USPS Photographing Mail Is No Surprise...

160 million letters and packages photographed by the USPS last year. To be used as part of domestic surveillance I guess.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/u...il.html?_r=0


-IBFS

It sounds like a reasonable explanation. The domestic surveillance angle is secondary, at best.

I wouldn't necessarily say domestic surveillance is a secondary reason.


-IBFS

I don't buy their story that storing an image helps in processing deliveries.

This is just another set of data points to keep the Secret Squirrel NSA data centers humming along day and night.

Has a tinfoil hat ever been pictured on a stamp?

Ah, but I'm watching them!

I saw what you did there CJD.

A system of recording the images of envelopes is also in place at Canadian Mail Processing Plants.

Here is what happens and why:



The machine is a Multiline Optical Character Reader (MLOCR). Letters are fed into the machine and the scanner captures an image on the face of each envelope.

The image is sent to the plant's Central Computer System (CCS). The CCS finds the correct address block and verifies that the postal code matches the rest of the address information. If it is incorrect, the CCS corrects information wherever possible.

If the information is correct, a bar code printer sprays the appropriate sortation bar code on to each Canadian and US mail pieces.

What if the machine cannot read the address?

If the address information cannot be confirmed or read, an image of the letter is sent electronically to staff in the Video Encoding System. The VES operators look at an image of the envelope on computer screens to determine the address and enter the proper sortation code.


VES desks (different models have been introduced at the Winnipeg Plant and perhaps at other facilities)


In the United States this function is carried out at a centralized centre in Utah. Canada will be centralizing the VES process for western Canadian processing plants in Vancouver once the new plant is in operation.

The Postal Union reported the following to its members:




What happens to the images of the envelopes?

I have been advised by a Canada Post representative that "specific data from individual letters is not retained".

The MLORC machines could not function if the information on the envelopes was not scanned and sent to the Central Computer System.
It is essential that the envelope be scanned for the system to work!
Although the US government may have used scanned information as an investigative tool, the MLOCR was not introduced for that purpose.

"Although the US government may have used scanned information as an investigative tool, the MLOCR was not introduced for that purpose..."

So what WAS the purpose? And I wonder how much such operations contribute to our (and your) postal budget deficits?

The purpose is to automate the sorting of mail. Which hopefully would lead to cost savings and smaller postal budget deficits.

But in the US, once the information was being scanned and OCRed, then saving the information for surveillance and investigations was only a matter of obtaining enough computer storage to hold all the data.