Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
United States News Technology

Suspicious Packages Spotlight Vast 'Mail Cover' Postal Surveillance System (fastcompany.com) 247

tedlistens writes: As law enforcement investigates possible mail bombs sent to prominent Democratic Party figures and liberal activists, the tools available at their disposal include digital images and delivery metadata commonly associated with mail sent in the United States. The U.S. Postal Service regularly photographs the front and back of every piece of U.S. mail, or about 150 billion parcels, envelopes, and postcards every year. A longstanding practice known as the "mail cover" program enables law enforcement to obtain address information and images of the outsides of mail as part of an investigation without the need for a warrant through the Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service's policing arm.

According to a report from CBS News, authorities are currently using "data analytics" to spot similar packages to those identified as containing bombs. Images of packages shared with the press show a common return address, using the misspelled name of Representative and former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The Postal Inspection Service doesn't generally comment on its investigative techniques. As part of the mail cover program, mail is routinely digitally photographed as part of the sorting process and even available for recipients to digitally preview in some areas. Apart from threats like bombs, the department says its main focus is on mail theft, fraud, and narcotics cases.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Suspicious Packages Spotlight Vast 'Mail Cover' Postal Surveillance System

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward

    What, you thought metadata collection only applied to digital communication?

    • Is it just metadata if they photograph a postcard?
      • by pz ( 113803 )

        The exterior of all mail is considered to be public information, including post-cards. There is no expectation of privacy.

        Want to write a post-card without making the contents public? Put it in an envelope, simple as that.

  • by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @11:54AM (#57540705) Journal

    It's called Informed Delivery. They email you images of what's arriving that day.

    https://informeddelivery.usps.... [usps.com]

    My wife signed up for it, it's sort of creepy and exciting (at first).

    I would assume they image everything (at least letter sized) as part of sorting.

    • My address is not available for this service...what are they hiding?

      • Interesting, I thought it was generally available for letter mail.

        And what are they hiding? They probably don't want to tip you off of their awareness of your untoward and tawdry mail contents...

        Maybe it's only in urban areas, but they have to scan everything anyway for sorting purposes.

    • It's a nice service, but in the email that they send me, every day, without fail, there is exactly one "mailpiece for which we don't currently have an image"

      • Does it happen to be a bulk mail thing? Since those are presorted, perhaps they don't go through the scanner.

        • You may be right. I had always read it as "one mail piece", but perhaps it should be read as "at least one".

    • The other thing that I notice from this system is that mail from the UK is frequently scanned upside down.

    • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:22PM (#57541289)

      It's called Informed Delivery. They email you images of what's arriving that day.

      https://informeddelivery.usps.... [usps.com]

      My wife signed up for it, it's sort of creepy and exciting (at first).

      I would assume they image everything (at least letter sized) as part of sorting.

      I expect that this what Netflix uses to speed up delivery of DVDs. I regularly drop a DVD in the mail and Netflix will send out the next one in my queue well before the returning DVD will have made it to their wharehouse. So on one hand creepy, on the other hand faster turn around time for their service.

    • by Oloryn ( 3236 )
      Yeah, I've found Informed Delivery handy, particularly when watching out for a particular letter. Also, it's occasionally handy for adding a bit more debugging data for delivery snags. E.g., I live at 999 E Bargle-bargle Lane, and regularly find mail destined for 999 W Bargle-bargle Lane in my mailbox. The fact that it also shows up in my Informed Delivery emailing tells me that the problem is with USPS routing software, not with my local mailbeing. The misrouted mails generally appear to have WEST spel
  • The postal service offers "Informed Delivery" where you can see your mail before you pick it up. From their web site: "Digitally preview your mail and manage your packages scheduled to arrive soon! Informed Delivery allows you to view greyscale images of the exterior, address side of letter-sized mailpieces and track packages in one convenient location."
    • The postal service offers "Informed Delivery" where you can see your mail before you pick it up. From their web site: "Digitally preview your mail and manage your packages scheduled to arrive soon! Informed Delivery allows you to view greyscale images of the exterior, address side of letter-sized mailpieces and track packages in one convenient location."

      The nice extension to this would be if you could mark stuff as junk, and the post office would then dump it rather than delivering it to your house.

  • by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @12:04PM (#57540769)
    Amazing, they are the only one who cannot find or track my packages but at least the photograph both sides of every letter.
    • So, two stories about tracking packages at the USPS:

      1) Earlier this year my wife and I ordered a piece of furniture on eBay (a flat-pack, DIY assembly sort of thing for some cheap storage we needed). The furniture didn't arrive on time, and the seller was unresponsive, so we initiated a dispute ten days after the original delivery date. The day that eBay was set to close the dispute in our favor by default, the seller suddenly posts a tracking number that proves the item was delivered to our ZIP code two da

  • by Anonymous Coward

    If you understand how OCR scanning works, you'd know they *have* to image the envelope, look for something that vaguely looks like an address (in various positions, orientations, etc), parse it, then route it through the sorting machines, etc all within seconds. It makes sense to store those images for training the software (wait until you find out that google stores your "ok google" requests, especially ones that it can't understand and sends them off to folks who manually listen and try to discern what th

  • The USPS is just pretending to be incompetent to cover up their vast and efficient data collection. Think about it!

    Nut: The government is spying on our mail!

    Normal Person: The same people that delivered my mail to the house around the corner, and gave me mail for someone who moved 10 years ago? No way!
    • It goes deeper than that--

      the post office reads the address on every piece of mail!
      and they KNOW where YOU LIVE!

      Best to just not have an address so they can't FIND you!
      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        and they KNOW where YOU LIVE!

        That little box I have at the post office is getting pretty cramped.

        Interesting note: The post office will deliver mail addressed to their street address and my PO box number (as if it were an apartment address).

        Another interesting note: Federal law requires that I keep the post office informed of my actual residential address. Many years ago, when I moved, I went to my post office to fill out the requisite forms.

        Me: "I'm moving. What form do I have to fill out to update my residential address on record

  • The Van ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:09PM (#57541693)

    This van looks like what Steve Bannon would turn into if he was a Transformer

    - Twitter

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's weird that he still loves Trump, even after Trump fired him, called him "Sloppy Steve" and suggested that he was mentally ill.

      His unrequited love is almost tragic.

  • The packages weren't postmarked when they were photographed on camera and released in news stories: they never went through the postal service.

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

Working...