A Blue-Sky Idea For the USPS — Postal Trucks As Sensors

An anonymous reader writes "The US Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. [Registration-required link; this no-reg summary encapsulates the idea, as does this paper by the same author.] (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise."

Comments

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[crunchygranola]

You rarely have mail stolen...

This should be emphasized....

And the government sends secret documents by the U.S. Postal Service.