And yet all the anthrax letters get through to their destination and they are clueless for weeks until someone says something.
Makes you wonder what they are really doing with all this data and with the Dark Star.
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
51–60 of 242 posts
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#52Ah, I see I've arrived at Hacker/USA Government Abuses News. And I say that as somebody deeply interested in these stories.
The fact that Obama declared on national TV that they only spy on non-US citizens (6.5+bn humans) without a warrant is the biggest news in the internet industry since the mass deployment of broadband a decade ago. Knock it off. These specific government abuses may well destroy the bulk of the revenue streams for the largest companies in silicon valley. If that isn't on topic for HN, I don't know what is.
No it isn't, that was going on all through the Cold War. It's just more efficient now.
This isn't just a government problem either; people in europe are at least as unhappy about firms like Google and Facebook warehousing their data, but at least over in Europe they have robust privacy laws that service providers have to comply with.
See for example these stories, in which (some) American users express puzzlement over Euros' insistence that they are the owners of their personal data:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3127185
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867166
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3036157
There's a Facebook bias to these because those were the easiest threads for me to remember & get search hits on, but the principles apply to any firm that retains customer data. EU users have a legal right to demand companies divulge all dta stored about them, and insist on its permanent deletion - something that's not available to US users.
Now, you can hardly insist that governments be less powerful than the companies they are supposed to regulate. If you want real privacy, then you need it explicitly stated in law, and structured so that it can't be signed away in exchange for some commercial benefit, much the same as you can't legally sign yourself into slavery; such contractual arrangements are inherently invalid. This is going to require a constitutional amendment, because otherwise companies are going to defend their data hoarding and unilateral exploitation of said data on First Amendment grounds.
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#53Ah, I see I've arrived at Hacker/USA Government Abuses News. And I say that as somebody deeply interested in these stories.
The fact that Obama declared on national TV that they only spy on non-US citizens (6.5+bn humans) without a warrant is the biggest news in the internet industry since the mass deployment of broadband a decade ago. Knock it off. These specific government abuses may well destroy the bulk of the revenue streams for the largest companies in silicon valley. If that isn't on topic for HN, I don't know what is.
If I were in the government of other countries, I'd be setting up more programs to woo technical talent from the US. In Brazil, Rio de Janeiro's Botofogo district is a prime location for tech talent to go to. It's an international city with a great quality of life that Americans tend to love. Berlin is another city that could be actively wooing dozens to hundreds of American developers.
Make it a no strings attached program. All you need to do is move to the country and work with software/hardware. You would be given assistance to either join an existing company or set a new one up. Your choice.
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#54About seven years ago, I was at a sushi bar and struck up a conversation with an older gentleman sitting next to me. He told me he was a developer and created systems for USPS. I am always fascinated by the technology used in large scale systems so I picked his brain for a good hour. From what I recall, he said at the key distribution centers, USPS scans every single mail (in standard envelop sizes) and in under a se…
Except I've never, ever heard of this used to solve a crime.
Definitely never used in court or we'd hear about it but they probably wouldn't risk the constitutionality of that.
So they are just collecting it for the sake of spying on everyone. Lovely.
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#55And yet all the anthrax letters get through to their destination and they are clueless for weeks until someone says something. Makes you wonder what they are really doing with all this data and with the Dark Star.
[deleted]
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#56About seven years ago, I was at a sushi bar and struck up a conversation with an older gentleman sitting next to me. He told me he was a developer and created systems for USPS. I am always fascinated by the technology used in large scale systems so I picked his brain for a good hour. From what I recall, he said at the key distribution centers, USPS scans every single mail (in standard envelop sizes) and in under a se…
Better OCR (and, cynically, perhaps a higher tolerance of error to cut costs) is making the human handwriting readers obsolete. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/us/where-mail-with-illegib...
And much less hand addressed mail. It's much easier to OCR a printed label.
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#57Goddamnit this is NOT OK. This is the dark side of the technological improvements to "productivity": we have enabled a level of productivity that allows the few to track the many. It's time we technologists all sat down and though about ways to turn the tide - they are using technology to track us, how can we use technology to thwart them? My best answer is: data flak. We should all start building system that include…
They will simply allocate more resources to it and you as the taxpayer will end up paying for it. The only real solution is to have end-to-end encryption that is easy to understand and use.
How are you going to encrypt your snail mail destination data?
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's OK for now. This is big news; very very big. I am a fan of trying to keep HN on topic but for now I am very interested in what everyone here has to say. I have to say, I thought I was very up to date on US spying - I know people who have worked with Echelon and would not say certain words on the phone - but I have still been blown away with the revelations. They're game-changing. They're relevant to HN.…
This particular linked story really isn't very big news.
Well maybe not for you, but for me it's another piece of a jigsaw which is beginning to show a very ugly picture indeed.
You're a US citizen I see. Well, maybe you don't understand or give a shit, but from the outside, the opinion of your country is being revised dramatically downwards. Very dramatically. All of this human rights, freedom of speech, fourth amendment stuff is being exposed for the bullshit that it is.
The damage to the reputation of the USA from these events is incalculable. Do you have any conception of what it means when normal people are suggesting that a whistleblower on the run from the USA seek refuge in Russia or China?
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#59If you need to send an anonymous letter - hopefully for good (say, whistle blowing) and not evil - you can still do so.
Use a fake return address (duh).
Drive to a mailbox far away from your work or home. Pick a mailbox that has no security cameras. Don't go into a Post Office, where there will be security cameras.
Turn off your phone before going anywhere near the drop location.
(This is all coming from a PBS documentary about how they went about the 2001 anthrax attack investigation.)
Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
#60About seven years ago, I was at a sushi bar and struck up a conversation with an older gentleman sitting next to me. He told me he was a developer and created systems for USPS. I am always fascinated by the technology used in large scale systems so I picked his brain for a good hour. From what I recall, he said at the key distribution centers, USPS scans every single mail (in standard envelop sizes) and in under a se…
It'd be more interesting if they captured the address the package is sent to; the return address (if any); and the post mark.
As I understand it postal mail is traditionally given much stronger protections than other forms of communication, especially in the US.
I'd be very surprised if postal mail was being intercepted and contents were read without very strong warrants.
EDIT: It does sound like a fascinating system though. All that mechanical stuff; all those different sizes; all that paper dust! Postal mail is amazing.