EVERY Piece of Mail in the USA is Photographed

[jeffweico]

Here is a link to a news story originally appearing in the New York Times. It states that there is something called the "Mail Isolation and Control Program" which mandates that the USPS photograph the outside of every piece of paper mail going through their system so they may be later retrieved by law enforcement.

Postal Service logging all mail for law enforcement - Worcester Telegram & Gazette - telegram.com

To those who have claimed that Amazon/PayPal/eBay cannot possibly link you this way or that way because of limited computing resources, you MIGHT want to re-think that. If the USPS can take photographs of 160 BILLION pieces of mail each year, store them and search through them, sorting through some user data would be VERY EASY for almost any private company.

Remember, computing power and storage space are dirt cheap these days and companies are storing much of this information via "data warehousing" where mass volumes of information are stored and processed WITHOUT putting any burden on the main servers the company relies on to conduct their business.

[MM78]

Might want to start ordering that catnip from an undisclosed seller!

[rsot]

@jeffweico, good point but I think that the chance of linking would come into play if 1) seller does HIGH volumes 2) lot of fraud complaint necessitating research. There would be some cost still associated to data retrieval and manual investigation in order to proceed with action on this data....

[Bunneh]

Originally Posted by jeffweico

If the USPS can take photographs of 160 BILLION pieces of mail each year, store them and search through them, sorting through some user data would be VERY EASY for almost any private company.

Sounds like a LOT of work and manpower AND also a lot of postage delays...

[JamesNorth101]

Impressive operation, but I don't quite see how it would help the police in anyway, because all they will see is the external packaging.

Only way I see if being useful is if someone has bought say a 50" TV, and received a 23" TV and the seller refuses to accept that, external pictures would prove the size of the TV.

[Dmshark25]

Maybe he means you can be linked if you were to manually place your real return address sticker over your stealth address printed out on postage thru ebay shipping.

I know some discussed doing this technique when they don't have access to their stealth address. If all the data is recorded: shipping address , return address, tracking numbers, all this Data can be crunched and computed and cause links

[JamesNorth101]

Very good point. That would be a hell of a job.

I did not see it mentioned anywhere in the article that the database would be accessible to private companies though, unless I missed it, so should not be an issue.

Still food for thought though.

[rsot]

True but if enough parcels come through and they decide that a person is worth investigating...well, you can put the rest together logically and investigation will begin

[jeffweico]

I didn't mean that the USPS would sell the data to Amazon or anything.

I only meant to illustrate that what would seem impossible, technology resources-wise a few years ago is now VERY doable. Walmart has PETABYTES of data in their data warehouse.

So, when someone says they cannot link you by using data point X and data point Y because it would put too much of a load on their servers, I say think again!

I also don't think the USPS is investigating eBay cases where a buyer feels they were ripped off. Maybe if there were a lot of complaints about the same seller, but not routinely.

My guess would be they might be looking for terrorist type activities, or people using the mail to sell drugs or other such things.

[Dmshark25]

Yea I doubt they are going to use their resources for an ebay claim, USPS is major debt already

But yes the technology is there

[jeffweico]

My whole point is simply that ANY possibility of linking should be avoided. Just because eBay/PayPal/Amazon are not using a technique to link accounts TODAY does not mean they won't tomorrow.

Remember the "turn n' burn" method used on Amazon accounts? Set up an account, and DO NOT add a bank account. Sell like crazy, as much as you can, as fast as you can, knowing that Amazon will shut down the account and hold the money for 90 days. Then, just add ONE bank account to as many closed Amazon accounts as you want and the money would still disburse in 90 days. This no longer works.

When they started looking at this, they stopped disbursing the money. They began locking people out of their accounts and keeping the money. One member here in particular, who is certainly no fool and probably the KING of Amazon ended up losing a significant amount of money. In the tens of thousands. Many smaller members did as well.

I shied away from this method. I like to keep my accounts as long as I can. It isn't that I am any smarter than anyone else, it is just that my business model was different. When this happened, I looked closely at everything I was doing with the thought of eliminating any possible links. I went WAY above and beyond the techniques discussed in the stealth guide. In fact, when I laid this out, I believe - if memory serves - one person even called me "sphincter-boy". But you know what? In the last year, I have lost only THREE Amazon accounts and in TWO of those cases, I got my money after the 90 days.

At the end of the day, each seller has to do what they are comfortable with and what works for them. I always recommend that people eliminate ANY possibility of linking, no matter how far-fetched it seems, if it can be reasonably done. I'll admit, I go overboard. I use a separate PC for each set of accounts and have more than 10 going at all times. I use VPS's sometimes as well. I use different OS's, browsers, email providers, areas, ANYTHING that will make the account look different from the others. I maintain a working phone number for each account. I have a cable modem, 2 DSL lines, and several USB mobile broadband sticks each from a different provider. Doing it this way is definitely more expensive. But I sleep well at night and RARELY lose accounts.

[rsot]

Originally Posted by jeffweico

Remember the "turn n' burn" method used on Amazon accounts? Set up an account, and DO NOT add a bank account. Sell like crazy, as much as you can, as fast as you can, knowing that Amazon will shut down the account and hold the money for 90 days. Then, just add ONE bank account to as many closed Amazon accounts as you want and the money would still disburse in 90 days. This no longer works.

That was and is a killer - things can change at any point but it is good to know how ANY platform works...down to the core...including potential future operations

[vogeltron]

They day they start linking eBay accounts through this is the day I retire from this. I truly am not worried about this and I am a skeptical about most government operations. I do have my gripes with the data mining the US govt supposedly does with everything as Mr. Snowden revealed. If you are apart of a serious terrorist group or whatever I suppose you should worry. Even being a Libertarian or a Ron Paul/Chuck Baldwin Supporter I think you could be a target. I wouldn't worry about it unless you leave crazy comments about killing people or blowing **** up. But overall if you are worried about selling Vero or ⊗⊗⊗⊗ **** or running stealth accounts I would relax. Unless ICE/US Customs is knocking on your door for importing ⊗⊗⊗⊗ **** I would relax.

I admit I do not agree with this practice. But I would be much more worried about the US government going through Facebook, yahoo, Google email and comments and everything else. Rather than worrying about taking pics of the to and from of mail and parcels. Just my two cents if it makes a difference which I am sure it doesn't. NSA probably reading this as we speak.