5 ms·

Most logical explanation: trying to find people mailing marijuana out of state.

by jolan 12y ago

GigabyteCoin 12y ago
Out of state license plate and visiting a post office in Colorado? I'd bet that whatever you mailed to your home address would have a great chance of being intercepted en route.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  We can all create conspiracies here, but that wouldn't fly over the fourth admenment. However the US post office uses an automatic scanner system to read packages. I cannot imagine the NSA, with its insane desire for meta data hasn't tapped into it yet.
  - akira2501 12y ago
    They may have added the functionality by now, but when I worked on the system, it only encoded the destination address. They don't take pictures of the mail for fun or for tracking, it's purely for sorting. You want all the mail in a letter carriers truck to go into the truck in the order it's going to be delivered in for efficiency. So the system was in one of two modes, destination address coding or return address coding. Which mode it was in was determined by the mail processing plant itself. Also, it only photographed letters that did not have a presorted barcode printed on them. If it already had a barcode it just got sorted immediately. I'm not sure what there really is to tap into here.
    - jonah 12y ago
      You must have worked on that system a LONG time ago.
    - detaro 12y ago
      What about this? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...
      - sehugg 12y ago
        The stamp machines surreptitously took portraits of users in 2004, it's likely the self-service package kiosks do too. https://epic.org/privacy/postal/ https://epic.org/privacy/postal/
- coldtea 12y ago
  Really? As if the post office guys would know what your plates are?
tedks 12y ago
My first thought. It's almost certainly this. SFians could probably check for these as well, given that California has been a medical state for a while.
amagumori 12y ago
and mailing everything else as well. this alone might be enough to kill silkroad-style marketplaces - or at least significantly reduce the number of sellers.
sitkack 12y ago
the DEA has a country wide network of license plate scanners, tracks everyone on interstate highways to catch drug mules. https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-law-reform/foia-documents-reveal-massive-dea-program-record-ame https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-la... So this seems very plausible. Giving you the Occam point on this one.

Most logical explanation: trying to find people mailing marijuana out of state.

by jolan 12y ago

Most logical explanation: trying to find people mailing marijuana out of state.

Out of state license plate and visiting a post office in Colorado? I'd bet that whatever you mailed to your home address would have a great chance of being intercepted en route.

tomjen3 12y ago
We can all create conspiracies here, but that wouldn't fly over the fourth admenment. However the US post office uses an automatic scanner system to read packages. I cannot imagine the NSA, with its insane desire for meta data hasn't tapped into it yet.
- akira2501 12y ago
  They may have added the functionality by now, but when I worked on the system, it only encoded the destination address. They don't take pictures of the mail for fun or for tracking, it's purely for sorting. You want all the mail in a letter carriers truck to go into the truck in the order it's going to be delivered in for efficiency. So the system was in one of two modes, destination address coding or return address coding. Which mode it was in was determined by the mail processing plant itself. Also, it only photographed letters that did not have a presorted barcode printed on them. If it already had a barcode it just got sorted immediately. I'm not sure what there really is to tap into here.
  - jonah 12y ago
    You must have worked on that system a LONG time ago.
  - detaro 12y ago
    What about this? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...
    - sehugg 12y ago
      The stamp machines surreptitously took portraits of users in 2004, it's likely the self-service package kiosks do too. https://epic.org/privacy/postal/ https://epic.org/privacy/postal/
coldtea 12y ago
Really? As if the post office guys would know what your plates are?

tedks 12y ago

My first thought. It's almost certainly this. SFians could probably check for these as well, given that California has been a medical state for a while.

amagumori 12y ago

and mailing everything else as well. this alone might be enough to kill silkroad-style marketplaces - or at least significantly reduce the number of sellers.

sitkack 12y ago

the DEA has a country wide network of license plate scanners, tracks everyone on interstate highways to catch drug mules. https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-law-reform/foia-documents-reveal-massive-dea-program-record-ame https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-criminal-la... So this seems very plausible. Giving you the Occam point on this one.