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

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201–210 of 242 posts

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

#201
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using war or the threat of war to apprehend peace is antithetical to pacifism. I agree, but keep in mind the person-to-person analog: "Using force or the threat of force to apprehend personal safety is antithetical to pacifism." I.e. there is a convincing philosophical argument that once you agree that people have the right to use force in self-defense, that there is a collective right to use military force for col…

Precisely. I can't speak for all pacifists, but many, like Tolstoy, outright reject personal self-defense, at least in theory. That is to say, while it is very difficult for man to give up defense of oneself and one's family (probably for good reason), a pacifist does not see the self-defender as morally pristine. The great danger is when self-defense is given priority over other means of resolving or fleeing violenc…

Well stated.

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

#202
post #40

About 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…

"7 years ago they were saving 100% of the information... I can't even imagine how much higher that percentage must be by now"

I meant, they were storing then. Who knows what they're doing now. Analyzing, creating graphs/networks, sharing historical records?

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

#203
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "secret order" you refer to is in accordance with the public law, otherwise the "secret court" you refer to wouldn't have said that it's legal. Invading the mail, on the other hand, is quite explicitly illegal.

An undisclosed order that is in accordance with an undisclosed nonintuitive interpretation of the public law oughtn't be legal, and regardless of conformance to the USC, seems to violate the constitution that provides the foundation for the government's existence.

Edit: I wished I'd read rayiner's sibling reply elsewhere. It explains the point I'm trying to make in a fashion that's about 100x better. -----

To the extent that revealing an E.O. doesn't endanger national security or other legitimate government purposes I agree completely that it should be public.

However I don't agree that it's safe in general to rely on a given Administration's "interpretation of the law". As Snowden has pointed out, the Administration can change... you should assume that what is permissible under the law and Constitution is actually being done, if that actually worries you.

So if the law says that the Government can intercept foreign communications pursuant to a trap-and-trace it's probably a good assumption to make that the Government is actually, at some point, trapping aforementioned communications.

I mean, if this was working just like a normal law enforcement scheme then you'd already have to deal with the possibility that the government is tapping a communications channel pursuant to a regular Article III warrant to investigate communications of a terror cell for months at a time. Presumably this wound theoretically still accumulate enough data (and metadata) to theoretically wreck your theoretical world should a theoretical despotism come to pass.

What an E.O. should do is to define where an Administration will focus its limited resources in enforcing the law. Perhaps they will decline to fully defend laws that are anti-homosexual in nature. Perhaps they will avoid aggressively going after marijuana usage (would be nice!). But even in that situation, if you cross state lines to buy weed you're still technically breaking the law and should be prepared for consequences of that; the E.O. could change tomorrow, after all.

And besides all that, what if they guy making an interpretation is at a much lower level. An individual cop might make a snap decision, do you expect them all to mail you a Policy & Vision Statement each month?

Even if that did, it would be hopeless to try to push the edge of 1000 different "lawful ways to enforce the law". Assume anything the law permits might be done.... and even then, it's hard enough to fully comply with all the law, even the ones that clearly fall within Constitutional guidelines.

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

#204
post #123
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to attack my character. I deleted the comment immediately after writing it because I decided it contributes to the thing I'm complaining about, which is many front page stories full of repetitive comment threads that are only tangentially related to the linked story and contain little new information or insight.

Fair enough. Usually I would probably agree with you. But in this case, I feel the "reaction comments" are important. The reaction is going to be the main story, after all.

[deleted]

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

#205
post #181

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.

...yet.

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

#206
post #8

Ah, I see I've arrived at Hacker/USA Government Abuses News. And I say that as somebody deeply interested in these stories.

Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting. HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!) It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of…

It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense.

Unfortunately, politics have invaded our tech oasis, and I don't mean HN. The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable; at this point, retreating to some new oasis and denying it won't make it go away. While I do want a site where I can see more articles about Erlang and lambda calculus, for now at least, I can accept the pressing need to maintain focus on political issues that undermine our ability to build the technology we want and have it used for good instead of evil.

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

#207

Could you not just refrain from writing a return address on your mail? Or instead, put down a false return address? In that case there'd be no tracking of who is mailing whom, but instead just how many letters someone is receiving.

Yes, and for most private mail that's perfectly fine as long as there is adequate postage. People who are required to furnish an accurate return address include senders of prepaid mail (you know, where it's printed on the envelope with a number), distributers of periodicals, senders of priority and registered mail, and a few other similar examples.

It's still possible to identify where the letter was sent based on the postmark and unique barcode printed on the envelope when it is scanned.

Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5986635 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5986011

Edit: this comment is for scrabble's sake, as you and I already exchanged comments on the subject.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they do have a right to privacy in their medical history. Recording license plate numbers at a hospital, abortion clinic, etc. is a violation of that right, even if it might otherwise be legal.

That logic isn't obviously correct. People do not have a right to go about in public, to and from notorious places, in a 2-ton death monster that requires licensure and indemnification to operate, anonymously. People requiring a higher degree of privacy than that offered by cars would be better served taking their bicycles.

I would argue that a de facto right to privacy is created by the nature of the destination. It doesn't matter if someone can see you or your car, the fact that it's a medical destination should create a right to privacy of that trip.

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

#209

If its an image it suggests that it might be fun to print QR codes on your mail which refer to specific URLs. If the URL is accessed you get a hit on who looked it up. Sort of like putting a 1x1 gif in an email which is loaded from your web site as cheap analytics (pro tip, don't do this if you work at Google, the security guys don't like it :-). Always interesting if you can get the other side to reveal information…

That assumes that what ever is getting the images is also going to process them as QR codes and follow any URL encoded in them. Based on what the system is described as doing, I don't see why it would have any concern over a QR code since QR codes are not an accepted form of addressing a envelope.

All US mail gets a delivery bar code imprinted on it when it is sorted. There are quality checks that verify that the delivery bar code is accurate. Electronic postage is also created using 2D barcodes. My guess is that the folks who build such systems have them just eat bar codes for lunch (which is to say interpret all bar codes) and include that interpretation in the meta data.

If as you say they are never looked at (and I can certainly believe that is true) then the URL you encoded would never be accessed. If however you got a web log entry on your web server that your URL was fetched from a machine run by Booz Hamilton, well there ya go, a bit of information extracted by putting a puzzle in front of them. :-)

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

#210
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...yet.

Government agents literally drive all over America with loaded guns. It's only a matter before they start killing us all.
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