8 ms·
Every piece of mail that passes through a high-speed sorting machine is scanned, front and back, OCR'd, and stored - as far as we know, indefinitely. That's how
by KennyBlanken 4y ago
Every piece of mail that passes through a high-speed sorting machine is scanned, front and back, OCR'd, and stored - as far as we know, indefinitely. That's how they deliver the "what's coming in your mailbox" images you can sign up to receive via email.
Those images very often show the contents of the envelope clearly enough to recognize and even read the contents, which I'm quite positive isn't an accident.
The USPS is literally reading and storing at least part of nearly every letter mailed in the United States.
The USPS inspectors have a long history of being used as a morality enforcement agency, so yes, this should be of concern.
- greyface- 4y agoSome more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...
- UpstandingUser 4y agoI've heard rumors that this was going on for a long time before it's been publicly acknowledged to have -- before OCR should have been able to handle that sort of variety of handwriting (reliably), let alone at scale. Like a snail-mail version of the NSA metadata collection program.
- nuclearnice1 4y agoWikipedia gives the impression the modern incarnation of photographing the US mail at scale began in 2001: “created in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, including two postal workers” [0] However research on photographs of mail was already taking place as far back as 1986 [1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T... [1] https://cedar.buffalo.edu/papers/articles/Framework_Object_1988.pdf https://cedar.buffalo.edu/papers/articles/Framework_Object_1...
- throwaway654329 4y agoAgreed. It’s even worse: they also have the capability with the “mail covers” program to divert and tamper with mail. This happens to Americans on U.S. soil and I’m not just talking about suspects of terrorism.
- nuclearnice1 4y agoApparently not a pre 9/11 program, if Wikipedia is correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T...