Slashdot Mirror
Australian 'Electronic Pigeon Hole' Could Replace Gov't Snail Mail
angry tapir writes "Australia's federal Opposition will look to create a national government-funded 'electronic pigeon hole' for all Australians in an effort to cut the costs of 'snail mail' communication, if they are returned to power at the next election. According to Opposition communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, the pigeon hole would effectively act as a life-long single source of storage for communications between each citizen and government. The service would be free for Australians in exchange for their agreeing to no longer receive paper-based communications from government agencies and other related organizations."
Wow, is that Australian for "web mail"? My opinion of their marketing skills just took a hit. "Hey everybody, have a pigeon hole!"
Over our super fast national broadband network. OH WAIT, WRONG PARTY
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
None of the main players in Govt have any gasp of the issues, legal and otherwise, associated with the internet. The opposition leader doesn't believe that fibre networks can be upgraded to run at 1Gbps or faster.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
If Australia can actually pull off building its national broadband megaproject then I'll be impressed enough with them to think they can do anything.
It's a special-purpose mail system, much like a corporate system. Content stays around forever, and it's only for sending to and from units of the Government.
The real issue is winding down the postal system. Postal systems worldwide are sending fewer letters each year.
We've had this in Denmark for 5+ years. E-boks.dk - except it is not only government mail, but all official mail. My bank, insurance - even my salary slip from my company. Also I can upload my own scanned documents into the repository, where it will stay forever.
I haven't received anything important in my mailbox for YEARS. I only check and empty it once every second week (only spam).
The system is secured by the national "Nem-ID" (Easy-ID) system, which is a combination of a password and a one-time pad. Also used by my bank (and all other danish banks. I have an old account in another bank. Same login work for both).
It took a while to get it all running smoothly, but it is really nice now it works. Added advantage is that electronic thefts (stolen login details etc.) from banks dropped to almost 0 nationwide since it was introduced.
I've been hoping for that around here for ten years. There isn't a single piece of letter mail that I need delivered in paper. I'll happily take an electronic format, and print it myself as needed. It'd be a lot easier for my post office to scan it than to deliver it. And certainly to send electronic documents in the first place where possible. Webmail, pop mail, my e-mail, or their e-mail, I couldn't care less. I just hate the idea of paying for a service at a government level that's really no longer required.
Well done. We here will start by copying the cool Australian monetary notes, and then we'll move on to the post office advancements. Thanks for both.
What for the cases in which:
a. no reliable access to Internet or not owning a computer - the outback is huge
b. persons that don't know how to operate a computer (even if they know very well how to break a horse).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I like the idea, but what I think this means, what is meant and what will be delivered are probably quite disparate.
Nope, Internet access is deemed a basic human right. However, the article doesn't mention if you can opt back out again. It's possible that subscription can be reversed.
So the coalition wants to give an electronic "pigeon hole" to every citizen which will allow communication from "government agencies and other related organizations". This sounds to me like a reboot of the National Identity system that the same government tried to create in 2006.
For those who read this and think "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we did this in the US", I've heard that getting official communications and financial statements in electronic form can really fuck you over. Perhaps someone can enlighten us as to exactly how (or inform me that I'm completely wrong).
From what I recall hearing, though, when you get a credit card statement or a bank disclosure or a tax bill in hard copy via US mail it's a legal document; when you get a pdf of the same thing sent to your gmail it's in many ways just a pile of ones and zeros. IANAL so I don't understand exactly how, but I've heard there are many legal advantages to not only preferring but demanding hard copy of everything important, because if anything goes wrong you can't protect yourself as well (or sometimes at all) with electronic documentation. Not because it says any less the paper copy, obviously, but because the law is so antiquated that for many important purposes it can't be considered valid documentation by any judge or auditor who truly follows said law.
So it wouldn't be just technical challenges to overcome if we made a national Important Official Email system, we'd also have to drag the US Code from way back there in 1998 (for the most technically literate portions) up into 2011 and beyond.
Another source of spam, I mean political advertising , I mean public education campaigns.
And the problem is you will have to trawl through it all to find the little things that you need to know, I mean if this is for ALL government communications, then that will include things like parking fines, speeding fines, rates notices, all notices to and from the tax office, and you will have no excuse for not knowing about it.
da da da dum indeed.
as long as they tie the delivery of e-services up good and tight so that it mus be always available to every citizen,
In regards with tight, one word... LulSec.
(they showed it is possible. How long until this "pigeon hole" will be cracked?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
ONE inbox with all official government documents ever sent. If the government had a competent infrastructure to support it (with quintuply redundant backups etc etc) this could work extremely well.
Furthermore, they could make this the official delivery mechanism for official documents, court orders, subpoenas, etc. No more shit lost in the mail.
The primary problems :
1. Privacy. A computer hacker who did breach the system could conceivably copy the entire database and expose the private files of millions of people.
2. Security. Information in these documents could be used by someone to steal money or entire identities.
The problems are not unsolvable. Both come down to identity. There has to be an unbreakable mechanism for both encrypting the documents and for verifying identity. The technology to do both exists. It's called one time pad. Dedicated microcontrollers attached to gigabytes of flash memory would be distributed in pairs, sharing a unique hardware generated pad file. One unit of the pair would exist in a vault in a government data center, the other in the possession of the citizen.
To add documents to the stash, a key held on the microcontroller would be used to encrypt the files. To access the files, the user must verify identity by a communication exchange between the one time pad in the government vault and the card the user carries. The files would then be streamed through the micro-controller in the vault which would do the decrypting and on to the user.
For redudancy, the government would actually need 3 instances of the microcontroller located in separate vaults.
This way, no plaintext version of the file would ever exist after it is stored in the electronic 'cubby hole'.
We already have something similar - it's that online centrelink stuff.
The only difference is that we'll all get email addresses - which will in all likelyhood contracted out to gmail/outlook.com.
I wonder what the email domain will be...
No, even that's bad. The whole concept of an e-service pigeonhole is bad. Here's why:
With paper based communication, the onus of delivery is on the government. If they want to talk to you, then they have to make a reasonable effort to contact you (via registered mail, etc.).
With a pigeonhole, (electronic or otherwise), the onus is reversed. Now if they want to talk to you, they just send something to the pigeonhole whenever. It's up to you to make an effort to read what's in your pigeonhole regularly, to keep up to date on their intentions.
To give just one example, say you are being billed. If they send you mail and you don't pay, you could claim that you didn't receive the bill. If you're on holiday, and they send you registered mail, then there might not be anyone at the house to accept it.
Now suppose you have a pigeonhole. They send the bill there, and expect you to find it. Whatever you do, even if you're on holiday, you've received it and it's your fault if you didn't read it in time.
Hopefully the controversial (and I think stupid) Australian Internet Filter http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/06/24/052258/Australian-ISPs-To-Start-Filtering-the-Internet can do something for the people of Australia by black-banning this website which will no doubt be a source of many mass spam attacks on the Australian public at large... :-)
You can buy a smartphone for $80 now, how hard would it be to set the pigeon hole account as a no data cost service (like how some Telco's provide free Facebook); They made us without digital TV's spend about that on a set top box so they can turn off the analogue signal. When the cost of communicating with the public drops to practically nothing a lot of things will become possible and could even feed information back to the government (surveys, public opinion, votes).
Rocket Surgeon.
The onus is already on you to have to check your mail regularly, and checking something electronically is a lot easier.
The government sending snail mail does not usually help you - if you change address (up to *you* to change your address in 10000 different places), go on holiday (up to you to have someone physically check for you), get your mail stolen (up to you to pay for a PO box). I've never received registered mail from the government (a good thing I guess) but I've had plenty of notices (eg failure to vote while overseas) and important documents (drivers license) sent out in the regular mail. In fact my DL was sent to my old postal address because they didn't check the back of the form where you make your postal address change.
the government will be able to read all that mail. No more pesky envelopes or laws to stop them. NO THANKS.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
gosh they wouldn't want to even consider putting that money into something like health or education would they? the idea would warrant merit if it could actually save the government money, but look at the past record of government in managing contracts. they suck balls. there will always be snail mail from government whether they do this pigeon hole thing or not; it will merely create two systems that must be maintained (and paid for with taxes). get the national broadband thing going on time and on budget, at very least to prove that government agencies are capable of managing a project. regardless of which party is in power the real work wont change hands anyway. if they really want to reduce the amount of taxpayer money wasted on paper, try eliminating election advertising.
Will the pigeon hole software only run on Windows like the failed etax program? Does that mean that any Australian who uses Linux or Mac will lose their citizenship?
As long as
1. the Aussies will have pushed the broadband (even mobile will do) to every single family,
2. the Aussies will have pushed at least a PC to every single family,
3. each family will get enough e-literacy,
4. there will be no centralized ass^H^H^Hpigeon hole.
Quite simple for the 6th largest country with only the 233rd population density!
Good luck!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Heck, if the opt-out allows you to set a mailing address then this will be good for the non-users as well. A simple, single change of address mechanism.
Electronic Pigeon holes? Does that mean Australia will be using Electronic Carrier Pigeons? If so how fast can these Electronic Carrier Pigeons fly? Will they be like Borg Pigeons with laser eyes and integrated GPS tracking?
They only have so many pigeon holes (n) which is less than the population (m), which leads to some being shared. This was just the principle of it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And what happens when the government decides later to no longer support your browser of choice, or your operating system? Or they use some proprietary plugin or software package that is incompatible with what you have?
Are they going to pay for you to have a new computer, new software licensing, training?
People can complain about snail-mail, but at least it has ZERO compatibility problems and has an extremely easy user interface...
For the drivers license, there's no reason why you would challenge having received it, so there's little risk in sending it out by regular mail, even though somebody might steal it. In that case you'd be on the phone asking why you didn't get it anyway.
Registered mail gives proof of receipt, so it's a legal step up like notarizing a photocopy of a document is a legal step up from a plain photocopy.
In many cases where a transaction needs to be provable, you might be asked to travel to an office with several forms of ID instead of having registered mail sent to you.
Well, one would hope that for situations when such proof of receipt is required, similar conditions (such as going in in person) would still apply, even if the original summons/documentation was sent electronically. That said, I think a friend of mine received a court summons in regular mail while overseas. Can't remember the details though. If that doesnt require registered mail, what does?
I agree normal mail has no proof of receipt, but the onus is still on you to check for it and to make ammends when you don't receive the mail. It's a lot more effort than being able to check mail from anywhere anytime.
Yes, with electronic message delivery the ability to check if someone actually received the communication can be designed in, but I don't see how that's a bad thing, unless you regularly use the excuse that you were on holiday to pay bills late?? Instant receipt doesn't necessarily mean that you have the ability to respond to whatever the government requires of you immediately (eg if you are on holiday) but at least you would be aware of it prior to not appearing in court or whatever (ok getting drastic with examples here but you get the point).
I like the idea because I hate snail mail and the point I was trying to make in my original reply is that it is no more secure or reliable, and the onus is still on the individual to check the mailbox, and electronic delivery doesn't really change that.
Segwaying... the only issue I have with the idea is that it lends itself to the requirement for a unique government ID for everyone.
Centrelink already runs such a system for welfare recipients and it sucks.
Instead of just opening a letter you get an email or SMS to tell you that you have an electronic letter. Then you have to log into their website past a password and security question and download a PDF of the letter.
The website is offline most Sundays and nights for routine maintenance. At other times it is overloaded and so slow that it hard to use. For a while some of the PDFs were corrupted and unreadable by either Foxit or Adobe. And if you missed the email or SMS you missed the letter which could be important and leave you open to having your welfare suspended.
The Government has never implemented a single IT project properly and always wastes billions. I went back to getting letters and intend to continue doing so.