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U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#181

Post by tootie »

tokenadult wrote: post #41

I have lived in a country (Taiwan under its previous dictatorial regime in the early 1980s) where I assumed that all my postal mail, domestic or foreign, was read by the ruling party's secret police as part of the delivery process. The postal service in Taiwan was always awesomely efficient when I lived there, with residential mail delivery twice a day all days of the week, year-round except for a brief set of holida…

That's both fascinating and inspiring, but note that the story is here is that are just reading the outside of envelopes, not the contents. And nothing is being censored.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#182

Post by lightbritefight »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #91
asdf3 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abortion protesters used to write down the license plates... just some publicly available meta-data, right?

Yes. What is your point? Nobody has any expectation of a right to drive anonymously.

His point is that this metadata has one intended use, and that it is not supposed to be re-purposed to aid in the harassment of the people you disagree with.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#183

Post by unclebucknasty »

rayiner wrote: post #122
unclebucknasty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting points. One thing all of this brings to mind is that we appear to be nearing a crossroads (perhaps we've already passed it). That is, we'll have to very soon decide en masse whether we are OK with the demise of privacy or not. This is irrespective of whether our privacy is lost to companies, government, or both. Because it seems that by default, people are simply becoming accustomed to a world without per…

I don't think we're seeing the demise of personal privacy. For most of American history, "privacy" meant that what happened in the walls of your home or in the confines of some other private place remained private. You could expect privacy in your house and your coat pocket and in conversations you had with people in a private setting. And by and large, that's still the case. If you live on a farm like most people di…

Yes, the historical conception of privacy meant certain things, while other things weren't a part of this conception, simply because the technology of the day made them inconceivable.

For example, it would be akin today to someone believing that the people should be free from being spontaneously teleported by the government against one's will. It's just not something we worry about.

But, putting that silly (but salient) analogy aside, there is an underlying ethos with regard to our conception of privacy that I think is true historically, as well as today. It survives changes in technology and generally weathers the test of time. I think that ethos feels something like the Constitution with regard to federal government rights not specifically expressed. That is, they fall to the states and the people.

So, likewise, I think people believe (at some level of consciousness) that the government simply should not be where it doesn't belong (i.e. in areas of their private lives) and that the government should have access to the minimal information about us required to do its job. And for privacy advocates, this extends to erring on the side of rights vs. security when in doubt.

In short, I think most people would agree that just because technology provides the possibility of more government access to our information, it doesn't mean they should have such access.

Mind you, I am not saying that any of this is codified, but rather is a part of people's conception of privacy. So, I disagree with your assessment of what people consider private.

With regard to your Facebook snarky comment example, I think we're talking about different things. Publicly posting such is, I think, a conscious decision that what is being posted is not deemed private. However, the notion that everything uploaded, e-mailed, or otherwise stored or communicated (even if not marked for public consumption, or clearly is not intended for same) should be accessible to the federal government is an entirely different matter. And, I believe, most people would view such carte blanche access as an invasion of their privacy.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#184

Post by devindotcom »

nmcfarl wrote: post #128
elmuchoprez wrote: post #34

Maybe I'm alone here, but I never had an expectation of privacy in regards to what I write on the outside of a envelope and drop into a public receptacle (mailbox). I expect the contents to be considered highly private, but not the outside. There's also this issue of willing disclosure of information to an entity. When I put a stamp on something and drop it in the mailbox, I know I'm handing that information over to…

Scope matters. It’s quite different to assume that people can look at the outside of any particular letter, than it is to assume that people are building a database of all your mail, and doing social network analysis on it. The results of the 2 actions are radically different, with radically different amounts of information gleaned.

Isn't that rather like the argument used regarding the JSTOR data, which we all rejected vehemently?

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#185

Post by betterunix »

reustle wrote: post #159
betterunix wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this century, we certainly can: do not have license plates at all, use radio beacons instead, which send encrypted copies of the plate. The police would be allowed to request decryption from the DMV (e.g., "running the plates"), and a few other authorized people, but the general public could not. The secret keys would be the weak point, and would have to be held only in a limited number of DMV data centers (which…

And if you see a hit and run, good luck helping the other guy out by "grabbing his plate number"

I'm not sure that would be so hard to solve. You can record the ciphertext plate and give that to the police.

Really the question is, "How important is this problem? Do we care about license plate privacy?"

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#186

Post by jmccree »

specialist wrote: post #176
discardorama wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Using a throwaway account) I worked on the OCR systems. Fun fact: at one time, the USPS was the world's biggest user of Linux in a production setting. Their OCR boxes ran on Linux (until they were replace with SGI O2 boxes at a massive cost... but I digress). Here's the path the mail takes: it is picked up by carriers from the mail boxes. Then dump trucks bring it to the P&DCs (Processing and Distribution Centers).…

Great info, thanks. How reliable is the mail delivery? Do you know how much mail is lost? One percent, more, less? (I believe one kind of failure is called UAA - undeliverable as addressed.) I'd love to learn more, but don't know where to start. Some of us election integrity activists are deeply concerned with the transition to vote by mail (all postal ballots, no more poll sites). One practical complaint is our assu…

I'm curious how much mail also gets lost due to being delivered to the wrong mailbox. I average at least one mail per month that is not addressed to me in my mailbox.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#187

Post by discardorama »

specialist wrote: post #176
discardorama wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Using a throwaway account) I worked on the OCR systems. Fun fact: at one time, the USPS was the world's biggest user of Linux in a production setting. Their OCR boxes ran on Linux (until they were replace with SGI O2 boxes at a massive cost... but I digress). Here's the path the mail takes: it is picked up by carriers from the mail boxes. Then dump trucks bring it to the P&DCs (Processing and Distribution Centers).…

Great info, thanks. How reliable is the mail delivery? Do you know how much mail is lost? One percent, more, less? (I believe one kind of failure is called UAA - undeliverable as addressed.) I'd love to learn more, but don't know where to start. Some of us election integrity activists are deeply concerned with the transition to vote by mail (all postal ballots, no more poll sites). One practical complaint is our assu…

In general, I think mail delivery is very reliable. But given the volume, there will be outliers. Even if we assumed 99.9999% reliability (a hypothetical number), given that they sort 300MM pieces per day, 300 pieces per day will be affected.

If you have the money, you should try an experiment: mail a large number of ballot-like pieces from different mailboxes all over the county (say, 10,000 letters) and see how many reach the destination. Sure, it'll cost $5K, but you may have a better answer.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#188

Post by atgm »

mistercow wrote: post #31
javajosh wrote: post #5

Goddamnit 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…

Essentially what you're proposing is a DoS of the tracking system. The problem with that (at least with physical mail) is that it takes far more resources to generate physical mail than to scan it. A DoS shaped like that will never work unless you have some way of massively amplifying the effect you are having. Postage on a post card is currently 33 cents. How many postcards do you reckon you'd have to send before th…

> Postage on a post card is currently 33 cents. How many postcards do you reckon you'd have to send before the automatic scanning process costs even one cent extra?

It seems like it would be a self-defeating process since the cost built into sending "data flak" would pay for the services monitoring it.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#189

Post by nisse72 »

bathat wrote: post #160
betterunix wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this century, we certainly can: do not have license plates at all, use radio beacons instead, which send encrypted copies of the plate. The police would be allowed to request decryption from the DMV (e.g., "running the plates"), and a few other authorized people, but the general public could not. The secret keys would be the weak point, and would have to be held only in a limited number of DMV data centers (which…

Sure, but then how do you tell the police that you just saw a black SUV with Massachusetts plates ending is 907 blow through a red light and almost run down an old lady with a cane at 7th and main? How would they ever find the driver or owner? While there are many ways to abuse the fact that license plates are publicly-visible (the aforementioned abortion protester being one example), there are still very legitimate…

With a system like that, the intersection itself would be capable of logging the passing of every vehicle: time, direction, speed. There is no escape.

Re: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

#190

Post by jack-r-abbit »

asdf3 wrote: post #79
elmuchoprez wrote: post #34

Maybe I'm alone here, but I never had an expectation of privacy in regards to what I write on the outside of a envelope and drop into a public receptacle (mailbox). I expect the contents to be considered highly private, but not the outside. There's also this issue of willing disclosure of information to an entity. When I put a stamp on something and drop it in the mailbox, I know I'm handing that information over to…

Abortion protesters used to write down the license plates... just some publicly available meta-data, right?

Yes, the plate number on your vehicle is publicly available data. But I don't see how that is very usefully. I'm not sure there is any way for a random person to do anything with a plate number. It would require the person to have some sort of connection to the DMV or other agency that has access to your name and address based on the plate number. And those people are still not going to have access to your medical records even if they did manage to get your name and address just by knowing your plate number.

EDIT: the bit about getting at medical records seeped in from reading another comment.

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