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The US post office is spying on the mail – senators want to stop it
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y agohttps://archive.is/WlRGf https://archive.is/WlRGf
- greyface- 3y agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...
- balderdash 3y agoYeah this has been going on for 20 years..makes me wonder, why now?
- tjfl 3y agoPublic Intelligence has a copy of the request form: https://info.publicintelligence.net/USPS-MailCoverRequestsForm.pdf https://info.publicintelligence.net/USPS-MailCoverRequestsFo...
- csdvrx 3y agoAre attorneys offered extra protection? There're several checkboxes for that.
- jachee 3y agoClient-attorney communication is explicitly privileged/protected.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoSo are dolphins doesn't mean they don't get into the drag net.
- tptacek 3y agoMost attorney-client privilege laws explicitly exempt any communications that can't be expected to be private, which would presumably include the exterior envelope of a piece of mail, which is effectively a postcard (the archetypical not-private communication). The other problem you'd have here is that you can't generally enforce the privilege, beyond excluding evidence in a trial.
- kerkeslager 3y agoThis is an area where parallel construction[1] can be applied for evidence laundering. Usually these terms are used to describe unreasonable search/seizure in violation of the 4th amendment, but it can also be applied to evidence collected in violation of attorney/client privilege. The evidence can't be submitted in a trial, but that's pretty much the only thing that can't be done with it--you can use it to obtain other evidence. In theory that evidence would also be excluded as "fruit of the poisonous tree", but in reality and violation of the constitution and basic human rights, law enforcement frequently uses parallel construction--showing an alternate path by which the evidence might plausibly have been obtained--to get evidence in front of jurors which they could not have obtained without violating the constitution they supposedly uphold. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- tptacek 3y agoI don't think any of this has anything to do with attorney-client privilege, which is the only thing I'm here to talk about. Postal mail metadata is about the least interesting possible thing to discuss; the privilege thing here was the only interesting angle I saw.
- zerocrates 3y agoThe Post Office's regulations for these mail covers do explicitly exclude mail "between the mail cover subject and the subject's known attorney." I agree that attorney-client privilege probably doesn't require this for "outside of the envelope" information, but the policy seems to be more of just reacting to the... vibes of the privilege.
- m3047 3y agoI assume the USPS "Informed Delivery" service is the same thing, repackaged for the mail recipient(s). (I'm a subscriber FWIW.)
- ok_dad 3y agoI was going to say that for every mail item I get an image by email the day before or that day. My Apple photos search function often shows new images with words that are the search term in them, for example if I search “apple” I’ll get images with “apple orchard” in a sign. Put those two together and that’s likely what the FBI and etc have access to. Good thing I don’t get much mail, but I guess the FBI knows that I’m getting prescriptions in the mail or maybe they know I donate to certain causes. Privacy is dead in the USA.
- brookst 3y agoI mean 100 years ago if you had gotten a letter from "US communist party", your mail carrier would likely have reported it directly, without any fancy automation. The outside of envelopes has never been particularly private, so I'm not seeing it as a policy change so much as an implementation change to support scale.
- ok_dad 3y agoI don’t believe the argument holds. Just because individuals could see your mail is not equivalent to an automated agent looking at every piece of your mail every day from miles away and creating a profile of you. This is the true slippery slope, that we allow this processing for more and more data. Eventually, every bit of our lives will be processed and profiled at this rate!
- function_seven 3y agoYeah, Quantity has a Quality all its own. Every time I hear an argument for surveillance that boils down to “well they could just stand there and watch you do the $activity,” I lightly lose my mind. CCTV, ALNRs, facial recognition, etc. All of these are technically “just” advanced versions of the old fashioned stake-out. But that makes all the difference in the world.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bnrhk 3y ago[flagged]
- kibwen 3y agoThis has been public knowledge for 50 years. The article even says as much: > The history of abuse of mail covers, as the lawmakers note, is a long one. A famous incident occurred in the 1970s, when a 15-year-old girl mistakenly wrote the Socialist Workers Party—a communist organization strongly supportive of Cuba—while researching a school assignment involving the Socialist Labor Party. The teenager was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, with the bureau even sending an agent into her school. The senators note that Church Committee, which was formed in 1975 to investigate US intelligence abuses, uncovered that the Central Intelligence Agency had photographed “the exteriors of over 2 million pieces of mail,” while opening hundreds of thousands of others, belonging to “prominent activists and authors.” There's nothing remotely "conspiracy theory" about this. Next time, just link them the wiki article rather than, bafflingly, trying to allege conspiracy via your throwaway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#Opening_mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee#Opening_mail
- dragonwriter 3y ago> This has been public knowledge for 50 years No, the problems identified 50 years years ago were part of a process which resulted in extensive controls being put in place on the US national security apparatus to prevent the things it discovered from continuing; that those controls in fact changed nothing and things remained exactly the same is, well, if true, not something which has been public knowledge since day one.
- kibwen 3y ago> resulted in extensive controls being put in place on the US national security apparatus to prevent the things it discovered from continuing Who told you that? Here's a NYT article from 2013 with the same story: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-ma... It's good to draw awareness to what's going on here, but let's not pretend that this practice isn't trivially verifiable via ten seconds of searching.
- Johnie 3y agoI get nothing sensitive or personal in snail mail that I care about USPS spying on. They can look at all of the pre-qualified credit card offers all they want.
- uoaei 3y agoMust be a wild experience to imagine that more people than just you use the United States Postal Service.
- mindslight 3y agoAny efforts at privacy are good, but why focus on the USPS (which already has some protections), rather than working on general privacy legislation that would also provide protections with the corporate carriers?
- Uvix 3y agoGeneral privacy legislation would not cover the USPS due to sovereign immunity.
- mindslight 3y agoIt would if it explicitly mentioned applying to government agencies, just like how this legislation makes itself applicable.
- matthjensen 3y agoAn interesting aspect of this is that any information that USPS collects is also likely to be available to foreign governments now or in the future. The U.S. government has a terrible track record of keeping its own information secure. See, for example, a list of notable federal breaches (2020-present): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PGVHO6BDZzGnB3l3j3hyzuuDPiB9SY1ZU_Y5xb10-lE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PGVHO6BDZzGnB3l3j3hy...
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- maximinus_thrax 3y agoI find it suspicious that legislators are jumping at this, even via bipartisan effort, while stuff like stingrays, CBP seizing and storing American's phone data, mass surveillance from various three letter agencies are only triggering small bouts of outrage in the news. In today's world, I'm not even sure if I even care what the USPS does with my mail, I do most if not all of my stuff digitally (exceptions are stuff like license plates/registration which the state already knows about) so I wonder if legislators will finally tackle digital surveillance say 50 years from now?
- aio2 3y agoI think it's probably meant to show that they "care" about your privacy.
- 13of40 3y agoOf course. Email, SMS, Twitter, and whatever aren't "papers" in a 4th Amendment sense. Fred Meyer coupon circulars on the other hand...we need to circle the wagons for those.
- 15155 3y agoThe First Amendment covers the internet, and poll taxes were found to be illegal... but somehow folks argue the Second Amendment doesn't cover modern firearms and that taxes on these are completely OK.
- umeshunni 3y agoWhile not actually effecting the things that matter.
- stevehawk 3y agoNow that someone has convinced Americans that mail-in voter fraud is real, they would like to commit the actual fraud to retain power.
- runsWphotons 3y ago
- drewcoo 3y agoWe know that the tech works. If the USPS can't own it, what will stop other agencies from scanning mail? Post-9/11 there was a huge federal power grab: "security" at the cost of our personal liberties. I think stopping USPS from scanning is playing ineffectual whack-a-mole instead of neutering some three-letter-agencies. But it's probably at least political suicide to challenge those agencies directly.
- cheschire 3y agoI bet Amazon's lobbying to neuter the USPS through statute and regulation, thus creating a market need through brute force. Then they can just stand up a personal mail service that "values your privacy" and offers next-day mail delivery using their network of delivery trucks.
- theGnuMe 3y agoDoubtful, USPS is even cheaper than self delivery apparently as Amazon uses them for last mile delivery.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI thought Amazon sends a decreasing proportion through USPS every year as they build out their own delivery network, and just leaves the scraps for USPS. Cheap USPS means Amazon's competition, without access to its own mass delivery network, is weakened.
- theGnuMe 3y agoYou could make the same argument about UPS or FedEx but the USPS stands strong. What is interesting is the USPS uses FedEx for express mail (and global express I think).
- nirui 3y ago> The history of abuse of mail covers, as the lawmakers note, is a long one. A famous incident occurred in the 1970s, when a 15-year-old girl mistakenly wrote to the Socialist Workers Party—a communist organization strongly supportive of Cuba—while researching a school assignment involving the Socialist Labor Party. The teenager was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, which even sent an agent into her school. Isn't information printed on mail cover (exterior of an mail) is something equivalent to meta data (in for example Email)? I bet if you write an email to people such as Edward Snowden or some other POIs, the FBI will be interested to record it, take a look and maybe even asking some questions as well. They are less likely to "thoroughly investigate" for just a single instance of course, but that's because the environment has changed, not because they have new rules say they shouldn't. Plus, what's the worst that could happen if you didn't break any law? I often hear the story of people said something wrong online and got an FBI visit, and they ended up fine. Another example is a YouTube channel called Second Thought and one of his video costed him a DHS visit (see https://twitter.com/_SecondThought/status/1332746172570677250 https://twitter.com/_SecondThought/status/133274617257067725...), his still rising on YouTube after the encounter. I bet the teenager was fine too after the investigation (???)
- rektide 3y ago'We don't read your emails (just their metadata)' has also been a contentious topic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/email-metadata-nsa/313842/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/email... There are good reasons to defend civil privacy.
- shadowgovt 3y agoThere are, of course, also good reasons to expect no such privacy when using a service operated by somebody else (especially regarding the exterior routing data necessary to have a message find its destination).
- rektide 3y ago"No reasons to expect" is something I might phrase as "good reason to suspect outside powers aren't respecting you"
- seneca 3y agoThis is entirely theater. It's arresting the kids breaking windows while you let the murderers roam free so that you can say you're tough on crime. The USPS is so low on the list of government agencies violating your privacy that they might as well not be there at all, but they are also mostly inconsequential. Senators can go after them with no real fallout, not actually impact the the massive data harvesting system, and still claim to be "doing something" while the intelligence agencies run roughshod over your basic rights.
- jmclnx 3y agoDo people remember the anthrax scare in the early 2000s ? I thought Congress authorized scanning for anthrax and bombs. Now they want to take it away ? IMHO this is just a fund raiser for the 2024 elections. Once they get good press, the bill will die in committee.
- stevespang 3y ago[dead]
- Animats 3y agoCongress has the power to stop this. They can forbid law enforcement from asking for mail covers. They can even make it a crime. If they choose not to do this, that's a problem with Congress, not the USPS.
- pyuser583 3y agoPostal service is incredibly important. It is the “last resort” means of communication. I’ve been in business situations where electronic communication wasn’t an option, and we had to use mail for everything. It saved our asses. Please respect postal service. It isn’t legacy technology. It’s the most resilient and most accessible means of communication we have. When all else fails, the postal system is there.
- surume 3y agoDoes anyone else feel that privacy and personal rights are a thing of the past, especially in america? Their constitution holds no more water than a sieve anymore.
- otterley 3y agoTo be clear here, we're not talking about the USPS opening sealed envelopes and reading your mail. We're talking solely about what's printed on the envelope, which even the article admits is not traditionally considered private.
- wg0 3y ago"Man in the middle" attack.
- zingababba 3y agoI buy a lot of illegal drugs which get shipped through USPS so I'm all for this.