I'm amazed how they managed to bring in barcoded stamps without a peep from anyone about privacy. Sending a letter anonymously is now impossible.
Aren’t there cases where bank robbers were caught after the fact using knowledge of the serial numbers of the stolen bills?
The aim is mass surveillance so a few people going to the trouble of avoiding it is not a problem. True, it is meta data (not letter contents) but we know that is pretty powerful by itself.
I do mean it is the aim - they never really explained what the real advantages of doing it for, and I suspect there is pressure from the security services who are accustomed to seeing most communications (or at least most meta data) to seal what they see as a hole in data collection.
> I imagine the main reason to do it was to make it harder to use fake stamps
it was never put forward as a reason IIRC. How common are forged stamps in the first place, to make it worthwhile
You now have to be more careful about buying the stamps themselves though. You could make a stock of them and not use them for a year or so (not like CCTV footage lasts more than a week).
How do you think this happens? The codes are not scanned at the shop.
> when transaction for these stamps was registered.
Where is this registered?