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USPS Service Kiosks Taking Pictures of Customers
NW writes "According to FOIA documents obtained by EPIC new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days." IBM is the contractor behind the kiosks. Note that the kiosk is supposed to not complete the transaction if it determines the photograph has been compromised, so simply covering the camera is unlikely to work. As the cost of cameras and digital storage approaches zero, is it inevitable that every machine you interact with will take your photograph and store it?
Now let's all overreact as if there aren't cameras watching you in almost every store these days.
I don't know how anyone could claim that this is a necessary invasion of privacy. Taking pictures of us while we're sending mail? How often is the mail used in incidents of terrorism? Definitely not often enough to warrant photographing anyone who tries to send a package, and making it so that the machine doesn't work if you won't let your picture be properly taken.
Say your branch IS used for terrorist activities. Say a mail bomb, or anthrax threat. You can bet that if you're an arab you're going to be getting a visit from the FBI.
When you use these machines, you no longer have to wait in line and goto the counter to mail anything that weighs over 16oz; you can mail items up to 70lbs without ever having to see a postal clerk. I suspect its to keep people from mailing things that they shouldn't.
Since stamps are readily convertible into cash at face value or near, I would expect similar protection on stamp machines as I would for cash machines...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Could someone please explain why the government feels the need to have pictures of people on file like this? This is crazy.
I'm reminded of Aldous Huxley's 1984. This is the first step toward telescreens!
As tech savvy people, we need to get the word out about this and put these sorts of invasions of privacy to a stop. Making the citizen the object of state knowledge is the first step toward subjugation and elimination of freedom.
As an open source programmer, gun owner, and opponent of the current political order, I see this as a direct attack on my civil liberties that must be dealt with at once. The government has already tried to take our constitutionally protected rights to bear arms. Give them a couple years and Microsoft will be using their own private telescreens to weed out dissident hackers and sending them to "reprogramming camps" in the Carribean.
Well, I'll pass on the rum drink thank you! Get out there and stop these fascists!
A Proud Member of the Reality Oriented Community.
I'm unsure how I feel about this. On one hand, I value my privacy, and I dislike such intrusions.
On the other hand, I value the freedom of public places, and the freedom to take pictures of whatever you wish.
It boils down to an argument I had with a friend of mine a while back. We were in a public place, and a third party took a picture of him. He became furious, and demanded that the person take no more picture, nor distribute the one he had already taken. (The third party was not known to either of us; he wasn't just some stranger)
Now, I calmly explained to my friend that, since he was in a public place, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy, and that the other person could indeed take his picture whether he liked it or not. I cited prior cases and current laws regarding such things. (I'd recently done research for a class on just that topic.)
He became even more angry. "I don't care about his rights. He has a right to be an asshole, but that doesn't mean he should be! I don't want my picture taken!"
The guy took his picture again for good measure (nice shot of an angry face), and we all walked away chuckling.
To further muddy the waters, consider that digital photography, like p2p applications and globalization, is fast-growing and un-stoppable. There's no magical way to prevent someone from taking your picture. In the end, your picture can be taken whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do about it.
I don't believe that people have a right to privacy, but I do believe that people have a right to protect their privacy as best they can within the confines of reasonable law.
My friend, for example, could avoid public places and close his curtains, but he could not assault photographers.
Public places are just that: public. Whether you like it or not, people can see and record your actions.
Then again, this isn't just a person: it's a government entity. Should corporations/governments have the same rights as individual people? What if this were a private company, instead of the USPS? Would that make the issue any different?
What if it was just some guy standing near USPS boxes taking pictures of people?
It's a complicated issue with no simple answers.
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I am sick of people saying that any honest type of person wouldn't mind . Just because I'm an honest person doesn't mean I want pictures of every little thing I do kept by the government.
Say, you're an honest person, right? You wouldn't mind if the government kept logs of all your telephone conversations, would you? Or how about if they PUBLISHED the logs? I mean, you're honest and all, what do you have to hide? Say, since you're an honest person, would you mind if we put a bug on you and kept ALL your conversations?
This is not an example of a strawman fallacy, I'm simply showing how far this "you shouldn't mind it if you're not doing anything wrong" backward thinking can be taken.
I say that BECAUSE I'm an honest person, I don't want the government taking pictures of me when I send a package.
Even if you stand in line at a post office, there is a camera trained right on your face at the counter. This happens at practically every bank and government institute already. Nothing new here except a new tool for law enforcement.
Of course if you're into mail fraud or anthrax then this just might affect you, sorry.
I am supposed to tolerate something just because it's already been done? Thanks but no thanks. Just because we have been taught that we have no privacy in public doesn't mean we should have cameras trained on us at every turn.
Soon the cameras will be inside your house but it will be ok because they are everywhere else.
No, don't you realize that it's left-wing drivel because the poster fancies himself as some sort of paragon of right-wing virtue and, since he disagrees with something he seems to have read into the commentary, it must be left-wing drivel.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Sorry but that is the very definition of public. Not private. Great Britain keeps cameras on street corners to watch everything, but they're not as fun to hate are they?
Soon the cameras will be inside your house but it will be ok because they are everywhere else.
You keep preaching it and I'll keep waiting. We'll both die first, I assure you.
In case you didn't know/realize it, ATMs (Automated Teller Machines) have been taking your picture for over 20 years...
The retention times for those pictures vary with the institution, but it could conceivably be years...
I worked for Diebold back in the 80s and on an almost weekly basis I was tasked with operating the video gear for bank security and FBI investigators...
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It may be paranoid but it's not "left wing". Lefties would WANT the gubmint keeping track of everything. Gee, I thought Righties were against gubmint intervention in everyone's daily life. It's funny how the modern times have completely reversed the Left/Right concept.
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whackos. Etc, etc, etc.
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The left generally keeps out of people's private lives, but has a record of getting more involved in limiting the rights of organizations - businesses, etc. The right generally does have a record of interfering in people's private lives, proposing laws on sex, on what you do with your bodies, proposing funding for imposing a set of beliefs on people, etc, but is more liberal when it comes to the rights of organizations (except trade unions, they *hate* trade unions.)
When the left talks about systems to enlarge government, it tends to do so about replacing corrupt private groups with accountable public bodies (it may be flawed in doing so, but that's the mentality), rarely about making individuals change their private behaviour. When the right talks about systems to enlarge government, it tends to talk about more draconian penalties for breaking laws, about passing morality laws, and about making security more intrusive and bureaucratic.
When most on the left talk about reducing government, they talk about giving individuals rights. When the right in America talks about reducing government, they usually talk about giving regional bodies such as the States more rights, simply transfering rights from one government to another, in some cases giving those governments more extreme rights than the national government had. The perfect government for a left winger provides social security (pensions, welfare, possibly healthcare), a public, accountable, infrastructure, and some semblance of security and law and order, on a national or international level. The perfect government for the right provides military security on a national level, and draconian neo-fascist religion-imposing governments on a State level. I know which I'd prefer.
And yes, I'm aware there are those on the left who occasionally stray in to the territory of the right, but there equal numbers who do vice versa.
Always amuses me to hear right wingers pretend to be "pro-liberty". Kind of like the Confederate States didn't go to war over slavery, oh no, they were "pro-States Rights". No they *@$%ing weren't, they were panicing because a law they'd imposed on free states forcing free states to return escaped slaves was about to be overturned, a probable harbringer for an eventual end to slavery. What the hell was "pro-States Rights" about that?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
On the day of Smith's execution, the person who gave Smith $20 and a bottle of Thunderbird to send the package laughs a slow, evil laugh and heaves a sigh of relief.
The end. And everyone lived happily ever after &c. The solution to this problem is improved scanning of cargo to be loaded onto planes, not a wholesale violation of civil liberties. Either that or accept that having a free and open society has its dangers and consider those dangers as the price of a better quality of life.
-b.
The "I'm an honest person so, I don't care" argument is very old and most analogies, such as yours, are lost on such people. The best analogy I have heard so far is much simpler.
Ask them how they would feel if they were sitting in a restaurant and someone at the next table was staring directly at them the entire time. Most people find this very disconcerting and sometimes react with great hostility. That is how I feel when someone, the government or otherwise, is constantly recording my activities no matter where I go. I don't have to be hiding something to not like being stared at.
When presented with this scenario, most people begin to understand and are less likely to present the "I'm an honest person" retort.
Two different people doing bad things is not really a lot. More people are killed in hit and run accidents every day. So with your logic, everyone should wear cameras looking out for rogue cars?
c# - Wait, it's not pronounced coctothorpe?
The kiosks don't accept cash ... I'd expect more of an outrage over that than there is a camera(s) in the machine storing pictures.
The camera part is pretty obvious and easily spotted - it's a silver colored square that's difficult to miss. Contrast this with pinhole cameras that are often well hidden and difficult to spot - pinhole cameras are sometimes used in conjunction with a traditional camera(s) in ATMs, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more than one camera aimed at/inside some of those kiosks.
Ron Bennett
Boy people love that quote don't they. You know just because someone said something witty doesn't make it the truth. He was a person, people make mistakes, isn't it possible that he was wrong?
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Cool, then we should get rid of that law on taking pics down women's blouses, since of course there is no expectation of privacy in public places.
All the upskirt sites, rejoice!
As Dr. Strangelove said, it's not a deterrent IF YOU KEEP IT SECRET.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I understand surveillance and the idea of retaining data about an individual to aid in possible future prosecution, but why on a stamp machine? ATMs get tampered with, and the people using them get robbed while at the machine. I see the point of ATMs housing cameras.
Postal Stamp dispensers are not what I would consider a potential crime stop worthy of monitoring with a camera. Is this some anti-terrorism plan? We didn't have pictures of the 9/11 terrorists boarding the airplanes, but we still knew who they were pretty quickly after the attacks.
Funny what the government thinks up to protect me. Personally, I think Uncle Sam is getting a little senile in his old age.
Stick a piece of tape over the camera when you see it. Since this disables the machine, the lost revenue may force the postal service to reconsider their design.
wherever you go - malls, stores, gas stations you are being continually monitored and recorded. you have no idea how long they keep your face on file. what's all the cribbing about? get over it - the US is probably the only place wherever people talk the most about privacy and end up having the least!
BP http://www.card-central.com
...with this little word game, I quite simply don't.
I think it's entirely fucked up that one should be able to put up cameras wherever the fuck one wants as long as people are expected to stay dressed there. This kind of preemptive law enforcement appears to me akin to fingerprinting everybody and then wait for the crime.
Or, better yet, just take everybody's DNA profile at birth and give it to the police waiting for the child to become felon.
The way I view it is that if the police cannot maintain law and order without carpet camera coverage, they are either:
a) Underfunded (most likely)
b) Understaffed, or
c) Incompetent.
Of course some people are going to get killed, murdered, maimed and raped, but that is a result of the fact that we as humans can choose. Some choose to go down the roads that have victims.
Nevertheless, this idea that just because a place is 'public' that the police and politicians can do as they please with it to appear proactive, is absolutely ludicrous. I expect decency from the government, and this is a slippery slope leading to abuse.
Alternatively, if one has nothing to fear, why not have police robot snipers on the rooftops scouting for trouble? As we're heading down this road, we, the public, are dropping all the arguments that are there to protect our dignity as human beings, as well as to balance the rights of private citizens versus officials.
i agree that you don't have the expectation of privacy (as in getting nekkid) in "public" places, but what about the freedom to assemble? which goes with the assumption that you won't be persecuted for assembling in certain places/supporting particular causes. i think the common belief/expectation is that the general public should be able to go where they like in public without fear of being tracked/recorded/stalked/oppressed. i'm gonna be investing in a few balaclavas...
It is a philosophical quote: a political mindset. Marx had many quotes that are wrong in the frame of capitalism and Adam Smith generated many quotes that are contrary to a planned economy. Were they right or wrong? That depends on your own sociopolitical/economic concepts and goals.
For a truly free state the Ben Franklin was right on, but many (most?) people these days don't _want_ a truly free state: consider the millions of people who consider a prohibition of random searches and seizures to be a quaint idea that is little more than an idealistic suggestion. No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln considered the Constitution to be a rough guideline that could be suspended at will by a single individual (refer to his elimination of habeas corpus). Was that justified and necessary? Those who were thrown in jail without reason would probably say no, but everybody else had to decide for themselves.
So are those willing to sacrifice liberty for security undeserving of either? Personally I say that Ben was right smack spot on. But then again I don't believe in entitlements.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
the government won't be putting cameras in private spaces anytime soon
Not, but I'm sure it is a very Patriotic Act to gain remote controll of your web cam.
And to monitor your power usage (hey, you might be trying to grow some of that evil hydroponic devil weed).
And when there's a camera on every street light looking at liscense plates (gotta catch those red light burning bandits), it's gonna be a breeze to track your car... right to the mall, where every store front tracks your unique compilation of RFID tags and cameras from every angle watch your every move.
Each of these things, by themselves, aren't a big deal, right? So there's no reason (aside from tin-foilliness) to object to any of these small, incremental erosions of privacy, right?
Baby steps... baby steps.
You can't take the sky from me...
except if you are being monitored for "national security reasons", in which case no warrant is needed. Brought to you by the "Patriot Act", the thousands of pages of law your elected representative voted for but never read.
You can appeal to a secret court which sits at a secret place with secret judges, ruling based on secret precedents, with all proceedings kept secret. Have fun.
I realize you value your privacy, but keep in mind that public places are by definition not private, and that the government won't be putting cameras in private spaces anytime soon, as it would pretty much require the constitution to be gutted first.
The current administration has already proven that they have both the desire and the ability to drastically change our laws while keeping the public thinking that it is in their best interests for the government to do so.
Just wait for the terrorists to begin living right in a middle-class neighborhood acting as any other family. Then the government will want to curb the ability for "terrorists" to create cells right in our own backyards by slowing inching cameras closer and closer to our homes.
Remember, the government is just watching out for us. Right?
Yeah, bin Laden family name will guarantee your package can travel without inspection even when everyone else's is grounded.
Indeed the analogy is flawed but, it does cause most people to have have a greater understanding of why supposedly honest people, with nothing to hide, resent constant surveillance.
Additionally, I personally, don't have any problem with the USPS system. These machines use credit and debit cards to perform their functions and having a photograph of the person performing the transaction is simply a means of preventing fraud, just as it is with the ATM.
I do, however, dislike the increasing amount of surveillance in general. "Security" cameras, facial recognition systems and other systems are proliferating at, what I deem to be, an alarming rate. These systems are either specifically intended to track individuals or could easily be re-purposed to do so and they are increasingly "everywhere". Perhaps I do suffer paranoia, as the AC stated earlier. Regardless, it is a means of control that I resent.
To offer another flawed analogy, try this scenario. You are an honest person with nothing to hide. You go to a party at a friend's. While there, you socialize, dance, drink, commit a faux pas or two and generally have a good time. You don't make an ass of yourself or do anything that you shouldn't, you just loosen up and have a good time.
Now, suppose that someone conspicuously set up a video camera in the corner to capture everything on tape. Would you still behave in the same manner and have as good a time, or would it make you feel uncomfortable?
Are you a great dancer? Most people are terrible dancers, despite what they might think, and wouldn't care to have their efforts documented. What if you spilled your drink on yourself? It isn't really a big deal, similar things happen to everyone all the time but, would you like it recorded for you friends to laugh at for years to come? It is my opinion that most people would feel uncomfortable about having the party documented like this. Just look at how people stiffen up and conversation stops when Uncle Bob swings the camcorder in their direction. Of course there are extroverts out there that truly don't care or even enjoy it. These are the people that we see, making fools of themselves, on America's Funniest Videos.
Some people feel the same discomfort about public surveillance. Most people say they don't care about it because they are not consciously aware of it happening. They do not see the "hidden" cameras. I see lots of them, everywhere I go. There are probably even more that are truly hidden that I don't see. What are the images being used for? How long are they retained? Who has access to them?
Knowing all this, can you honestly say that your behavior is not altered, in anyway, by public surveillance? If your behavior is being altered, do you like the idea that someone else is controlling you?
The problem is that technology is shifting what it is feasable to monitor, and we as a society have not come up with any common sense of responsible use of monitoring technology.
Before cameras and CCTV, there wasn't a strong need for an expectation of privacy in a public place. It wouldn't be feasable for the police to track everyone's movements, or for store employees to watch each customer individually. And no, the "no right to privacy in public" rule is not true. If someone followed you for many blocks down the street, you would be very suspicious of their motives.
With CCTV, there wasn't a great deal of concern since most cannot be watched all the time. A bored security guard may glance at it now and then, but it's still not feasable to track everyone all the time.
However, with computer processing, it has (perhaps) become possible to be much more invasive of privacy. A store could monitor where each customer walks, identify who they are when they enter, their address (if they have a customer loyalty card), and what they buy - then correlate it with missing inventory, marketing design, etc. So, maybe this worries you, or maybe you say "hey, I like advertisers, and they'd never mistake me for a shoplifter by accident". But, once we have such large databases, how do you guarantee that they don't get abused? Should we, as a society, accept that someone can look up how many bags of Kibbles & Snouts you bought on Dec. 21, 2004....fifty years from now? We're entering a system where there's no physical limitation on collecting any data on anyone...and in general, we're not thinking about what impact this could have if misused. These postal kiosk cameras may not be any more intrusive than store cameras or ATM cameras - but why did it take a FOIA request to find out? And what if they change their minds?
Sorry but that is the very definition of public. Not private.
So you alright with cameras in public restrooms then? Most places are public to use but private in the sense of information disclosure. When I am on the street, only people who already know me recognize me and link whatever I am doing to my identity. I keep my privacy in regard to strangers and people watching security cameras for criminal activity. Unless they post MPEGs of juicy bits on the web, which happens to be illegal.
On the other hand, post office kiosks link my picture to at least address of the recepient and probably my own identity, as they will likely require use of credit card of driver license with a mag stripe. Any judge can issue a court order to disclose it. If you are a witness in a criminal trial, do you really want the would to know you are taking "anonynous" HIV tests every year because defense is trying to undermine your credibility.
Oh sure, I don't want anonymous pictures in public restrooms either. But for most activities, your privacy is safe if there is no link to your identity.
There is a clear distinction between public and private space.
First, I disagree with the principle of your statement, I don't believe that distinction is all that clear. Second, it is entirely possible to revisit the distinction and redefine it.
In the most famous example of this, the Quebec Supreme Court ruled that cameras in public spaces were a type of privacy invasion because the knowledge that you were being recorded diminished a citizen's ability to enjoy the public space.
(I can't find the citation at the moment.)
There is clearly another way of looking at things. It is not necessary for us to accept the "public space" excuse as irrepairable.
Realistically, most people in the U.S. are more likely to experience problems due to misguided and overly zealous government attempts to "protect" them, than to be directly affected by a terrorist attack. It's not a question of which gets your heckles (sic) up more, it's a question of which is most likely to have a direct effect on you. The answer to the latter question is "Homeland Security".
Make no mistake, one of the primary purposes of Homeland Security is to cover the government's collective ass when the next attack happens. "We tried everything - from a color-coded warning system, to forcing mothers to drink their own milk at airports, right down to photographing everyone who buys a stamp! What more could we have done?"
The problem with giving up liberty for security is that there's no exchange rate between the two -- you can't trade one for the other. Don't confuse a bureaucratic immune response with an intelligent response to security threats.Actually, depending on your point of view, some statements can be both right and wrong at the same time. "This sentence is false" can be thought of as being both right and wrong.
Plus, the camera in this kiosk takes one picture (presumably), so it's more like a stranger briefly glancing at you. Not at all the same as being stared at.
Except the Kiosk stores the picture for 30 days and the person glancing at you does just that, glances at you.
Now, if he glanced at you and then drew your portrait...