Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by Hemos on from the tracking-my-santa-claus-letters dept.

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.

5 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. RFID by DigiShaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, I guess RFIDs will be embedded into paper at some point in the future I would think.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  2. UK mail by danormsby · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Mail in the UK often bears red dotted bar code that give key info to automated readers on where the letter is supposed to be going. The dots get put there by an OCR reader and saves having to re-OCR everything.

    Not sure how you are going to identify the sender AND have postboxes where anyone can post a letter.

    --
    Omnis amans amens
  3. USPS already has some systems that help track mail by EriktheGreen · · Score: 3, Interesting
    USPS already has some systems that help track mail, including the one that puts those little bar-code like things at the bottom edge of the envelope (they're more or less translations of zip code information).

    Didja know that USPS uses Linux systems to do OCR on address information? It's the only serious use of Linux at USPS, mostly due to anal government service employees who barely managed to finish high school and who can't be fired due to union seniority.

    Actually, USPS has been looking into a mail tracking system since just after 9/11 (I worked there on and after 9/11 for a while) and this report will just help them get funding for that system.

    Really, this isn't a terribly bad thing. If you think about it, it just verifies what post office the mail came from. The information about the sender is going to be the information that the sender presented at the post office of origin for verification.... to a non-trained government employee who probably could make more cash working at mcdonalds (no bull, I have a great deal of respect for those letter carriers... out in all weather, and most get paid about $20k a year).

    I also can't imagine that there will be human checks of the sender information in a lot of cases, since there are drop boxes all over the place for mail, and there's no way they can either remove those or staff them with people.

    Yet another easily subvertable federal system meant to make us safer, but really just another way to spend gobs of your tax dollars on things we need less than more prisons and better schools.

    Erik

  4. Some people still rely heavily on Snail Mail... by thung226 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work for an organization that sends information to over 20k low income families all over the US. One of our biggest complaints here in the office is a family claiming stuff must have been "lost in the mail", so we end up spending thousands of dollars just resending the same information to them throughout the year. This system would help us keep our records up to date and cut our overall mailing costs. Plus, I suspect it might keep people in our program longer and reduce our attrition rates. I'd be curious to find out how many families we lose based solely on the fact that we don't have the right address for them or some Mail center in Arizona or Alaska seems to always 'lose' our mail.

    --
    -n-
  5. P.O. already keeps image of each envelope by mec · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some more link whoring ...

    Postal Theory: Mail Sorter Acted as Mill for Anthrax

    Read down towards the bottom:

    Potentially telltale mail was identified using masses of computer data recorded as each letter entering the highly automated sorting centers is scanned for an address, given identifying bar codes recording its time and place of posting, and sent on its way.

    The data include digital images of almost every hand-addressed envelope, which optical scanners cannot easily read, postal officials said.

    The big question is: will the post office stop delivering mail that doesn't have a valid return address?

    In the time of the Unabomer, the PO stopped delivering mail that weighs over one pound and came from a collection box. Mail that weighs over one pound has to be brought in person to a post office.