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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?
How about wearing GWB rubber mask? or even Nixon for that matter.
Return of the ex-presidents.
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Now let's all overreact as if there aren't cameras watching you in almost every store these days.
A privacy issue my g/f will care about. She hates having her photo taken!
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Clearly this is simply because USPS wants to make their own version of hotornot
The stamps were printed with my portrait on them.
I think the 30 day storage timeframe is pretty optimistic.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
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.
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?
Yes, it is inevitable. Dammit.
Thank God the cost of anal probes and specimen storage is not approaching zero.
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-kgj
As far as the ATM example goes, that's different. We know that the ATM is taking pictures to protect us. It's the bank's security system implemented on our behalf. It means if someone steals our card and uses it, there's a greater chance of catching the culprit.
The Post Office situation is a little bit wierd. We've never had a system that guarantees a picture of the sender will be associated with a particular bit of mail, still more that the sender would be unaware of this. It has implications, good and bad. It's a little disconcerting the implementers were so secretive about it that it required a FOIA request to get the information.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The kiosks in question aren't stamp machines (which have been around for 40 years or more), but a complete self-service post office. You can buy postage, mail letters, mail small packages, etc. It takes credit cards, paper currency and coins.
In other words, it *is* a lot like an ATM.
I worked on the software (the retail bit of it, not the bit that takes photographs - when I was on the project, that bit wasn't even there) for this piece of kit.
We had some great fun with the coin machine. We had bags of coins plus the coin/bill acceptor for testing. When work had been going on too long, I used to like emptying the acceptor of everything but pennies, then buying a 1c stamp with a $20 bill. The thing went off like a machine gun firing out pennies, it was friggin' cool.
It also did a bit of a Las Vegas style jackpot dispense with all of them full - in change it could give (IIRC, it was 1998 when I worked on the software for the pilot) quarters, nickels, pennies and Susan B dollars. (It didn't dispense dimes. I was told because dime dispensing is unreliable, and the machine tended to choke on them). Again, 1c stamp with a $20 bill, and Ker-ching - it simultaneously fired coins from all four coin stores.
At least I worked out what to do with surfeit pennies - instead of keeping them in a jar or bagging them up and paying one of those machines to count them, you can spend 1c coins in the postal vending machines (or could when I was working on them). Great way of getting rid of your shrapnel.
BTW: Whenever you take a package to a post office, if it's got IBM kit, you're using my code. I wrote the scale driver (amongst other things).
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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.
There is a clear distinction between public and private space. In public, the government can put up cameras because it is a public space and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. In private space, only the property owner or a person designated by the owner can put up a camera. They are well within their rights to do this, provided they don't put a camera in an area where an individual would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as a restroom stall. The police cannot put a camera in a private space, or aim a camera into a private space, without a warrant. 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.
Terrance: Oh Celine Dion, what have you done? I was going to make us a family again, but now you've slept with Ugly Bob.
Celine Dion: What do you mean? Why are you calling him Ugly Bob?
Phillip: Because that's his name you stupid bitch.
Celine Dion: You told me your name was Handsome Bob.
Terrance: Look at him Celine Dion.
Phillip: Behold, his horrible face.
Celine Dion: Oh my God, he's heinously ugly, and I am pregnant with his child.
Terrance: What? Noooooo.
Celine Dion: I'm going to have a freak-baby.
Phillip: Oh, the humanity.
As Dr. Strangelove said, it's not a deterrent IF YOU KEEP IT SECRET.
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When those kiosks went in to the local Post Office, they had a greeter who explained their function and features. It was explicity part of the "script" that the transaction was accompanied by a photograph for security purposes.
Seems to me someone needs some PayPal donations to subsidize their fight for your freedom so they announced this as an FOIA issue. Oh, what do you know, donations are the first item on their main page!
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"
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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.
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Back in college, I had a gas mask I had picked up at an army surplus store. You have no idea how much fun you can have walking around in public wearing a gas mask. I think the best was when I walked up to the Information desk at a book store and asked if they had any books on paranoia.
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