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by lettercarrier
4221 days ago
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I was once asked to hand over mail from a certain address in Weschester NY so they could copy the OE, both sides. I refused. I, like my peers, take privacy and sanctity to the absolute extreme level. We have all had the stranger asking for "their" mail only to not be able to provide proper ID; the ex husband trying to intercept the check; the private eye snooping around asking pointed questions. To me, this article says what we know anyway, the USPS ain't perfect. On the scale of things to worry about with your mail, this is not one of them. Even if the USPS wanted to create the worlds best spy system they would find a way to screw it up. Don't fret about this, folks. Fret about: The crook who steals your parcel from your porch; the person who skims your phone number off your Amazon parcel; the neighborhood junkie who uses mail to receive drugs and then doles them out to your kids; the nosey neighbor who steals your identities; the person who forwards your mail without you realizing it. |
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A mechanism for dragnet surveillance with practically nonexistent oversight is far more threatening to me than individual criminals. And while you may have some respect for yourself and your profession, you don't really have anything to do with this. The images are processed at the hub of the system built to automatically sort the mail, and diverting those images to permanent storage or a network pipe requires nearly zero additional capital investment.
The only regulatory hurdle to prevent any cop in the U.S. from getting copies is a politely worded request, which does not necessarily need to be detailed or truthful. And once one cop has it, nothing prevents him from sharing it. There are already several nationally accessible systems in the U.S. run by a single county sheriff's department, sometimes as a means of evading federal data retention rules. We already know from media reports that such systems can be abused. Cops look up themselves, friends, enemies, family members, ex-spouses or ex-lovers, celebrities, journalists, politicians, or whomever else strikes their fancy.
This bothers me for the same reason that widespread e-mail metadata collection bothers me. It is done with callous disregard to the expectation I have as a free man that if I live my life without any criminal intent, I should be largely invisible to the enforcer class. Innocents should have blank records in all those databases.
Instead, I feel that everyone now has an individually numbered target painted on the backs of their heads. Any tool that can be used for legitimate police work can also be used for political oppression. I have no doubts whatsoever that the mail cover program has been used for purposes beyond fighting crimes with individualized suspicion against known suspects.