The US post office is spying on the mail – senators want to stop it | Hacker News Reader

The US post office is spying on the mail – senators want to stop it

wired.com

200 pointsimpish920869 comments

I 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?

I think it's probably meant to show that they "care" about your privacy.

Of 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.

The 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.

While not actually effecting the things that matter.

Now that someone has convinced Americans that mail-in voter fraud is real, they would like to commit the actual fraud to retain power.

It might have to do with the fact that most of Congress is old and understands the mail system, but not so much digital communications.

>that legislators are jumping at this

They signed a strongly worded letter. Saying that's "jumping at this" seems generous. It probably won't take fifty years for them to do a completely pointless thing about digital surveillance.

Eight out of 100 senators signed this letter, and at least some of the ones I recognize have consistently opposed stingrays, CBP abuse, and mass surveillance. So this is business as usual, unless they can convince 43 others do something about it.

They'll need 52 others to break the filibuster

An 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/1PGVHO6BDZzGnB3l3j3hy...

Public Intelligence has a copy of the request form: https://info.publicintelligence.net/USPS-MailCoverRequestsFo...

Are attorneys offered extra protection? There're several checkboxes for that.

Client-attorney communication is explicitly privileged/protected.

So are dolphins doesn't mean they don't get into the drag net.

Most 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.

This 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

I 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.

The 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.

Yeah this has been going on for 20 years..makes me wonder, why now?

I assume the USPS "Informed Delivery" service is the same thing, repackaged for the mail recipient(s). (I'm a subscriber FWIW.)

I 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.

I 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.

I 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!

Yeah, 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.

Yep, these folks would have us think a nuke is equivalent to a rock since they’re both used to kill people.

In general, yes. In this specific case a person who lives in your community and looks at the letters going into your mailbox everyday will also have a profile of you.

Of course this is less true in denser areas

A hundred years ago the mail carrier couldn’t produce a list of every person that has ever sent a piece of mail to me.

Even to the naked eye, the scans often clearly show the contents of the envelope. With even a slight bit of basic image adjustment (we're talking brightness/contrast or levels) you can very clearly read what's inside.

I subscribe ťo the same service and I find it pretty handy. There's no way to stop the incessant junk mail so it helps me filter what needs prompt pickup and the junk that can stay a couple days before I check the mailbox.

Informed delivery was a game changer for me. Being able to decide in advance whether or not you absolutely need to fetch the mail saved me a few times.

Saved you from what?

From having to go get the mail when I was sick.

Package "lookahead" is the true gamechanger. Being able to see tracking information for inbound packages you don't have tracking numbers for directly is nice (because of the name/address matching stuff).

FOREX: I applied for a new passport and the passport status says "approved, we're mailing it soon" with no tracking information. Informed Delivery shows me the package coming from Arizona and where it is in the mailstream, even if the US State Department didn't give me my tracking number.

We 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.

Postal 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.

Congress 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.

Any 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?

General privacy legislation would not cover the USPS due to sovereign immunity.

It would if it explicitly mentioned applying to government agencies, just like how this legislation makes itself applicable.

This 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.

Do 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.

Does 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.

> 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/133274617257067725...), his still rising on YouTube after the encounter. I bet the teenager was fine too after the investigation (???)

'We don't read your emails (just their metadata)' has also been a contentious topic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/email...

There are good reasons to defend civil privacy.

There 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).

"No reasons to expect" is something I might phrase as "good reason to suspect outside powers aren't respecting you"

"We kill people based on metadata" -- former NSA chief Michael Hayden

A visit from the FBI, or any arm of law enforcement, is an unpleasant experience. Likely moreso if it's unexpected because you've done nothing, in your mind, to invoke it.

What's the worst that could happen? They could misconstrue something else...

"Man in the middle" attack.

I buy a lot of illegal drugs which get shipped through USPS so I'm all for this.

I 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.

Doubtful, USPS is even cheaper than self delivery apparently as Amazon uses them for last mile delivery.

I 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.

You 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).

To 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.

I 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.

Must be a wild experience to imagine that more people than just you use the United States Postal Service.

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