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The research has interests of museums that want to read books without opening and damaging them. Is there any chance the scans can damage them? Also, what are
by fma 10y ago
The research has interests of museums that want to read books without opening and damaging them. Is there any chance the scans can damage them?
Also, what are the laws of the US government applied this to reading our letters. Our mail is protected by law from opening, but what if they aren't physically opened?
- posterboy 10y agoif it is that literal, I'm sure this would be against the spirit of the law, anyway.
- fma 10y agoYep, that is my exact train of thought. To me, examining email is against the spirit of the law - however, that is allowed because the law did not exactly forbid email (email didn't exist few hundred years back...)
- vladus2000 10y agoIANAL but I believe it is illegal to read mail in this way. You have an expectation of privacy with a letter. Same with your house, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy within it. That being said, I believe if this is cheap enough they will start doing it in secret and the courts probably will not stop it. Whether or not they will attempt to use anything gained from it directly in court is debatable but it could lead to parallel construction cases.
- rurban 10y agoThat's not true. According to US interpretation of law they may scan every IMAP mail which was not deleted. So in their analogy any book in a public or cooperate museum may be scanned, there is no privacy protection. Only in democratic countries you can expect some privacy.
- bhickey 10y agoMail and e-mail are legally distinct.
- keyjsgnsgdgn 10y agoThat is false. https://consumerist.com/2013/07/03/forget-the-nsas-hi-tech-snooping-the-usps-has-been-scanning-our-mail-for-years/ https://consumerist.com/2013/07/03/forget-the-nsas-hi-tech-s...
- novaleaf 10y agowow! a rebuttal of a rebuttal, of a rebuttal, of a rebuttal! =D
- bhickey 10y agoNote that I didn't say "You have absolute privacy in postal mail." The two have different legal protections, and those on snail mail are incontrovertibly stronger.
- wodenokoto 10y agoThis article is related to scanning the outside of snail mail and is not relevant for the discussion at hand.
- sp332 10y agoYou have to leave the mail sitting for a certain amount of time, at which point it falls under the "abandoned" part and can be picked up without a warrant. Unfortunately they didn't interpret email being read as being picked up, since it's still sitting in the server.
- awqrre 10y agobut since you don't have an expectation of privacy when a third party cloud service handles your data, according to the law, why would you have an expectation of privacy for letters handled by third parties... for example, the Government can legally read all your emails hosted by a third party if they are 6 months or older (http://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read-your-email-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read-...)
- Dylan16807 10y agoThere are special rules about the postal service. They're not just a third party.
- Cyph0n 10y agoSo you believe that intelligence agencies have no way to read your mail if they wanted to? Come on.
- kens 10y agoYou don't need this technology to read through an envelope. You can get a spray (envelope X-ray spray) that makes the envelope temporarily transparent and then evaporates without a trace. The other way to read mail without opening it is to insert a shaft at the top of the envelope, wrap the contents around it, pull out the contents to read, and then reverse to put the letter back in the envelope. I think I saw this stuff at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC; it was a much more interesting museum than I expected.
- celticninja 10y agoYou don't need this technology to do it but it sure makes things easier and faster to do. Allowing you to automate the process and apply it on a huge scale, say for example every letter handled by the US PS. Up until now these would have been specific and targeted attacks where the benefit was worth the effort of the task, with little effort required they will have no reason not to.
- robryk 10y agoIn many cases you can just shine bright light through the envelope with the letter inside.
- kzrdude 10y agoYou're a hacker!
- weinzierl 10y agoThe "envelope X-ray spray" is available at electronic stores as "transparent transfer spray" [1]. It used to be used for PCB manufacturing. [1] http://www.produktinfo.conrad.com/datenblaetter/600000-624999/618952-si-01-en-TRANSPARENT_21_PAUSKLAR_SPRAY_200_ML.pdf http://www.produktinfo.conrad.com/datenblaetter/600000-62499...
- ars 10y agoI wonder if you could use brake cleaning fluid. That should be easier to find.