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We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

royalmail.com

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Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#21

Post by MarchKilroy89 »

MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #20
scrollaway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to make this claim, at least give a reasonable explanation as to how this deanonymisation works. Otherwise your comment is no better than "they're putting microchips in the vaccines" junk.

A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…

To give a real world example: Imagine if America had a system like this in place when the Zodiac killer was active in California. A prolific writer of letters to the press, all of Zodiac's barcode-stamped envelopes would open up new potential leads in answering questions like "when was this stamp manufactured" and "where was this stamp originally sold".

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#22

Post by woodruffw »

MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #21
MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…

To give a real world example: Imagine if America had a system like this in place when the Zodiac killer was active in California. A prolific writer of letters to the press, all of Zodiac's barcode-stamped envelopes would open up new potential leads in answering questions like "when was this stamp manufactured" and "where was this stamp originally sold".

While I actually do appreciate the importance of postal anonymity, the Zodiac Killer is maybe not the best example to select.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#23

Post by TMWNN »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #13
Symbiote wrote: post #2

At the top: > The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app Then in the FAQ > Why are you adding barcodes to stamps? > > The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way f…

My guess is that one of the biggest motivations is to enable one-time address digitization. I'm only really familiar with USPS but my understanding is that the Royal Mail Mailmark system is largely similar to the USPS IMB system. Bulk mailers have long been required to barcode mail with destination information to reduce the need to OCR addresses, which is a particularly complex and expensive part of the operation. No…

>And it provides counterfeiting and fraud resistance, along with the ability to add detailed tracking to letters very cheaply.

Yes, this is what I was curious about.

(For non-Americans' benefit: All USPS shipping is tracked with barcodes, except for stamped mail. USPS offering this would benefit merchants who would be able to ship very small/thin items in envelopes with tracking, and people in general who want to be able to follow their stamped letters' progress.)

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#24

Post by adolph »

Symbiote wrote: post #4
Symbiote wrote: post #2

At the top: > The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app Then in the FAQ > Why are you adding barcodes to stamps? > > The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way f…

"Any person importing, distributing, selling or otherwise assisting in the sale of counterfeit stamps is committing offences of fraud and/or counterfeiting" [1] I am surprised there are so many listed on eBay. Just the two "sponsored" listings on eBay for the search "first class stamps" have already sold over £1000 of counterfeit stamps, and about £20 in fees for eBay. [1] https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answ…

The surprising part is that people go to such effort for such a low value commodity. Who is sending 1k worth of Christmas cards etc? Maybe small biz, but again the value added doesn’t seem to match the risk of getting your model train outfit raised by the postal inspector.

Maybe anarchists use these exclusively to avoid paying the man?

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#25

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

scrollaway wrote: post #19
MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #9

Translation: Keeping with our effort to turn this country into more of a Panopticon, and aligned with our belief that no two parties should be able to communicate privately, we hate that you can send mail mostly anonymously, and this gives us a bit more power to surveil you by making stamps unique.

If you're going to make this claim, at least give a reasonable explanation as to how this deanonymisation works. Otherwise your comment is no better than "they're putting microchips in the vaccines" junk.

That works while you are still able to buy them for cash, assuming there is no facial recognition on the security camera watching the exchange.

> This card was used to buy this stamp and we have this face on camera doing it.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#26

Post by jcrawfordor »

garrettgrimsley wrote: post #8
rippercushions wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know which standard they're using? It's not either of the common 2D codes, namely QR Code or PDF417, and while it looks a bit like Data Matrix, AFAIK those are always square.

It appears to be 2D Mailmark Type 29 https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Mai...

It is Data Matrix, Mailmark is basically a logical standard on top of Data Matrix ECC200. Data Matrix allows the blocks to be arranged in multiple layouts, square or rectangular.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#27

Post by scrollaway »

MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #20
scrollaway wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to make this claim, at least give a reasonable explanation as to how this deanonymisation works. Otherwise your comment is no better than "they're putting microchips in the vaccines" junk.

A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…

Indeed it assumes the stamps are scanned upon sale. Otherwise, at best, what you obtain is "where was this stamp sold", which is completely non-identifying.

But if you think about it for more than ~10 seconds, you remember that stamps are sold in packs of 4-8 at least. They're also often sold in sheets of 50+. All this makes individual scans painful.

So you want to play the devil's advocate and make more assumptions; say, for example, "every stamp could trace back to its original pack, so only one of them needs to be scanned". But if that's the point of this panopticon move, then why put the barcode on the stamp, rather than … the pack itself?

Because you know what always gets scanned? The product's barcode. If I wanted to track people who buy stamps, I would create unique EAN13-compatible barcodes for every single pack sold, always start them with the same number space + some digits for actual different products, and voila, somewhat backwards-compatible, unique tracking on all those stamps without having to deploy a barcode on every single stamp, implement a swap-out scheme, etc.

Of course, maybe someone at GCHQ is reading my comment and thinking "fuck, why did we spend so much money on this scheme again?", but somehow I doubt it.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#28

Post by tialaramex »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #13
Symbiote wrote: post #2

At the top: > The barcodes will enable exciting new services by connecting physical stamps to the digital world through the Royal Mail app Then in the FAQ > Why are you adding barcodes to stamps? > > The move is part of the Company’s extensive and ongoing modernisation drive and will allow the unique barcodes to facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way f…

My guess is that one of the biggest motivations is to enable one-time address digitization. I'm only really familiar with USPS but my understanding is that the Royal Mail Mailmark system is largely similar to the USPS IMB system. Bulk mailers have long been required to barcode mail with destination information to reduce the need to OCR addresses, which is a particularly complex and expensive part of the operation. No…

> Well, that's the case in the US. From what I can tell Royal Mail doesn't currently do this, and so they're going to have to OCR the address repeatedly on all non-bulk items.

Take a closer look at the bottom right hand edge of some non-bulk mail. Huh, those are some faint orange lines. What's going on? That's RM4SCC encoded data from the sorting machinery.

It's not "really" faint orange, that's a fluorescent ink, inside the machine under appropriate lighting rather than the faint orange these lines show up very nicely. They're encoding (2 bits per line) a unique identifier so the system can track every individual piece of mail for a few weeks, plus its Delivery Point destination.

[I would guess "faint orange" was chosen because it's unobtrusive, yet you can't honestly claim it's hiding]

After the initial OCR run, later machines just see "Oh, #238205724145, still headed for 18 Long Drive, AB12 34XZ" without needing OCR and then people at a higher level can ask e.g. why the fuck is there so much mail handled by this Glasgow sorting office and find that aha, some bozo has directed all the mail for Swansea via this office, what a buffoon, we'll fix that.

Probably if you're murder police, you could get Royal Mail to scan it and tell you this crucial envelope entered their system at about 12:30 on September 24th in Liverpool central office, and it was eventually given to a human to deliver at 08:47 last Tuesday, but I'd guess this is rarely useful and it's not something they will tell random members of the public. The Delivery Point is redundant if you're a human since the address is printed in human readable letters.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#29

Post by mastax »

garrettgrimsley wrote: post #8
rippercushions wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know which standard they're using? It's not either of the common 2D codes, namely QR Code or PDF417, and while it looks a bit like Data Matrix, AFAIK those are always square.

It appears to be 2D Mailmark Type 29 https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Mai...

What an incredibly well made document.

Re: We’re adding barcodes to our regular stamps

#30

Post by tjbiddle »

MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #21
MarchKilroy89 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple scenario that comes to mind is that given a letter, it's now easier to tie it back to the stamp's point of sale. "Who purchased this stamp?" is a very hard question to answer in their current (essentially fungible) form. Adding barcodes makes this much easier. This assumes that stamps are scanned when sold, to tie their barcodes to the purchaser. That may happen. It may not. But clearly the more scans a stam…

To give a real world example: Imagine if America had a system like this in place when the Zodiac killer was active in California. A prolific writer of letters to the press, all of Zodiac's barcode-stamped envelopes would open up new potential leads in answering questions like "when was this stamp manufactured" and "where was this stamp originally sold".

I imagine if this system was in place, then they likely wouldn't have written letters to start with.
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