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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

I bet they already have to do this for the NSA / CIA / FBI so why not profit from it as well as a separate product that people will pay extra for? Genius!

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Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

Given that I'm not the only one in this thread pointing out that the source of this offering is most likely driven from features designed for three-letter agencies, I'd argue my comment was substantive (though I'll give you the point that it was written a bit cheekily).

While certainly useful to three letter agencies, the original reason for imaging the front of mail-pieces is for mail routing. The mail-pieces that don't have routing bar-codes in the address areas get fed to an OCR system to read the address data (with a fallback to humans for the last few that OCR can't read) so the computer system knows where to route the mail-piece. In order to read the address text via. OCR one needs an image of the front of the envelope to feed to the OCR system. This new offering is just leveraging that scanning process that has been in place for a very long time. The biggest difference might be that previously the image went from scan to OCR to deletion and instead now they've decided to replace "delete" with "store" to make this new offering feasible.

> This new offering is just leveraging that scanning process that has been in place for a very long time. The biggest difference might be that previously the image went from scan to OCR to deletion and instead now they've decided to replace "delete" with "store" to make this new offering feasible.

And with my tinfoil hat on, I'm saying it's probably driven by requests from three-letter agencies. We already know they scan the covers not just for automated processing (which as you mention wouldn't require saving the image after the OCR is complete), but to also provide it to law enforcement.

If public pressure is forcing those agencies to be more forthright with what data they're collecting and storing, it conceivable for them to push that responsibility upstream. If the USPS is going to be imaging and storing everyone's mail, there's no need for other agencies to do so. They can just access it on the fly.

Arguably, the government would save money with this approach as well as I'm sure all three major agencies would want a full copy the data set.

dang, I think koolba had a good point and was not trolling. It's an open secret that the US government tracks mail, though I think the details are not well understood. USPS has probably been taking pictures of the outside of everyone's mail for a long time and somebody recently had the bright idea to monetize it.

Yes, in fact they do: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...

Though I'm sure the primary purpose of scanning envelopes is, ya know, to see where they're going.

Mail covers[1] are a very old surveillance technique and mail isolation control and tracking/MICP[2] has been standard on all parcels since early 2000s

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_cover 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...

It's free.

> It's free.

For now sure but there's no reason this couldn't be a premium service down the road.

Heck, I'd pay for it if it allowed me to access it programmatically, process the cover images to filter junk mail, and have them (for an added fee / driven by API) shred them for me.

If anyone wants to try building it that idea out let me know. I'll beta test.

This is already a service and has been for a long time:

https://www.earthclassmail.com/

I looked at that years ago and found enough complaints about it thatI picked a lower-tech service. Be sure to do some research before you try it.

A positive testimony here for Earth Class Mail. Using them for several years now. It seems like they were in difficult times maybe five years ago. Since then, they went through a re-org, found a new CEO, and are by all signs doing well. New addresses and features added periodically. They regularly ship (forward) for us internationally too.

Good to know, thanks!

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