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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

#31

Post by mistercow »

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 the automatic scanning process costs even one cent extra?

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

#32

Post by swalsh »

oinksoft wrote: 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.

Einstein spent his entire life changing the world for great good. Of course another one of this contributions lead to the development of the Atomic Bomb. It is said that in his later life he slumped into a bout of depression knowing how his work was being used.

On a different scale, i think a lot of us are realizing that all the things we've been working towards (machine vision, machine learning, twitter, facebook etc) are also being used against us. Its a bit disappointing really.

Of course, ever since nuclear proliferation, worldwide violence has been dramatically reduced... so take that for what its worth ;)

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

#33

Post by oinksoft »

raganwald wrote: post #20
oinksoft wrote: 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.

Who do you think builds these things? Email, cameras in phones, handwriting recognition, network analysis, facial recognition, big data... We should be highly aware of both edges of the swords we forge in our volcano.

Perhaps I've always found it obvious that creating these things, working for companies with close ties to military and surveillance (Lockheed, etc.) is quite near evil and that professionals with integrity would not do that.

I think that is a minority view in our profession, so you are probably right.

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

#34

Post by elmuchoprez »

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 a government authority (or whatever you want to call the USPS's weird relationship to the government). Regardless of what they are or aren't supposed to do with it, the fact is that I know I'm putting my info in their hands and trusting them. This is unlike PRISM, where I send an email through Gmail with no expectation that it should ever pass through government hands.

Also, I'm under the impression that most if not all hand-written addresses are digitized for sorting purposes. I think you have to be naive to assume the postal service wasn't keeping that data on file.

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

#35

Post by enraged_camel »

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…

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.

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

#36

Post by enko »

oinksoft wrote: 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.

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. Business exists in a context; that context is changing around us, or at least being revealed for its true form. It's very relevant.

And FWIW I am astounded at the lengths "they" are going to get him and the massive political capital they seem happy to burn in the attempt. Genuinely amazing stuff. I have no idea what's next; no-one has. We're in a genuinely unprecedented era here. Anything is possible.

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

#37

Post by rayiner »

oinksoft wrote: post #33
raganwald wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you think builds these things? Email, cameras in phones, handwriting recognition, network analysis, facial recognition, big data... We should be highly aware of both edges of the swords we forge in our volcano.

Perhaps I've always found it obvious that creating these things, working for companies with close ties to military and surveillance (Lockheed, etc.) is quite near evil and that professionals with integrity would not do that. I think that is a minority view in our profession, so you are probably right.

If you think working for Lockheed is evil, what do you think of working for a company like Facebook, that profits from selling the personal data of teenagers to companies who take advantage of their adolescence to peddle overpriced products to them that they don't need and that their parents can't really afford?

I'm not saying Facebook is evil, but let's face it the world is a lot more morally complex than the self-righteous want to make it out to be.

This idea that Silicon Valley is full of engineers toiling in a Parthenon of virtue while evil people in Washington misuse the fruits of their creations is utter bunk. Like every technology in history, software and internet technology can be used for different things, and there is widespread disagreement on the virtues of those ends.

E.g. Einstein might have regretted his involvement in the nuclear program, but there are a huge number of people who to this day think the development of nuclear weapons was a positive thing in how it ensured American ascendency for the succeeding half-century. At the same time, you'll find lots of people who think Lockeed, etc, are doing very noble things by developing technologies that allow American foreign policy to be implemented while getting fewer American soldiers killed (and reducing collateral damage too--a cruise missile is a lot more damaging than a drone strike). There is probably no country in history that has maintained its supremacy for as long as America has with so relatively few casualties among its armed forces. You can thank Lockheed for that.

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

#38

Post by rcavezza »

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…

I agree with the notion that this is "NOT OK". I generally feel that about most things that have surfaced in the past few weeks. My problem is that I really have no idea what I can do to help or show my disapproval.

I think we really need to go back to a checks and balances type of government instead of a top heavy executive branch. This lack of checks and balances is the root cause of the issues but I really don't know if there's anything I or we can do about it.

I'm open to suggestions for specific action items. I'm extremely unsure of what I can do to help cause change.

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

#39

Post by bediger4000 »

Is the "Mail Isolation Control and Tracking System" ever used to do anything other than decide guilt by assocation?

That is, does the to/from data they collect ever get used to exonerate someone from a crime, or is it just used to decide who to put on "no fly" lists and other such un-American things?

Can this data have any use other than providing guilt by assocation? Can this data be used to say "no, not a terrorist" or something like that?

If it's just one sided, used or useful only for prosecution and persecution, then it needs to be done away with. As it stands, this practice is just Soviet. It's un-American to do guilt by assocation, and to have prosecution evidence that the defendant can't challenge in public.

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

#40

Post by chime »

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 second, runs OCR for the destination address. Results from OCR are matched to the address database and if the match is significant, the mail is automatically diverted to the correct queue. Now here's the fun part - if OCR fails or print/handwriting is unreadable, a photograph is immediately sent to one of the hundreds of humans waiting to decipher the address and type it in (think Amazon Mechanical Turk). The humans have under 10 seconds to read, decipher, type, and submit the correct address. During this time, the letter is held up in a waiting buffer and the moment the correct address is available, it is diverted to the correct queue.

I asked him if that means USPS took a photo of every single piece of mail and he said yes, they had to, otherwise nobody would ever get any mail due to the sheer volume of mail they had to manage. I asked if the photos of envelopes were saved forever and he said, well, I'm pretty sure they are but I'm not allowed to publicly admit that.

I know it's a personal anecdote but that was seven years ago. I can't even imagine what they're doing now.

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