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USPS Logs All Snail Mail For Law Enforcement
The NY Times reports on a program in use by the United States Postal Service that photographs the exterior of every piece of mail going through the system and keeps it for law enforcement agencies. While the volume of snail mail is dropping, there were still over 160 billion pieces of mail last year. "The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping." This is in addition to the "mail covers" program, which has been used to keep tabs on mailings sent to and from suspicious individuals for over a century. "For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests. The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public."
While I understand WHY the USPS would do this, I wonder how much money they've spend on storing data (the photos) all the while cutting the hours of employees due to budget cuts, etc. as for the comment by Bruce Schneier: "whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy." I disagree. There is a difference between taking an address down and reading your mail. I don't see Bruce complaining about UPS, FedEx, etc. doing the same. Get over it
As long as it's only the exterior of the boxes, I don't care.
As long as they don't X-ray packages (could damage sensitive electronics, perhaps?), I don't care.
As long as they don't open up the packages (sensitive electronics and static discharges don't mix), I don't care.
They can take photos of the boxes from my eBay wins, I don't care.
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A public debate about blanket surveillance and the meaning of the 4th Amendment is long overdue. The more dirt comes up all at once, the harder it will be for the public and Congress to ignore.
There are really two possible outcomes: either Congress gets off its ass to rein in this kind of BS, or the American people actually admit they don't mind being spied on by the government (and there's a spike in emigration from the US to Europe).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
It has long been held by US courts that the exteriors of letters and other items sent through the mail are not considered private.
It makes sense that they are allowed to photograph and record them for later use.
I mean, did you really think that a piece of mail sent through a government controlled organization would be hidden from law enforcement?
Now, if they are doing the same for UPS/FedEx/etc, then there might be a slightly larger concern, but still not really a big deal.
Or, if they were opening (or scanning the inside without opening) and recording the contents of sealed mail without a warrant, that would also be concerning.
This XKCD suddenly became topical again: http://xkcd.com/327/
So the USPS can scan and retain a copy of every single item and find it for law enforcement requests, yet they can't put together a decent package tracking system and insist on delivery confirmation.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
What sort of similar surveillance programs are in place at UPS, Fedex and other U.S. couriers?
I don't know, but given UPS and FedEx use a computerized tracking system to run their ops I bet they have a lot more information than the USPS. The question is how long do they retain the data and who has access to it?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Those fuckers lost a check I sent and it will cost me $30 to cancel and resend. I wonder if I can get a record showing it at least made it into the postal system.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sorry, but haven't you got it yet? They are ABOVE the law, every law, everybody's law. And nobody can do diddley squat about it, though there will be buckets of pious lip service paid, with the requisite crocodile tears and lots of hand wringing. Most people have already forgotten about all this NSA stuff, after all there's all sorts of exciting circuses on TV and just look how much bread we get at Walmart! C'mon, sit back, and EAT, and WATCH, and EAT, and... You'll soon feel happier.
Just get used to being pwned like the rest of us have.
The NSA logs who I call, but not the contents. They log who I email, but not the contents (or so they say). The Post Office logs who I am sending and receiving packages from but not the contents (aside from making sure they don't give off radiation or appear hazardous). The NSA still requires a warrant issued by a FISA Court to actually look at any one individual or to tap communications if they believe it involves an American. Their data mining programs mostly just look for patterns. It's also not clear about whether or not the NSA looks at much data concerning Americans since it appears as though their primary goal was to monitor foreign communications that were routed through equipment in the USA.
By comparison, the IRS demands that I log everything I do financially and turn it over to them. If I make any mistakes, I can be prosecuted and potentially jailed for it. If the NSA misses a call I make, nobody is the wiser. If I forget that I'm no longer able to make a certain deduction, I face harsh penalties.
The NSA's generally pretty tight and there haven't been all that many cases of clear illegality. A lot of what the NSA does and how the FISA courts actually work is in a grey area, so I don't know what to think. By contrast, the IRS has frequently been at the center of many scandals.
Income taxes were legalized by the 16th amendment in 1913. Up until then, we didn't have Federal income taxes save for a couple of brief periods such as during the Civil War. During the 30's the first huge IRS scandal broke. The IRS was allegedly used by FDR's administration to harass political opponents. Most notably, Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary under the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover Administrations, was subject to baseless tax investigations. Senator Huey Long, a potential challenge from the left of FDR, also faced harassment. JFK and LBJ allegedly also had an IRS that liked to target political critics like the John Birch Society. Article 2 Section 1 of the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon accused Nixon of having the IRS investigate people on his "enemies list". While Clinton was in office, a few conservative outfits like the Heritage Foundation allegedly faced "unusual" audits, though true hard evidence of wrongdoing never surfaced. Similar story with Bush. Several liberal outfits claimed Bush's IRS was pestering them, though the IRS actually appears to have audited more right leaning organizations than left leaning ones. Now we get to Obama's huge spat over the IRS. The IRS has admitted to clear discrimination against conservative groups, effectively squashing the Tea Party's activities throughout most of the 2014 election cycle. The IRS is also alleged to have turned over confidential donor information from an organization opposed to gay marriage to one supporting gay marriage so that gay marriage proponents could harass their opponents. A Supreme Court case during the civil rights era in which Alabama demanded the NAACP's donors so that they could be harassed clearly shows the IRS' behavior was illegal. How involved (if at all) the President and his staff are in all of this remains to be seen, but it is clear, given it's history, that if there's any government agency to be worried about, it's the IRS and not the NSA or Post Office.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I ordered some legal products from a person who were busted selling illegal products.
Vendors do not use new addresses for every single piece of mail that goes out because the addresses have to be legit. They have OCR software running on the photos being taken.
For months after that, my mail was regularly opened. I complained repeatedly but my USPS, UPS, and Fedex packages were all pilfered. Nothing was ever taken. Most notably was a laptop case I ordered that was completely and obviously removed from the packaging and examined inside and out, only to be returned and left at my door. They didn't even bother to retape it.
Living with liberty isn't work losing all liberty to a corrupt system of laws. Stop violating laws. If you are concerned with private information being public, such as the talk about penis pumps, sex toys, and all other manor of stuff, then stop shipping through the mail. Stop ordering online. Stop thinking anything you do isn't being watched, because it is. Live like you know you are being watched or expect to be "shocked" when you find this out again.
BTW, this has been well known for over a year in the SR community. This is old news.
I write a lot of snail mail. I correspond with people in jails and prisons which usually requires me to use snail mail. Furthermore, I've maintained a long correspondence with a friend. I have his e-mail address and his phone number but we choose to keep our communication limited mostly to paper letters, usually written by hand. I write mine with a fountain pen!
When I learned of the NSA's snooping I was comforted somewhat by the fact that my most private confidential communications goes through the U.S. Postal Service and is not subject to this. Well, I guess not! The supermarket (and the bank) knows what I buy when I use a credit card to pay for it. The various cities and states know where I drive because of cameras. The cops now are installing license plate recognition cameras to record license numbers. Facial recognition software makes it difficult for me to go anywhere anonymously even on foot. Verizon Wireless knows where I am because I keep my phone on most of the time. I'm waiting to have an RFID tag implanted in my forehead!
Pretty soon we're going to be living in a country like the old DDR (that's East Germany to those too young to remember the Cold War) and a spying apparatus like its Stasi. Watch "Das Leben der Altern" (The Lives of Others), a German film of a few years ago to give you an idea of just how invasive this spying became. And this movie is set in 1984. It's much easier now!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
So not only do I have to add Fuck You, NSA to my email, now I have to start writing on my envelopes!
If the USPS was smart, they'd sell stamps that say exactly this; they'd be in the black by Christmas.
People have been clamoring for tracking of the postal service for decades? Who hasn't wanted some type of tracking for things sent through the post office like they get through Fedex or UPS? As long as they aren't opening the envelopes who cares? This is the literal equivalent to looking at the headers of packets sent over the Internet, meh....
As for tracking of things that are not sent through third party systems, such as people and cars on public streets that is an entirely different story. People forget that computers allow us to automate the absurd and otherwise unthinkable. Nobody has a problem with the policeman in the patrol car looking up a license plate of a passing car. Put that same system in a camera that automatically checks all plates and all of a sudden you have all kinds of implications. What was once absurd is now simply a matter of budget.
Finally, an explanation for why they invariably have one or two lonely clerks at the front desk but at least 6 more milling around the back-room.
Now if someone could just explain why the same thing happens at the DMV.
See, a long time ago, it was OK if a few random postal guy saw the outside of your mail, heck even if they *systematically* did it for all your mail. Since thousands passed in their hands, and probably nobody could remember all of them, especially keep track of all the friends/package. The human factor make it so it was not important to look at the outside of the letter.
Now with technology, massive storage, and automated scanning, this *all* changed. They can keep the name of destination/senderfor every mail. Collate the data. And if they wanted, say which package you got from whom, which letter, who do you write often, etc...
And that was the "exterior of the letter has no privacy implication" is terribly outdated and alson terriibly wrong : you could now have a pretty good picture of what and whom from a person do order, and whom she is mailing to, and with which frequency. That has implication of privacy *because* of the collation and easy availibility of the data, since it is not anymore a sets of random human not seeing the whole picture, but a cloud of machine with a database havign a very precise picture.
So since now somebody back decades ago did not see the implication against privacy of letting "just the exterior of the envelop has no expectation of privacy", well now your snail mail will say much more about you than some might want to wish. If you are fine with that, be aware, that not everybody is.
Frankly I do not care but I can see why some folk would not be happy.
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I wonder if they can help me look up the sweet letter art I sent to Nintendo Power when I was 10.
If this is legal, and it seems everyone is saying that it is, then why stop at criminal investigations? Think about it, this kind of data is a treasure trove of valuable commercial information. With this data they can determine who writes to who and how often, where a given person shops by mail order and sometimes exactly what they're buying, which utilities are billing us, what offers we respond to, it's likely even one's political leanings could be deduced given a deep enough study of the data. The postal service could solve all their financial woes if they just decided to market this stuff, it's a gold mine! And who could possibly object? It's just metadata, after all, stuff that's right there in plain sight, perfectly legal to examine. All kinds of possibilities open up, as we blindly skip on down that old proverbial slippery slope...
And that's the problem with allowing this type of data collection. The outside of each individual piece of mail might seem harmless enough, but put it all together in a searchable database, one that's cross-linked to other, similar databases, and voila! All kinds of information that was previously assumed to be private suddenly becomes easily available. We really do need legislation on when and how these types of databases can be used, and by whom. The law enforcement aspect is just the beginning, people need to realize just how much private information is hidden in, and easily retrievable from, these big aggregations of "public" data. The ability to run highly refined computer searches on a dataset changes all the presumptions about what is and what isn't private. If we don't put some limits on this type of data collection soon, privacy as we have traditionally known it will be a thing of the past. Perhaps it already is.