They have been photographing every single package since anarchists were shipping bombs in the mail 100 years ago. Seems to be breaking news every few years.
I just did this and paired it with ChatGPT to send me a Discord message like "You received mail from Progressive."
Seems silly and lazy but it was a fun afternoon project
(boring aside: USPS seems to have bespoke anti-bot measures which uses WASM to sign requests, which means you have to use full browser automation to login. Of course, most people instead parse the daily emails they send you which is a totally reasonable approach as well.)
Yep, came here to say this. I don't use it often, but it's pretty handy from time to time (e.g. checking to see if an important package requiring a signature is coming that day, so I can be home or arrange for someone else to be there).
If the open-source community can read the carbon-based ink inside carbonized ancient scrolls, then there is likely no need to open normal mail to read what it says.
"These scrolls were scanned at Diamond Light Source, a particle accelerator near Oxford, England. The facility produces a parallel beam of X-rays at high flux, allowing for fast, accurate, and high-resolution imaging. The X-ray photos are turned into a 3D volume of voxels using tomographic reconstruction algorithms, resulting in a stack of slice images."
That article is really cool BTW, amazing stuff. Give it a read.
Not sure why Aaron’s comment is dead, but he’s right - at least about taking photos of your trash.
Our local council has shown pictures of people putting styrene packaging in their green waste bin, and there was a case a while ago where an elderly woman was murdered and put into a bin for collection - the truck has footage of the bin being emptied, so they could narrow down where in landfill she might be.
They have been photographing every single letter for a while now.
And because of Moore's Law and cross-referencing databases now we can analysis it in depth.
This is networks of people they can watch. Like if your mum writes to your childhoods mate (who now you drug dealers) mum and tracking were you live and the same as any internet spying, working out if are you gay or a communist or a gay communist and cross-referencing handwriting.
They are also photographing your garbage. And can get your DNA from the sewers (although this might not have ever been used... publicly) License plate and phone tracking goes without saying.
There's no reason ShotSpotter (which can get some local voice audio) can't be matched to your podcast.
Meat world tracking is the new cool.... and it's nothing like 100 years ago.