“Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he said.īut law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail. “Now it seems to be, ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”īruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.) The information is sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered.
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Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
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Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States - about 160 billion pieces last year. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.Īs the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. “It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored.
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“Show all mail to supv” - supervisor - “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. Of course, that was in the days when Bop still existed as an "independent" entity.WASHINGTON - Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
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The shortest (international) address that I've used successfully was: One curious thing I've noticed is that when I've addressed items to various friends in the United Kingdom, US Postal staff often cross out United Kingdom/UK and replace it with England - apparently some postal staff don't know where the United Kingdom is! Makes them easy to remember, for me, anyway, but they can be a b*****r to find when you're driving about the countryside.
#SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS CODE#
Post Code (only UK - Dublin has area codes similar to Parisian arrondissements)Īnd the smaller the place the longer (and more descriptive) the address. UK and Irish addresses can be interesting though.
#SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS ZIP#
The Canadian format is similar - you just replace the State with the Province and the zip code with the postal code.