Slashdot Mirror
Finland To Try Scanning Snail Mail
will_die writes "In an effort to cut carbon emissions and reduce costs, Finland's postal company, Itella, has begun a pilot program wherein snail-mail letters are converted into PDFs and made viewable online by their addressees, instead or in advance of physical delivery. The effort is volunteer only — a little over 100 people and around 20 business as of last month — but it has already sparked concerns in Finland about privacy and government overreach. The volunteers will have images of all their letters viewable on a computer or phone. The postman will still arrive twice a week to deliver the scanned letters, as well as any packages or attachments. Additionally, the postal service will filter out junk mail."
... but no one cares. (since it's too long to title as such.)
This seems like Zumbox on crack.
While the idea of receiving mail digitally has some appeal to me, forcing everyone to receive mail originally sent in a non-digital format as a set of 1s and 0s is... not quite the best idea.
I wouldn't mind receiving my electric, water, and cable bill as a digital sending each month (and I already do via email), but certain things (bills from collections agencies come to mind) are things that I, and ONLY I need to see.
Now, with something like this, if the ability to respond electronically to the mail were there and available to us, even if there's some sort of digital postage (at a reduced cost, preferably, if we choose to not send a dead tree copy of the same letter) that was needed, maybe it would start to appeal to more.
Best case for that would be when my doctor sends me paperwork to fill out before I come in. If I can log into a secure server, receive the forms, type in the data (memo: we need to have something other than Adobe for forms, ffs. Plain old HTML forms should be fine), and submit that electronically...
If the doctor needs a dead tree version at that point, they can print it.
april fools...
Why not? What comes in by snail mail today?
And they're filtering out the junk mail!
I guess everyone has to GPG and OCR their private letters now ...
With the exception of contracts and suchlike (which would obviously be outside this scheme), I can't think of anything sensitive that I receive by snail mail these days.
Everything I really care about the security of (bank statements, personal messages etc) comes over the web, via TLS.
Posted 1 day ago, is this a late april fools joke?
If I could get my actual mail scanned and delivered by e-mail that would be awesome. There are some bills I have that don't have online pay functions yet, and regardless of privacy (since I already sold it to google a while back) this would actually be more private and secure then actually having it delivered. My mail gets stolen from time to time. (yes, I RTFA and I know they still deliver the scanned messages too)
The postman will still arrive twice a week to deliver the scanned letters, as well as any packages or attachments.
Twice a week? Post is delivered daily here..
If it was only delivered twice a week it would be even more useless!
Finland is really a very small country population-wise, but decently sized in landmass. Under 6M people in the 8th largest country in Europe. This has to make mail distribution very expensive. Add in the weather (I've been to northern Finland in February- well below 0 with snow banks over your head) and I can see why they'd want to minimize or eliminate physical delivery. Its barely economical in the US, I can't see how it could be there.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I call bull on the "effort to cut carbon emissions" - this is purely about the costs and the carbon emissions are a byproduct (gas costs money). When I send a letter, I mean to send a letter. Not an electronic document. Now, this does not happen very often, so usually, I do communicate via email. I don't need the post office tampering with the mail. Furthermore:
"This (secure digital mailbox) is totally different from e-mail. It is comparable to web banking," said Tommi Tikka, development director at state-owned Itella, which runs the Nordic country's postal system.
So people's mail is stored on some server, probably totally unencrypted and requiring only a login to get in. Cue the hacking and government abuse - I can imagine it now; "We don't need a warrant, it's already in this database. People have no expectation of privacy when sending letters." (IANAL - or rather, "I Am Not A Finnish Lawyer" and really have no ideas of the laws in that country).
Luckily, this is all on a volunteer basis (for now), and I think from a cost-cutting perspective, it does make sense to reduce the number of deliveries by postman for non-express mail to twice a week since the volume of mail has probably shrunk (I have no statistics for this, solely based on personal experience).
already sparked concerns
Has it? Really? Don't `they' publish the annual income of every citizen on-line in Finland, as a matter of public record? Or is that some other European whitebread workers paradise? Either way I seriously doubt there are any actual fins concerned about this.
Political Dissident: Hey, I sent out my anti-government newsletter to 1000 people. But only a few got it. What gives?
Government: I guess it was mis-tagged as junk mail. Our bad. Sorry it's already been deleted. No, we don't back up junk mail.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Old idea, new implementation.
PDFs instead of film negatives.
"all their letters viewable on a computer or phone"
I only have a dial-tone phone. How am I supposed to view my letters?
Hey, I was only kidding. You don't have to MOD me "Troll" . . . again . . . .
I thought the postal service MADE money from junk mail?
I'm a Finn. I've already got a filter for spam snail mail. I wrote "Ei mainoksia, kiitos" (no adds, please) to a sticker and placed it on top of my mail slot. The only post I get is postcards from friends and relatives twice a decade or so. Everything else is already digital..
Swiss Post and other Post Companies have been providing these types of services to corporate customers for quite a while now. It's all part of Business Process Outsourcing or adding value to your customers.
Don't know about Finland, but I mostly use the mail system for packages and magazines. Wouldn't be very happy if service on those items was cut back to a couple of times per week.
This kind of service is already implemented by the national post office in Portugal for a long time.
It's called ViaCTT.
How are emissions cut when the letters are still delivered? Wouldn't this actually cost more energy since they have to both hand deliver the original mail and use up power scanning and posting the copies? Not to mention the added labor hours required to do so. That looks like a cost increase, not a decrease. And, if they have enough spare employees to where they can actually spend time doing this, would it not be more efficient cost-wise to either just reduce those employees' hours(or move them to part-time) or lay them off altogether?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Hey, if you want a guaranteed private mail service then you should be willing to pay more for it. If there really is that demand out there then the free market will set the price and folks who care will voluntarily comply.
We pay all our bills on line - barely any incoming bills, no outgoing checks - I have written maybe 3 checks in the last 5 years. e-mail has replaced most of our correspondence. The only thing that shows up in my mailbox is adverts and the magazines I subscribe to, and very occasionally stuff like property tax assessments and 1099s etc.
How about the postal service let me opt out of getting junk mail delivered? I keep the garbage bin by the mailbox for a reason - only about 5% of what shows up in my mailbox actually survives the walk up the driveway to the house...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Catchy name!
....I'll scan it myself and send a PDF. Volunteer only tends to turn into the way it's done very quickly if costs can be cut at all. Glad I'm not Finnish. Tell your postmaster to stop smoking weed.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Wow you believe anything. It was an April's Fool joke in a local newspaper Kaleva.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kaleva.fi%2Fuutiset%2Fkirjeiden-skannaus-herattaa-tunteita%2F847518&sl=fi&tl=en
You're a lucky man, Here in the UK it's part of the national post service's business model to accept money from spammers to deliver junk mail. So we get loads of junk mail whether we like it or not. The postal workers recently went on strike because they didn't want to deliver junk mail to people but they got told by the employers they have to, and so have had to back down and accept they must deliver it if they want to keep their jobs.
The comments on here referring to the UNITED STATES government are amazing. I know most people don't RTFA, I know most people can't even be bothered to finish reading the summary.. but the FIRST WORD OF THE TITLE OF THE POST IS FINLAND.
I would expect this kind of reading comprehension fail in a youtube comments section, but not Slashdot.
Some full-service private mailbox facilities will do this for you to - they scan all the snail mail that arrives for you and then email the scans to you. Convenient for maintaining a mailing address if you are on the road a lot or are otherwise far away from your mailing address.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If I recall correctly, it stated that an email system should inter-operate with the physical postal delivery system in both directions. So one could write a physical letter, put an email address on the envelope, place it in the post box, the postman would collect it and the local delivery office scan in your letter, ocr it and then email it to the addressee. In the other direction, you could specify a physical street address in your email header, the system would send it to the nearest postal office to that address, who would print it out, place it in an envelope and deliver it.
birthday cards, valentines, ...
Just let Nokia do it and it will be legally OK.
Then I could choose - I can give my virtual mailing address to utilities that still insist on sending me paper bills, and keep my actual address for 'sensitive' material.
As someone who does personal business in 3 countries and moves relatively often, I'd love to have a service like this.
The second phase, of course, is to interface to the mail senders as well, offering to take PDF files and the print and send them. Or if the recipient is taking scanned bills, just forward the PDF and save a tree.
I'm also a Finn and I use the "no ads please" message on my mail slot, and I seldom get any junk snail mail. The only spam that is slipping through are spam mails that are addressed directly to me in an envelope. I think such envelopes should class ass a criminal act of spamming by the way.
UK postal workers: the strike was a move in the right direction; no-one should need to put up with that! Please go on strike again, and demand to only volunteerly deliver spam-snail-mail, and DON'T take no for an answer. If no agreement => resign, they'll cave in eventually (or get a more noble job than spamming people... isn't spam activity illegal by the way?? at least on the internet, shouldn't the real world also follow the same rules?) If no-one makes demands nothing would ever change for the better.
"Heeeey!!! I just figured out how we can get PAID to read Playboys all day!"
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
No, it wasn't more economical, the [Norwegian] Postal service couldn't stand the train delays any longer. It has been a troublesome year for rail services in Norway, a lot of problems with train sets, tracks, lack of personnel and so on.
We have the same law(s) in all of Scandinavia (as well as non-Scandinavian Finland).
It extends to e-mail as well, you are not allowed to spam consumers by phone, SMS, email or mail unless you already have a direct relationship with them (i.e. they're already customers).
My government provides a website where you can register your reservation against any form of commercial solicitation. It does however not include charities. All businesses have to update their registers every three months to filter out any new reservations, and it's *their* responsibility to do so. If they break the law there are severe penalties available to the relevant authorities.
You're missing the point, this is meant to replace postal delivery to all consumers and corporate customers.
That's very different from your "outsourcing" scenario which I doubt very many buy into. This would be the standard service for all, not some extra service you buy.
Wow, I think phones here work differently than those in Finland.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
That's very innovative of Portugal, but the Finns want to use it by default. That's very different from just offering it as an optional service. The Finns want everyone to use it.
It's actually very logical that the postal services of the world would want to stop wasting time and money on delivering mere documents. It's the box/parcel/package delivery that is profitable and important today.
You're missing the point, the Finns want to use it by default for everyone. That is a whole lot more innovative than offering it as an optional service.
It would reduce the frequency of physical postal delivery, saving on delivery costs while maintaining service levels.
We all know how to scan and email documents, the Postal services of the world aren't blind. Lots of countries offer this as a service, it just doesn't reduce the cost structure of the Postal service.
"Welcome to DHL, how may I help you today?"
"Hello, I'm a lawyer, I need these documents delivered to my client in person."
On a related note this is Europe, we're mostly socialists here, the "free market" is not that interesting to us. We're more interested in social services, and the postal service is not a profitable operation in most countries. It's a basic service required and paid for by the government. Reducing the cost, without reducing the service level is more important.
In a lot of places (Britain particularly) the postal service relies on the money paid by junk mailers. No junk mail, no funding for delivering real mail.
.. from a company called Earth Class Mail. They receive your mail, send you an image of the envelope, and let you tell them what to do with it: shred it, recycle it, open and scan contents and send PDF, deposit check, etc. The company was the subject of a sort-of documentary last year.
It seems like a genuinely useful service to offer in cases where communicating the information is more important than the physical letter; if implemented as an opt-in service for both sender and receiver. It seems like it would help reduce costs for transporting mail (transport larger amounts of mail at a time less frequently) which could be a big saving for a country with a sparse population and alpine conditions. Perhaps you could choose to have the original destroyed after reading it online if it had not already been sorted/distributed.
Welcome big brother! Privacy? who needs it, besides we're glad to give up all of our rights to keep us safe from terrorists, right? RIGHT?
There is a difference between "mass mail" and "private mail" in Finland at least... "Mass mail" is generic junk mail that doesn't have YOUR name and address on it, and some of it is delivered totally independent of the postal services, by different companies. So basically some of the junk mail delivery has nothing to do with the postal services whatsoever.
..strikes again!
The Americans/Australians/South Africans are no more British than you are Scandinavian just because you were a colony.
Scandinavia consists of the three Kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
I know you Finns like to think you are Scandinavians, but we Scandinavians don't think of you as such - and that's the only opinion that matters.
German, British or general European ignorance of who is what does not make you any more Scandinavian. You're Nordic, get over it.
I tend to think you have more in common with your Russian neighbors than us, not the Finns in present day Russian territory, but the real Russians. Or perhaps more like our Sami friends in some ways.
Either way you're not ethnically, linguistically or historically (see: Vikings/Kalmar union) related to us Scandinavians. You're still very nice people, but you're not part of our family. Just our extended "family" of Nordic friends.
Hey, I believe Itella has a form which you can fill at the post office to ban this kind of junk too.
Yea, except the general public can actually do something with PDFs, where as film negatives are really a pain in the ass to deal with for this purpose. True, old idea, new implementation, but its definitely an improvement over the last one.
The public never saw v-mail films. Film was just the transocean transport media. V-mail was printed on lightweight paper once it got to the U.S. The letter was also folded up to be its own envelope. Or at least thats how the single sheet v-mail based letters my grandmother received were. IIRC it looked like the original letter was written on a special v-mail form not on general purpose paper. Perhaps that made for automated processing. Other letters my grandmother received that were on regular paper and/or were multiple pages were shipped as the original paper rather than v-mail. Or course that might be an army/navy thing. The letters on regular paper were from the navy, the v-mail was from the army.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
You guys are so lucky. Actually I think you have a generally cool country and I think I'd happily try living in Finland if I wasn't so rubbish at languages! - thoroughly enjoyed my visits to Helsinki.
So this junk mail problem. Until recently the post workers had to deliver "unaddressed mail" to houses - junk mail/spam which is addressed "Dear Householder/ To The Owner" etc. Usually this is from insurance companies, double glazing companies etc, people selling us stuff. They don't even know who lives in the house.
Currently, the cap on the number of these items is three per house per day. But with the ratification of the new agreement between the Communications Workers Union (CWU) and the Royal Mail, that cap will be lifted. The postal workers represented by their unions weren't happy about this, they don't like carry the extra weight on their backs every day and know that they aren't popular with house owners for delivering junk mail. If they didn't have to carry so much junk mail they could carry more real mail and get round more houses in the same time.
So already you can get 18 junk mails a week (no Sunday deliveries) but now we might get as many as the junk companies want to post us.
We do have a junk mail opt-out system you can sign up for "Mail Preference Service" but this only stops you from receiving *addressed* mail, stuff with your name on it (so if you joined a competition for a prize and gave them your name and address and they send you junk afterwards). It doesn't stop the *unaddressed* mail.
I think Finland sounds a more civilised country than the UK in this respect.
The problem is our country is short of money so the national services like the post are looking to find ways of making money and being paid to deliver junk mail is something they will do...
I'm from finland, and i don't see the point in this. We already have workin electronic billing system. We have fairly advanced, secure, fast and wide internet banking too. I get most of my bills straight to my bank account, where i can easily review them and click "pay" on my own computer when i want. Most of the companies provide a copy of the bill to my e-mail, and i can choose to not have the paper version at all. I don't even remember when was the last time i had a traditional paper bill, most of the mail is just spam nowadays. And if i remember correctly, our government is working on a system where all the ofiicial mail (pension, social security, unemployment etc.) will be availabe online starting 2011. No need for postal workers to scan my mail, when there is no important mail to scan at all. The occasional postcard, magazine etc. can wait a few days if they want to cut delivery costs. After the new system is in place, i really can't see any good reasons for the scanning your mail -service.
As yet another Finn with the same sign on my door, I can say that it stops almost all junk. The only ones that don't respect the sign are pizza delivery men - whenever they deliver a pizza to a neighbour, they shove their menu into all mailboxes nearby. I even changed my sign to read "No ads. No pizza menus." to make it as clear as can be but despite that they've kept coming and once I even happened to see a pizza guy put down a menu in my mailbox and asked him "can't read?" and pointed at the sign but he was arrogant enough to reply "what you gonna do? Call the police?" (in broken Finnish since they're always from the middle east or so). I just wonder whether he thinks I'll ever order pizza from that joint - especially when you can order on-line from elsewhere :b
There was a Seinfeld episode where Kramer went into the post office to stop sending him mail - got me thinking. Why do we have to receive all this crap in a box in our front yard? I pay my bills online or schedule checks from my bank each month. There are few items that I actually open up every month, most go straight into the trash. The items I do open I end up scanning into PDF anyway as invoices or paystubs.
I actually pay for a service like this: Earth Class Mail, there are few others like this too. They receive your mail and scan the envelope which you access online just like your e-mail, then you can pick it up (inconvenient) or scanned, forwarded or shredded/recycled. It's a bit expensive and I've only been doing it for a couple months but so far so good.
I have a real street address (no PO Box) which so far no one has balked at: the DMV, my insurance company, voter registration.
Of course, the reason I am doing this is so that I can live anywhere I want without having to change my address every time I move -- except for magazine subscription (which with the new iPad/eReader devices will hopefully not be needed anymore). I work remote and can take my phone number anywhere I go (skype, vonage, etc) and make or receive calls from my laptop.
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
So these cheap bastards want to scan my porn and my inflatable dolls? Buy their own I say.
I know you Finns like to think you are Scandinavians, but we Scandinavians don't think of you as such - and that's the only opinion that matters.
Boy, do I know how you must be feeling!
We had a similar crowd over here. We knew them gays, communists and Jews liked to think they belonged, but we didn't think of them as such - and that's the only opinion that mattered to us.
Ignorance of who was what didn't make them belong any more. They were hardly human, get over it.
Yada yada yada.