OT. Postal Service as Spies

[Dean Hoffman]

The USPS is monitoring social media. Unconstitutional? Illegal? Maybe just another example of mission creep.

[Wade Garrett]

Be better if they deployed all that staff instead to processing and delivering the mail. I believe that is what the post office's mission is, eh what?

My mail sometimes comes as late as 8:15 PM with the usual complement of two or three mis-delivered mailpieces per month.

[gfretwell]

The only way this makes any sense at all is if they were looking for people who might be sending letter bombs or poisons through the mail. Both have happened and it might be a concern for the safety of the postal workers. Other than that it makes no sense. OTOH after 74 trips around the sun I had found out plenty of things the federal government does not have to make sense.

[trader_4]

It's ridiculous that the USPS has resources on this, when they are losing money, closing facilities, instituting cuts on service, etc. Even if they had no problems, there is no justification I see for this.

Meanwhile I sent two small first class mail items in the past week that are supposed to have tracking. One I put into a USPS blue mailbox outside the library, the other in the mailbox outside a local post office. Neither shows any tracking. One has been just over a week, the other several days now. It's not unusual for mail not to scan at first. Sometimes it takes a day or two and then it shows up somewhere along it's way and then tracks from there. But I've never seen this before.

A friend of mine sent his income tax to the IRS back in January, paid for return receipt/delivery confirmation service. Tracking shows it got there, but he never got a receipt back showing it, like he paid for. And so far the IRS doesn't show they have it either.

[trader_4]

Even then it makes no sense. We shouldn't have a whole bunch of agencies monitoring the internet for bad actors. We should have one and if they see something, then they should forward it to the appropriate agency to investigate further, if necessary.

[gfretwell]

I am not sure the IRS even honors return receipt mail. I never got a receipt and that was years ago before we started thinking the mail was bad.

OTOH I sent a Priority package to the wilds of Northern Michigan that has always taken an extra day and it got there in 4 days, one being Sunday. (In my mailbox on Thursday, delivered on Monday)

[gfretwell]

That is not the government way. These agencies do everything they can to protect their turf and I can see the postal inspectors wanting to do this in house if there is any way at all to come up with a nexus to their mission.

OTOH the whole story might be bullshit started by a conspiracy guy who saw something in a postal budget, found some obscure memo and ran with it. Who knows? I am certainly not that worried about postal inspectors reading my dog's Facebook page. If they f*ck with him he will bite them ;)

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yes, got one last October. Took a couple of weeks.

[bruce bowser]

In the past, they've steamed open other peoples' (organization's) letter and stamps, etc...

[gfretwell]

They don't have to steam anything open. Your mail is all subject to postal inspection at their discretion.

[danny burstein]

Nope. The _outside_ is fair game to them. Not the contents,

[Ed Pawlowski]

Depends. Some mail can be opened, other mail would need a warrant.

Get actual facts here:

[danny burstein]

Which confrims my point. "First class mail", for which full postage has been paid, is NOT searchable under normal circumstances.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Watch a couple of "To Catch A Smuggler" on Nat Geo and you can see packages getting opened both mail and freight.

Dogs, X-ray and hunches catch a lot of illegal stuff.

[Tekkie©]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:24:26 -0700, Bob F posted for all of us to digest...

Give it a rest Bob, Biden likes him so you be ok.