The United States Postal Service Will Now Email You Your Mail | Hacker News Reader

The United States Postal Service Will Now Email You Your Mail

qz.com

44 pointsesalazar33 comments

I would pay for this, at times. All of my mail is delivered to my box at a post office about 15 minutes from my home. I normally only check it once every week or two. When I'm expecting something important, however, I may make a trip there once a day for a few days in a row until it arrives.

I wouldn't pay for it all the time as 98% of what I receive isn't really "time-sensitive" or all that important (mostly it's just bills that I pay online anyways), but for those times like I mentioned above I'd gladly pay a few bucks for the service.

Of course, since it's not unusual for me to end up with other people's mail in my mailbox, I'm expecting there to be some "privacy violations" that come out of this as well.

Thank you. I was struggling to identify with a user story of why a scan of an envelope that was going to be delivered later today was of benefit to somebody.

There's no privacy violations that happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise, right? If it was in your mail, you had access anyway.

They could accidentally send my images to you but still deliver my mail correctly.

How do they determine/handle junk mail?

Does this increase/decrease cost?

Presumably, it would be treated the same as any other mail.

I receive perhaps one legitimate piece of mail per month in my mailbox at home, yet every time I open the mailbox, it is stuffed full of junk mail. I've asksd ny carrier to not place the junk mail in my box but she informed me that she has to. The senders are paying them to deliver it, so they do -- leaving me to have to constantly check the mailbox and throw it all away.

I'm all too familiar with this :(

I've had pretty much all my mail contents scanned for me since 1999. It's a great service - I can go anywhere in the world, and never worry about a bill, or a charge, or change in terms of services that get mailed to me. Plus, they'll forward any "hard items" (like credit cards) to a physical mailbox (which, in my case, is a pobox that will forward anything that arrives to whatever address I happen to be in the world.)

So - all my mail goes to Sioux Falls South Dakota, which then gets scanned (and presumably shredded), and then hard items are re-mailed to Mountain View, which then, on a monthly basis or so, get re-mailed again to Singapore (where I currently am).

It only took the USPS 16 years to offer the scan/email service for the envelope - it will be interesting to see when they'll scan/email the contents.

Can you post the services you use?

paytrust.com for the scanning. UPS Store at 650 Castro for re-mail to Singapore

There was a startup called Outbox awhile back that was trying to be a proxy service for physical mail- have your mail forwarded to them (or maybe they picked it up manually?) and they digitized it for you. This idea from USPS isn't quite that but a good step in the right direction. Super handy for more transient urban millennials at least.

They did pick it up in person. You sent them a picture of your key and they made a copy, then picked up your mail for processing. I loved the service. But it was a huge logistical problem, and the USPS was antagonistic towards them. Ultimately they gave up on trying to move that needle and became Able (https://www.ablelending.com/)

There's one running now called Virtual Post Mail.

Earth Class Mail does it too.

The Swiss post office calls this service "E-Post office": https://www.post.ch/en/private/receiving-mail/private-specif...

I've never tried it, but the descriptions sounds great: You receive a notification whenever you get a letter and can then decide, whether to get the letter physically delivered or opened & scanned. With automatic filtering for later letters from the same address.

It should cost almost nothing to implement as they already doing it for law enforcement anyway. And it is also an indirect method for them of informing the general public that they have the capacity of doing it and therefore it must not come to a surprise if it is also forwarded @fbi. Maybe in their mind it's a way of declining moral responsibility for their spying. And likewise for federal governement as it is certainly endorsed (if not suggested) by them.

Are you really suggesting that the USPS is opening all letters sent through them, scanning their contents and passing it all on to law enforcement? It's a serious allegation without any proof.

If I recall correctly, they are actually scanning the outside of the letter which gets you senders, recipients, sending time (the metadata, so to speak.) Which isn't very nice but also not as brazen as opening and resealing letters KGB-style.

What I don't understand is how the US got not to interpret emails as an equivalent to a letter, and how the secrecy of correspondence that applies to mail didn't extend to emails. As you say, opening and resealing letters is "KGB style", but that's exactly what they do with emails. Even USPS is not allowed to open your mail.

The argument was that emails are more like postcards, since they aren't "sealed" and you "share" their contents with the provider. That said, I believe the sixth circuit agreed with you in United States v. Warshak, in 2010. Of course, LE is trying its best to read that ruling in the most narrow way possible.

Will never* happen. The Postal Union would have a heart attack at the mere suggestion. They exist to keep delivery postal workers employed, they (rightfully) don't give a damn about what postal consumers want, and they have the ability to seriously disrupt the core usps business: delivering junk mail. They would never agree to email replacing last mile delivery of mail.

* not in the next decade.

doe88 is talking about mail covers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_cover), a program where the USPS provides copies of the information on the outside of envelopes to the federal agency requesting it.

This program is controversial because no lawful order is required for the USPS to collect this information. It's an egregious violation of US citizens' privacy.

Yes, I know, that's what I was talking about as well. What he was actually saying was "It should cost almost nothing to implement as they already doing it for law enforcement anyway" which would mean that they are actually reading the letter contents - which is just not true, as far as we know.

Digital postal mail:

* http://www.virtualpostmail.com/

* https://www.postscanmail.com/

The link to sign up for Informed Delivery Notification just goes to the preferences page. I was only able to opt into My USPS (package tracking), as well as choose to receive communications from USPS.

There's a small part of me that feels as though this might've been something that should have happened maybe as early as 1990, but didn't, somehow.

Now if only you could look at the online envelope images and mark them "spam", "open and scan contents", or "deliver unopened".

Yeah, that's what the mail forwarding services do, like the one I use. Not free of course. But people like me would pay the USPS for the service if they could match what private mail forwarders do. One advantage is you wouldn't have to do the notarized form for authorization to receive mail. That can be a major pain if you are living outside the US in a country that is not a member of the Apostille Convention, meaning it doesn't have real notaries.

A lot of business services companies, providing a registered address, etc, do this (for individuals, brass-plate overseas offices, or individuals that don't want their own address known). It costs around GBP 90 for a London (UK) registered address and unlimited mail forwarding (physical or scanned email).

Haha, this is what Jerry Seinfeld once jokingly proposed when he was mocking the postal service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xR...

I would definitely pay for this if it replaced physical junk mail with scans. I'd pay even more if it just went ahead and deleted all junk mail. I'd pay a similar amount to...unsubscribe from junk mail.

SO many people have tried this, and the USPS has shut them down. Either the USPS will do it or no one will, because they won't allow competition.

Endorsed by the NSA

Hmmm...

it's just pictures of the front outside of the envelope. that part is not private, and the usps already can -- and does -- provide that to law enforcement if they request it. So this does not change anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com