U.S. Postal Service To Develop 'Intelligent Mail'

securitas writes "The President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service's final report (PDF) has recommended that the USPS and the Department of Homeland Security develop sender identification technology for all U.S. mail. The commission said Intelligent Mail could bolster security and let consumers track the progress of all mail they send, which has been a top consumer demand in surveys. The report released July 31 reads, "Each piece of Intelligent Mail will carry a unique, machine-readable barcode (or other indicia) that will identify, at a minimum, the sender, the destination, and the class of mail... Intelligent Mail will allow the real-time tracking of individual mail pieces." Privacy advocates like the EFF and Center for Democracy & Technology are understandably concerned. The Final Recommendations are available in PDF format. More at Direct Marketers News and pro-privacy/civil liberties magazine Counterpunch." Jamie adds: This confuses me, because I read a news story in late 2001 which matter-of-factly explained that authorities would be contacting recipients of letters which went through a particular post office around the same time as an anthrax envelope. The implication, which I haven't seen any discussion of then or since, is that records are kept of every letter's travels through every post office. Anyone know anything about that? Update: mec does.

Comments

HA!

[MarkusH]

The implication, which I haven't seen any discussion of then or since, is that records are kept of every letter's travels through every post office. Anyone know anything about that?

Having worked at a post office clerk in a former life, I would say you must be kidding. I personally handled 25,000 letters a day, and I wasn't in automation, which does 50,000 letters per station per hour. You just don't have time to record any sort of information about first class mail.

What they probably meant is that they would check on letters with return addresses or was sent registered or certified. Registered, Certified and Insured mail DID get that sort of record keeping, for obvious reasons.

Re:Inconvenience is overwhelming

[pauljlucas]

They aren't a business, they're a government service. If they were a business they'd have been bankrupt decades ago.

However, they don't receive any money from the rest of the federal government (i.e., tax money from citizens). They are entirely self-sufficient and get their money exclusively from selling stamps and other services. Because they're a government service, they simply don't make a profit.

There is already s system partially in place

[Nylathotep]

I use to work for a company that sent tens of thousands of collection notices (outsourced). There was a postal program that they were wanting to beta for tracking mail. It wasnt real time, there was like a day delay, and I think the last point it could track was the destination P.O. but it did track the mail they sent out. The letter itself just had a little bit of extra coding in the same area they use for address change notification. (If you ever look at your mail from a large volume mailer, you'll see a #XYZXYZZ and sometimes a code after it. Those first 7 characters is the mailer, who will receive back the change of address information. The characters following is an optional user defined account number. That service is called ACS (Address Change Service). Its not much of leap after that to tag it for tracking. Anyway, the USPS does use optical scanners that can read and OCR the mail provided its automation ready. Not the greatest OCR because it can have issues with fonts. It wouldnt be a huge jump to be able to track the mail. What slows things down considerably is handwritten addresses which end up being psuedo-hand routed. If you want to avoid any tracking, my recommendation is go handwriting, I cant imagine them using the resources to retype and label every single piece of mail that doesnt hit automation standards.

USPS already has this

[dacarr]

It's called "express mail". They only update once per day, but one is able to track it to some extent. Ditto with registered mail, which has the added security of a lockbox on your article.

Ah, you don't need it there in one or two days or in a lockbox? Sorry, you can only confirm delivery with the other trackable services they offer - certified, insured, merch return receipt ("brown label"), delivery or signature confirmation (which are only offered for priority mail (which is pretty much just first class mail weighing more than 13 ounces)), etc. And again, those only update once per day.

Keep in mind that this is a government run institution, so their internal capabilities are pretty underwhelming - as such, the ability to track mail in real time (something that all private overnight couriers offer) would be far too overwhelming to the USPS. If you want to know how underwhelming, to give you an idea, last I checked our local processing and distribution facility in Anaheim Hills, there was a bank of XTs and PC286 machines whose purpose in life it was to handle the scanning of PostNET barcodes (you know, those dual-length lines you'll probably find near the address or bottom of the envelope on an article of snail mail you get if you're in the US.) Now just think, do you think that they're going to use a beowulf cluster of 286 and XT boxen to electronically store every article of mail that passes through this little rinky-dink P&DF (one fo two in Orange County, CA)? They pass tons of mail per day, they just don't have the power there, and if they're still running said boxes, do you think they're going to fix what ain't broke? This is the government we're talking about.

Said barcode, by the way, is a twelve digit code that pretty much boils down to which box the letter lands in, with an added check digit (each digit in the 11 digit portion is added together, check is n, where n is the next multiple of 10 minus the total of the added numbers). Hardly privacy invasion. Example: PO Box 62 in Fullerton 92836 would wind up being a barcode that reads "928360062626". (The total of the first eleven is 44, next mult of 10 is 50, ergo 50-44=6.)

Don't even ask how I know this shite, it's less painful.