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

UK mail

[danormsby]

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.

P.O. already keeps image of each envelope

[mec]

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.