Postal Service almost never denies mail-surveillance requests
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
That's not to say that I approve of this behavior. Just that it shouldn't be surprising. There is no oversight. If mom and dad are gone, why not have some cookies?
We really don't want ISPs to be common carriers. Keep them private and competitive.
Personally I'd rather see the federal government overrule states which have made laws against municipal ownership of the last mile. And to start handing out small seed grants to get more places to install fiber everywhere and lease it to whatever company cares to re-sell it.
For example I live in Houston where there utility company only owns the power distribution infrastructure. There are 100 (or so) companies that sell power at retail after buying it wholesale. http://www.powertochoose.org/
I consider that to be excellent competition. Getting to choose between two power companies, however, I would not consider competition.
- Comcast/AT&T/Time Warner is not real/enough competition, more like a monopoly
This problem could be solved with the antitrust laws already in place. Despite being a libertarian I'm not opposed to breaking up these private monopolies that government policies have made possible.
- Being private hasn't protected them against federal intrusion
Being private citizens has also not protected us against the NSA spying on us. That does not mean the solution is more government intrusion to offset the existing one.
I oppose the federal government overruling state laws in any sense (so I'd rather the laws against municipal ownership of the last mile be abolished by market forces) as that obviously stifles competition between states.
For a self-proclaimed libertarian, you're ignoring a very basic tendency of market systems. Natural monopolies are Econ 100 level stuff, and utilities are the textbook example.
Murray Rothbard once said:
"In general, I urge everybody to look at a government measure [...] not in terms of a tragic failure to achieve the common good, public interest, or general welfare, but [rather] as a conscious agency for doing all sorts of monopolizing, cartelizing, and other restrictive things. In other words, the government is not that dumb!"
If you read about how the FCC came to be and how they were politically set on displacing competitors, you will change your mind.
Free markets can't generate monopolies because they can't use the threat of force by hooking up with the government. If you disagree, all you need to do is come forward with a single example of a monopoly that exists without any government backing (regulations, cronyism, etc).
And if I were you I'd drop this cliche of "oh this is Econ 101". It doesn't help the conversation and is just a veiled attack. In this case though, since the government influences what gets taught in universities, even Econ 400 isn't enough to understand free markets, and most Econ graduates come out of university with little to no understanding of the Austrian school.
* Tell them the government should abolish all regulation which interferes with "the free market".
* Then remind them that this would be an action taken by a government, and thus by definition the incorrect thing to do.
How to keep a State-Church Separation believer busy:
* Tell them the government should abolish all regulation which interferes with "freedom of religion"
* Then remind them that this would be an action taken by a government, and thus by definition the incorrect thing to do.
You believe in separation of church and state, right? I believe in separation of market and state. Before you post another childish remark, remember you can always make that comparison yourself to see if your remark has any weight.
Other people start from a principle of "if a government did it, it was wrong". Which places all government actions off-limits.
Of course. Think of it this way:
- I don't have the right to take your money.
- My friends and I voting unanimously to take your money still doesn't give us the right to take your money.
- No matter how many friends I vote with, we as a group never have the right to take your money, or anyone else's.
- Then how did government get the right to take my money and yours?
You may say because it owns the land and if we don't like it we can leave. But think of it this way:
- I don't have the right to keep others from using unused land that even I am not using.
- And so on, same as above.
- Then how did government get the right to keep others from using unused land that even itself isn't using?
The problem here is that no one can grant another person or group with rights that they themselves don't possess.
It follows that the governemnt has no way to acquire this right, and so it does those things illegitimately (not authorized by any person or group of persons, since no person or group of persons has those rights to give up to the government). That's why anything a government does with tax money is wrong, because that revenue is ill-gotten.
That's why the excuse is usually "oh, there's a social contract"; this is a red herring. Even if the people had actually read and signed such a contract, they still don't possess those rights in order to be able to give them up to another party.
We allow ourselves to be taxed and to pay the government for land not by consent [1] but by threat of force, since if we disagree, we are fined, and if we don't pay we eventually go to jail.
[1] consent means voluntarily agreeing to do something. voluntarily means without coercion or threat of violence.
Absent the threat of violent force against anyone who does not obey conventions with respect to ownership, there is no such thing as ownership. So in order to have even the concept of private property and "rights" thereto you must postulate some entity which recognizes those "rights" and will enact violence on your behalf against certain classes of others who would "violate" them.
Hah!
I much rather have the government regulating my ISP which (in theory) I have a say in then my local monopoly Internet service provider calling all the shots.
You probably don't really wish this... because it will ultimately be bad (think of your local power or gas company).
What you really wish for is more competition on a level playing field, ie. 6-10 ISP's per city who compete with each other for your business.
I have already addressed the competition thing in a couple of comments on this thread... It does not exist right now and it would take a while to be a reality so ending Net Neutrality right now just makes things worse.
We can look at the cities Google Fiber has rolled out to. In every instance, competitor's pricing has decreased while bandwidth speed has increased. That is what we are fighting for -- we are not fighting for a government set bare-minimum level of service for government set price. That will get your DSL-like service -- just barely "good enough" and no innovation because there's no real competition.
We need to somehow get to having 6-10 ISP's in every major city. This will drive quality of service up, and pricing down.
I also think it's a conflict of interest to be a content provider while also an ISP (comcast, time-warner, etc). Either deliver bits, or create the bits -- not both.
The reality RIGHT NOW is that their is no competition in 99% of the US. Ending Net Neutrality right now and hoping in a decade things change would be stupid.
We need more of that from more companies.
Perhaps a better solution is to government fund small ISP's (they exist, look for them) and help them develop their own infrastructure in major cities. It will not be an overnight solution no, but it's far better imo than permanent legislation that might just kill the innovation you seek to spur.
Look at the state of DSL. It's delivered over POTS lines and falls under the legislation governing said lines. If an ISP runs lines to provide DSL service, they are required to lease the lines to whoever wants them (other isp's) for cost (not much profit made from this transaction). Suddenly everyone abandoned DSL in favor of Fiber and Cable services, and we've seen speeds exponentially grow in this area.
POTS lines already exist to every home in the USA, why not use them? DSL2+ has greatly increased the speeds, but still few ISP's use it. It's because of the huge legislative hurdles they have to jump over just to provide the service (I have a friend who is a WISP in the bay area of CA, and this is the reason he gave me for why he's not currently also running DSL to homes in his service region).
We risk doing the same if we regulate all internet carrying lines.
I really think it's better to somehow grow a lot more ISP's that operate in great competition. I don't know the perfect solution or how to go about accomplishing this -- but I do know free competition almost always trumps legislation. What we don't have right now is free competition (we have monopolies/duopolies).
The thinking that government regulation is always bad is wrong. There is no reason why the government can't classify ISPs as public utilities AND help create more players.
Any solution would take time so what we can't do right now is allow Net Neutrality to end and make the situation worse.
I'll take Comcast's terrible pricing and service. Give me some of my taxes back. If me and a few buddies want to start an ISP then that's on us.
Only because the US apparently can't do regulation properly. In the UK, Ofcom regulate properly, and therefore we have plenty of competition and all the forces in place to ensure that the last mile infrastructure company doesn't touch content, allows any ISP to use its services at the same rates, and does its job of keeping the cables working. I can get Internet from any number of providers, all competing with each other fairly on top of this company's cables (and one or two providing their own cables instead).
The thing is, the last mile infrastructure company doesn't run an ISP itself, so it doesn't have any reason to muck it up for the ISPs. That's the key. That's all you need to do - split the ISPs apart from the infrastructure companies.
That is not net neutrality.
Sure it is. There's competition, semi-regular speed upgrades, if I don't like my ISP I can take my business elsewhere. As a result, I'm currently on an entirely unlimited plan with no throttling, and no angry letter if I download more than some hidden limit. My understanding is that a significant amount, if not the majority of the US is unable to do that.
> the government thinks they can force-regulate things like a "porn filter" and content filters
They could do that in the USA already, monopoly regulation or no monopoly regulation. Monopoly regulation is practically entirely separate from content regulation.
In any case, they only regulate that the porn filter and content filters must be an option - I've certainly never had such a thing on my connection. The only sites that are blocked for me are blocked under court order. This is practically equivalent to regulating that ISPs must provide a free copy of Net Nanny to all customers to use if they so choose, it's just done on their end rather than mine. (Also, hilariously, there isn't actually any regulation on this - ISPs are currently doing it willingly.)
I think you are thinking of the state of US mobile industry and it's data plans. I'm not aware of any large ISP that has throttles or bandwidth caps (comcast has a supposed 300GB cap but has never to this day enforced it).
> In any case, they only regulate that the porn filter and content filters must be an option
You're forgetting that it's by default on, and that one must call their ISP and "opt-in" to seeing porn. Social stigma aside, how can you realistically and with 100% accuracy block only true porn websites? You cannot, and the UK has shown that over and over as legitimate websites get blocked, including news websites that run stories that relate to porn, etc. The same is true if the filters were expanded to say download websites. And who's to say a website is illegal or not - I for one certainly don't want my government telling me some download sites are legal and others are not.
Not to mention who's to say I intend to break the law simply by visiting a website? Maybe I'm doing research (Brian Krebs), etc.
The very notion of filtering some content goes completely against what net neutrality means.
Really? I've heard countless stories of US ISPs doing deep packet inspection to throttle torrents and other peer-to-peer traffic. If they've stopped that, my googling suggests it's primarily due to FCC regulation.
> You're forgetting that it's by default on, and that one must call their ISP and "opt-in" to seeing porn.
Ah, incorrect. All major ISPs (a) ask during sign-up, and (b) provide a web-based tool for turning it off. There's no need to ever talk to anybody.
> Social stigma aside, how can you realistically and with 100% accuracy block only true porn websites?
You can't, but there's already products on the market which claim to provide content filters which block porn. Net Nanny is a personal one, a good many companies implement one.
> And who's to say a website is illegal or not - I for one certainly don't want my government telling me some download sites are legal and others are not.
Your Government actually decides that more websites are illegal than any other country, delisting them from the .com DNS space for everybody, whether in the US or not. Perhaps you should fix that before worrying about an optional content filter that nobody in the US is currently talking about creating.
> Not to mention who's to say I intend to break the law simply by visiting a website?
Nobody. It's an optional content filter.
Then you haven't been paying attention[1]. I live in one of these areas, and have already been getting 1-2 robocalls a day this month about my data usage. They're calling it a "trial", but the costs are very real, and it's all in place to go national when people here don't complain enough. If I go over in the next two months, I will start getting hit with that charge.
[1] https://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-...
As was pointed out in an earlier thread (I think to you, but perhaps I'm misremembering) it's reasonable for the President to include a qualifier like 'legal content' in order to avoid headlines like 'Obama supports child porn?!' in the sensationalist media.
Furthermore, just because a website's activities are illegal does not mean I intend to break the law simply by visiting them. If that were the case, Brian Krebs would be in prison by now.
What we don't need is mandated filters by the government like they have over across the pond. Opt-out but defaulted to opted-in - and impossible filters that catch up a lot of legitimate websites and content which then have to file some sort of petition to be unblocked, meanwhile costing them all traffic and a lot of business (look it up, news websites have been taken down numerous times by the UK "porn filter" because they ran a story relating to porn and the entire site was blocked).
Certain industries are inherently slanted towards a monopoly, and a regulated monopoly is often preferable to an attempt at forcing market conditions. The two industries aren't the same, and I think electric/gas utilities are significantly more inclined towards a natural monopoly, but it is important to realize what situation we currently have, rather than applying an idealized narrative.
All we really need is competition, we don't even really need the ISPs to be classified as public utilities. What needs to happen, by whatever means necessary is for the delivery and content to be firewalled and enforcement of regulations that prevent the infrastructure from discriminating against content. Infrastructure (i.e., spectrum, wires, etc.) should not be able to discriminate between sources of content and should solely be competing against one another and be forced to break up once they reach a certain size and market share.
The more poignant question is, what will your neutral internet connection look like after a decade of full-blown monopoly? Title II is monopoly regulation, and there's no reason to believe the cost of Title II won't be formalised monopoly.
Your second statement is just wrong...
Google already runs most people's cell phones, search, browser, email, mapping service, etc. so it seems to me being one's ISP also potentially could be really bad.
And you are not taking into account that any large-scale legislation will not take affect immediately and will likely be a ramp-up style similar to the Healthcare Laws spread out over 5-8 years.
In that same timespan, a lot can be done to help foster new players in the ISP market and spur a lot of fierce competition. I think option 2 is the better option to really get better service with lower prices.
Nothing that has been regulated has ever been done better than the free market. USPS (that is changing now that they are privatish), DMV, POTS lines, Utility companies (power, water, gas), etc. We have seen time over time over time that when a market gets heavily regulated, innovation almost completely stops and things settle to a "just barely good enough". Do most US citizens have a choice of power companies? Nope. Land Line telephone providers? Nope. etc. Whens the last time your power company called you and said we're going to slash prices on all power because company X is slashing prices and we really value your business? Never.
All regulation is not "bad" or you must be totally ignorant on the history of regulation in the US and having some regulation does not mean being "heavily regulated".
Nothing that has been regulated has ever done better then the free market? One example you give, the USPS is certainly not becoming better because of being privatized. You must be under 25... At one time, the USPS did mostly one thing, delivering first class mail and they did it really well, to anywhere in the US for like 10 cents. It WAS THE MODEL for the rest of the world. Now? They raise first class postage like every six months and keep entering into more deals with direct marketers to distribute even more junk mail to us. Not better...
Hey, totally government controlled nor a "free market" is going to be the answer. Any solution will take time and one thing we can't do right now is end Net Neutrality which will only make things worse. I have said this like 10x now in this thread...
Great to see you fall to personal attacks in attempt of proving your point. You are wrong btw...
The point I'm making and the point you're missing is that any regulations/legislation is not going to change anything overnight. It will take years, no matter what it done. Perhaps longer with legislation due to the speed of government.
A slowly rolled out, 5-8 year legislated plan is a lot worse than a slowly ramped up 5-8 year private business competition and proliferation.
When businesses compete, the consumer wins. When businesses get regulated but still have no competition, the consumer loses. You seem to be completely glossing over this very important point. We need more competition -- not more regulation.
One does not simply regulate their way into competition.
> At one time, the USPS did mostly one thing, delivering first class mail and they did it really well, to anywhere in the US for like 10 cents
There are realities here you are not addressing. Dramatic increase in gasoline prices -- dramatic decrease in volume of mail, to name a few. This is why the USPS system is struggling today, and the reason they've been allowed to mostly "go private". The old system was also heavily subsidized by the US Gov't, which isn't happening anymore.
If you look at package mail transport (since only USPS can deliver letters to mailboxes), the competition is fierce between USPS, FedEX and UPS. Often times, UPS/FedEX are a lot cheaper to send a package through. (I know because I work for an distribution company w/ warehouse). We've seen some initiatives from USPS to recapture the package shipment market since they went privatish with their "if it fits, it ships campaign", but they still have a long ways to go. This is a great example where private companies in competition have way outbeat the regulated portions in the same industry.
You're "we should regulate today to save tomorrow" attitude holds no water here. Contrary, we should develop today to save tomorrow; develop more competition.
I don't know what 5-8 year legislated plan you are talking about. My immediate concern is preserving Net Neutrality (the way the Internet has always worked) and that can be corrected right now with the reclassification of ISPs. That is only step one...
The USPS should have been split up... First class mail delivery (no profit) run by the government and a private entity for package delivery. They could have shared resources and faculties. Requiring UPS and FedEx to also do first class mail delivery would have been another idea. Just privatizing the USPS with the burden of first class mail delivery and thinking they will ever be able to compete with UPS and FedEx in the long run was stupid.
Is this your version of, "back in my day a candy bar was a nickle"?
Because the last time a stamp was 10 cents was 1975.. which would be 43 cents today.
It's called inflation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_postag...
Thanks, your link seems to prove my point... Approximately, in the first 100 years of the postal service the price went form 2 cents to 10 cents which is a 5x increase. In the year 1971, which is when the government stopped managing the postal service (this is close to our year of 1975) the price has increased another 5x to today but that has only been 39 years.
Inflation has only been one factor in the changing price of first class postage over the years but thanks for your comment...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_postag...
The light purple is the inflation adjusted price (2008 prices); and the dark purple is the nominal price.
That is remarkably flat (inflation adjusted).
Fact is, it's been roughly 45 cents to mail a letter since the postal service began.
Sure, there were times when it was cheaper.. but it was ~43 cents in 1890; 40 cents in 1975 (2008 prices); and 45 cents today (49 cents is 45 cents in 2008 prices.. which is what the chart uses).
I am glad you are good at reading Wikipedia charts but ONCE AGAIN inflation has never been the only factor in first class stamp pricing then or now. Sure, over the long term the cost of anything will tend to match inflation. I have been mainly talking about recent short term pricing of stamps...
The original argument (by Alupis) was that the government privatizing the postal system has been making things better for consumers (compared to when it was a government agency). It has not... There has been nine price increases since 2001! This has NOT been because of inflation which has been minimal and stable. The reason has been pension mandates by the government (due to politics) and the decline of first class mail usage.
First class mail service has never been overly profitable which is why I argued a essential service like that is better run by the government (especially since the post office is not totally an independent enterprise anyway) and not a private profit-driven organization. The government never would have raised stamp prices nine times in the last 13 years (based on past history) if they were still running the post office which means stamp prices would not have keep pace with inflation (over the last 100 years) incidentally. They would most likely have addressed the pension mandate and taken other measures to keep stamp prices more stable (to not piss off the consumers aka voters). It is also doubtful they would be making deals with direct marketers to flood us with more junk mail.
A stamp in 2001 was 34 cents. That would be 45 cents in 2013 money.
The same price as a stamp in 1890.
And while you blame USPS for adjusted prices for inflation, it's actually mandated by the government. USPS prices are tied to the CPI-U index by Congress.
So clearly the government is happy to raise prices, since they've mandated this, and they've kept a stamp at roughly 45 cents for over 100 years.
My whole point(again) is that first class mail delivery should be handled by the government and NOT privatized. The government is supposed to handle certain things for it's citizens. Let's say in 1965 (when the postal service was running the postal service) paper costs, because of some crisis jumped 1000%. The government would not have raised the price of a stamp 1000%. A private postal service would have had to (not exactly because supply and demand is also in play) which I hope you understand.
Thank God we outlawed poll taxes and didn't privatize polling places. Adjusted for inflation, we would probably be paying $50 to vote on election day.
We won't get into why the government requires USPS prices be tied to the CPI-U or the pension fund mandates. Hint, union busting and lobbing money via UPS and FedEx.
This wasn't really even about the postal service but why the government needs to regulate ISPs. The Internet is now an essential service and citizens shouldn't be at the whim of monopolized private companies.
Well, this thread has been beat to death but thanks for playing...
Apparently the correct term is "Independent Agency" in the US which seems to imply a tighter integration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection...
For a campus that may have 30,000-50,000 people on it at any given time, you do need to be able to have quick responses when an incident does occur. The campus police at my local university actually do more than a typical police department might -- sending out txt messages to all students when there is an incident or threat, update details frequently, Help Call Boxes in the parking lot for at night, etc. They even handle situations when a student pulls the alarm during finals week (something that an outside police department would not be able to rapidly respond to and would get annoyed with quickly).
Some universities even have their own fire departments. Most have medical staff on duty for students as well. Some even have dentists and optometrists, etc. They really are "small cities".
Just wondering though you do sign an agreement with the campus that they are allowed to, right?
The campus police can and will shoot you. They are a real-deal police department. Most of the university shootings are ended by campus police (usually shooting the gunman).
However you sort of hinted at the fact that most campus police are a lot more lenient than city/state police. This is true in my experience -- guessing, but probably because they know who they are largely working with. Students. Drunk students, students doing dumb things, etc. Not hardened criminals most of the time. I'd probably step to far, but I'd wager campus police is a much safer line of work for an officer as well (no flip of the coin if the guy you pulled over for speeding will pull a gun on you, etc).
Edits: grammar
They get a huge amount of money from the government (the post office claims this isn't a subsidy since they provide services for the money), and they need Congress to approve efforts to raise prices, lower costs, change service, etc.
Years ago I tried to keep track of the various distinctions between different non-government organizations (e.g., the Federal Reserve is one form of a government corporation, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a different form) until I realized that the distinctions almost never mattered. How important is it that the Federal Reserve issues stock, given that the stock can't be sold and provides no voting rights? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren't backed by the full faith and credit of the government, but got bailouts anyway (largely because they followed Congress' bidding as far as policy was concerned). The post office has been losing billions for years, and it doesn't take much to realize most people expect it to get a government bailout that would never be offered to UPS or FedEx.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/opinion/2014/07/07/ro...
And there are no regulatory restrictions on what they can share, except one. They cannot include anything posted from any person to their known attorney.
So you can actually have all the cookies, except the white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, for up to 30 days at a time.
Other than that, I really don't expect the Post Office to ever do anything but comply with lawful requests. What's the alternative? Do you want the Post Office conducting internal investigations of postal customers?
The interesting thing is an article in today's WSJ, where the incoming Postmaster Megan Brennan claims to want to "act like private sector". If that's the case, they should be much more hostile to surveillance requests a la Twitter, Facebook.
The article is here http://online.wsj.com/articles/new-postmasters-goal-act-like...
Generally, searches are considered "unreasonable" if someone has an expectation of privacy in that context. In general, this creates a divide between private and not-private. The inside of your home: private, and protected. Anything visible from other peoples' property? Not private, not protected.
Mail tracking involves looking at the outside of your mail. It involves looking at information that is not only not private, but must necessarily be exposed in order for mail delivery to function. Hence its outside the 4th amendment. The government doesn't have to "search" your mail to be track it--they just have to get USPS to hand over information it has to necessarily collect incident to its business.
For the opposing view, Google "mosaic theory." As with many debates, this one comes down to a conflict between people who think the Constitution means what it says, and those that believe in "living constitutions" where we should insert things into the Constitution that aren't there, "because change."
Not sure if sarcastic, but how is it possible not to do this?
e.g. the 1st Amendment grants the right to a "free press". Are there really constitutional literalists who believe that because the word "press" as used in the 18th century contemplates the operation of a machine that imprints ink onto dead trees that we should not consider wsj.com within the scope of its protection?
Or consider that the Constitution uses male-gendered pronouns to describe the requirements and duties for the offices of Congress and the President. Are we then to infer that only men can hold these offices?
It seems to me that everybody interpolates the Constitution to some extent, and the difference is a question of degree. So quite frankly I'm puzzled how it can be an accusation against someone that they interpret the Constitution freely, as if the real moral high ground is a the belief that e.g. judicial review doesn't exist.
This is an awful and inaccurate characterization of the position. An idea that both Alito and Sotomayor share common ground on can't possibly be as simple as the picture you present. But don't take my word for it; take Orin Kerr's.
http://volokh.com/2012/01/23/whats-the-status-of-the-mosaic-...
The fourth amendment is certainly the reason these letters are not being opened. The information inside these letters is private, and not known to the postal service. On the other hand, the address printed on the outside of the letter is possibly public information, and certainly information that the service has access to.
One thing I always wonder about in these situations is a duty to keep a "shared secret". Are there situations when we can legally expect a company to fight for our privacy, or are we always relying on their good nature?
I think it depends on the definition of "papers, and effects" in 4A (I'm not an attorney so I really don't know the specifics). One could certainly make the argument that under certain circumstances you can disclose information to certain parties while maintaining a reasonable expectation of privacy. I would imagine this is the basis of doctor-patient and attorney-client confidentiality but that's just assumption on my part.
That's one of the issues that gets lost in the shuffle: the 4th amendment was written against the backdrop of the almost unlimited power of the common law subpoena. When the government demands a service provider turn over someone's electronic records, that doesn't fall within the 4th amendment (it's not a search), nor does it fall within the 5th (it's not self-incrimination).
Can a company that hands over information "without a fight" be sued for a breach of some implicit trust? If not, what about explicit promises or contracts? If at some point the company is not allowed to freely hand over the information, is the government still allowed to receive it in breach of the confidentiality arrangement?
And what about companies giving this information to other non-governmental third parties? In a lot of the contracts I've read and signed, companies have explicitly informed me of circumstances in which (and people to whom) my information may be disclosed. What does this imply about people not named, and what is implied by a contract not having such a clause?
I'm don't think that that's the end of the analysis for the interaction between contracts and the third party doctrine, though. But I don't know enough to speculate.
The Code of Federal Regulations section governing mail covers seems to indicate that the requirements for requesting a mail cover create absolutely no protections for USPS customers. For purposes relevant to the article, section 233.3(e)(2) is the most interesting. All that is necessary is to "specify the reasonable grounds" that national security is endangered, a fugitive is involved, a felony might be involved, or that forfeitable property (probably cash and/or drugs) needs to be identified. The request need not be restricted by person or place. If I think Walter White is cooking meth, the DEA can literally ask for a cover of all mail that passes through the USPS system, and the Chief Postal Inspector (or either of 2 possible designees) could give it to them for 30 days. Only communications KNOWN to be between a subject and his attorney are exempted.
Sections CFR 233.3(f)(2) and ASM 274.5 imply that the USPS cannot record data from the outside of mail in the absence of a mail cover order or other prescribed reason. That, in turn, implies that since (according to media reports) they have been doing it continuously since at least 2001, the head of DHS could simply be requesting a mail cover monthly, to support investigation of unspecified threats to national security. The CPI is required to keep those mail cover records for 8 years, though the data the send pursuant to those mail covers would be governed by the receiving agency's rules.
I would argue that the protections the USPS already has in place for the prevention of mail tampering generates a reasonable expectation of privacy in the external appearance of mail entrusted to the USPS. Since the mail must be placed in approved, closed, and statutorily-protected receptacles, are protected from viewing and tampering in transit, and delivered to [potentially lockable] receptacles, the mail itself is never in public view. There is no vantage point from which an ordinary member of the public could see and record the external mail data included in a mail cover. When I write a letter and mail it, I don't expect my neighbors to know to whom it was sent.
The courts have determined otherwise. In theory, the only way to trigger reconsideration would be to follow around postal delivery trucks, photographing and replacing mailbox contents. When you get arrested, bring up the precedent in your defense.
Mail exteriors are either private and confidential, and thus worthy of "reasonable search" protections, or they are not, and anyone should be able to photograph your mail. You can't have it both ways.
To me, this article says what we know anyway, the USPS ain't perfect. On the scale of things to worry about with your mail, this is not one of them. Even if the USPS wanted to create the worlds best spy system they would find a way to screw it up. Don't fret about this, folks.
Fret about: The crook who steals your parcel from your porch; the person who skims your phone number off your Amazon parcel; the neighborhood junkie who uses mail to receive drugs and then doles them out to your kids; the nosey neighbor who steals your identities; the person who forwards your mail without you realizing it.
A mechanism for dragnet surveillance with practically nonexistent oversight is far more threatening to me than individual criminals. And while you may have some respect for yourself and your profession, you don't really have anything to do with this. The images are processed at the hub of the system built to automatically sort the mail, and diverting those images to permanent storage or a network pipe requires nearly zero additional capital investment.
The only regulatory hurdle to prevent any cop in the U.S. from getting copies is a politely worded request, which does not necessarily need to be detailed or truthful. And once one cop has it, nothing prevents him from sharing it. There are already several nationally accessible systems in the U.S. run by a single county sheriff's department, sometimes as a means of evading federal data retention rules. We already know from media reports that such systems can be abused. Cops look up themselves, friends, enemies, family members, ex-spouses or ex-lovers, celebrities, journalists, politicians, or whomever else strikes their fancy.
This bothers me for the same reason that widespread e-mail metadata collection bothers me. It is done with callous disregard to the expectation I have as a free man that if I live my life without any criminal intent, I should be largely invisible to the enforcer class. Innocents should have blank records in all those databases.
Instead, I feel that everyone now has an individually numbered target painted on the backs of their heads. Any tool that can be used for legitimate police work can also be used for political oppression. I have no doubts whatsoever that the mail cover program has been used for purposes beyond fighting crimes with individualized suspicion against known suspects.
<< I should be largely invisible to the enforcer class.
The genie is out of the bottle. My health suffers if I think and express myself like you just did, although very eloquently. My roots are academic but my current state is prole. (ever read Fussell's Class?" [1] It is WONDERFUL!)
<< far more threatening to me than individual criminals.
I disagree. If you ever lose a relative to a gun or a drunk or cocaine, then storing a googol of data on me is never as threatening.
<< Any tool that can be used for legitimate police work can also be used for political oppression.
Maybe because I am political only one day of the year (or 2, depending), the day I vote, I do not feel oppressed.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/d...
You do not feel oppressed until you are the target of political oppression or personal persecution. Then you will likely understand why many folks are just as or more concerned about pervasive data collection than they are about random violent crazies or unfortunate events.
> The genie is out of the bottle.
The genie is out. However, -if we work at- it we do get to control how it behaves. (Remember reading about how the "mandatory quartering of troops" genie had been let out of the bottle ages ago in English territories? Do you also remember how the American Rebels muzzled that particular genie in their country?)