, if they actually go through with it. Whereas SSL only authenticates the server (among other things, of course), the allocations for client authentication in SSL are optional and very rarely used. All the client needs for this is its own digital certificate, just like the server has its certificate.

So, to get an SSL certificate, we (whether we like it or not) trust the various CAs to make certain that they are granted to the rightful owners. When it comes to client certificates, the scope of the problem becomes much larger, because you are authenticating people rather than domains. If you fail to properly identify someone before issuing the digital certificate, the point is lost.

The USPS has post offices all over the US (their only country of concern in this case), and this fact provides the perfect platform for authenticating people. Just as with Passports, you must prove your identity in person before being authenticated.

How do the pieces fit together? Well, it is fairly simple, but it involves a lot of existing systems, some of which are aging. You register online (providing much personal information, including what forms of ID you will be bringing with you). This generates a letter that is sent to your address (verifying your address in the process). You take this letter to the post office, and if you pass the in-person proofing, the clerk scans the barcode on the letter. This scan makes its way back to the system in about 24 hours, and then your digital certificate is generated. An email is sent to let you know, and you can then download it from the Web site after logging in.

At any rate, I still think the general idea is a good one, and this would be a useful service for a lot of people. I hope it is successful.

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.