USPS photographs front and back of every envelope that runs through the system.

[dkf]

According to FBI Agent James Spiropoulos, investigators accessed a Postal Service computer system that “incorporates a Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program which photographs and captures an image of every mail piece that is processed.” Agents were able to obtain front and back images of about 20 mail pieces that had been processed “immediately before the mail piece addressed to Mayor Bloomberg.”

A review of that mail revealed that each piece carried return addresses listing zip codes in the New Boston area.

A similar analysis of 40 mail pieces that were processed “immediately before and after the mail piece addressed to President Obama” showed that several of those letters listed addresses in two Texas cities near New Boston.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/woman-arrested-for-obama-bloomberg-ricin-letters-687435

[Occulus]

1. Oh, this is disingenuous as all hell.

I worked in one of these exact facilities as my first postal job in 1996; the images are never permanently stored and the entry clerks code for the exact data on the address written by the sender. They do this at high speed and have no option to save the image (although they can flag it as 'unknown' during a training/testing session and return to it at the end of the test). It's done solely to properly route unresolved addresses, and as a former Data Conversion Operator (this job's title) for the USPS I can state with some authority that these images, stored on the same equipment (hard drives) as they are day after day, are not retained beyond the next cache flush.

This image capture is performed in order to produce and apply an inkjet barcode to mailpieces unresolvable by the automated equipment. Look on the bottom rear of any handwritten-addressed piece of mail and you should find a similar barcode, either in black ink or fluorescent orange ink. The systems applying those barcodes do so so that your mail gets to you. Pieces which already have a properly-applied barcode generally do not get sent through the described system unless that barcode is invalid or unreadable.

I am a former USPS employee of seventeen years. The postal job dkf is using to minimize NSA spying by saying "USPS does it, too!" was my very first postal job, I did it for almost three years before starting as an automation clerk (processing the resolved mailpieces at the described operation's end, by the way), and it is no way anything similar, or done to any similar purpose, as telephone call spying by the NSA.

Nice try, dkf, but I know this process very intimately and in detail, did this job at all points in the process, and it is not in any way close to the same thing, and is not being done to anything close to any similar purpose as what the NSA is doing regarding telephone calls!

[dkf]

2. They may not have been storing it in your day but they are now.

That's how they were able to go back to the data to find the ricin actress.

[Occulus]

3. "in my day" included that time period

edit: you're flat wrong about the image storage, too- that isn't at all how it's done

[FarCenter]

6. So why are DMIs trained on MICT?

http://about.usps.com/universal-postal-service/rand-report.pdf page 49.

[Occulus]

9. Because it's their job.

DMI stands for Dangerous Mail Investigator/Investigation, MICT stands for Mail Isolation, Control, and Tracking... and both refer to hazmat mail as they apply to dangerous situations in the mailstream.

Neither one has to do with any form of spying. I should know; I went through part of the hazmat/hazwopr training myself.

I have no idea what made you bring that up, because it has nothing at all to do with the PICS system.

[FarCenter]

12. OP said "MICT program which photographs and captures an image of every mail piece that is processed"

So I looked up MICT USPS and found the reference. What is the PICS system, and why are you talking about it?

[Occulus]

13. PICS is the image capture system; MICT is something else entirely

and does not have to do with the image capture system described.

I worked at all points in the image capture process. MICT is not part of that system. It is something else entirely. That acronym was not once ever mentioned and was not used in reference to the process at any point in the process, or in any training in that process, across my entire time as an employee of USPS. MICT was never referenced in any technical article, any service talk, and is not present as an operating state on the screen displaying the modes in which the sorting equipment is running.

[FarCenter]

14. Lockheed Martin Wins $93 Million U.S. Postal Service Contract To Upgrade Image Processors on Bar Cod

Lockheed Martin Wins $93 Million U.S. Postal Service Contract To Upgrade Image Processors on Bar Code Sorters

Lockheed Martin's WFOV system enhances letter processing by capturing an
image of the entire envelope instead of just the bottom four inches, which
typically is the location of a bar code on letter mail. The new system will be
installed on Delivery Barcode Sorters (DBCS) and Carrier Sequence Barcode
Sorters (CSBCS). These two pieces of equipment are the backbone of postal
delivery systems, as nearly every piece of letter mail crosses one or both of
these machines during a mail-processing cycle.
The WFOV camera system provides more advanced letter processing and bar
code reading capabilities than existing DBCS and CSBCS camera systems, which
are nearly a decade old. The expanded image height allows the U.S. Postal
Service to take full advantage of the IBI mark used with electronic postage
and other nonaddress information on the envelope.
Lockheed Martin is responsible for the development and deployment of 9,000
WFOV camera systems at U.S. Postal Service facilities. Beginning in the late
summer of 2002, the systems will be installed at more than 1,600 locations
throughout the United States over a two-year period.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lockheed-martin-wins-93-million-us-postal-service-contract-to-upgrade-image-processors-on-bar-code-sorters-74663597.html

With companies like Lockheed Martin an Northrup Grumman providing postal automation, I'm sure that NSA could neve get any images...

[Occulus]

20. Except that the only mail going in front of the image lift camera

is the mail that's addressed so sloppily the address cannot be automatically determined.

We used exactly two systems: one to read the address as written, and one to capture the image of unresolvable addresses. Both were hooked into a system that attempted to resolve the address as written, and upon failure of that, sent the mail to another bin for collection so that it could be run on another machine loaded with a different sortplan which would send a two-bit image to the remote encoding center, code the data presented to the clerk, and use that coded information to apply the barcode containing the address data. The sole purpose of both was to achieve the greatest depth-of-sort for the carrier's delivery. I personally knew our IT staff; the line was dedicated and its only allowed destinations were postal.

Since resolvable addresses do not get sent to a remote site, and (having used the equipment) the images lifted come only from live mail whose addresses cannot, for one technical reason or another, be automatically resolved (a surprising, but necessary, number to people who are not USPS automation clerks), I still do not get what your objection is. It still isn't possible for the NSA or any other such agency to obtain all mailed envelope address data because that information is simply not globally obtained (not all of it goes in front of "that" camera), and the data that is obtained is necessarily random in source, depending as it does upon the quality of information and piece type the sender used in the first place.

[treestar]

22. Why isn't it spying?

If they do it to every mail piece?

[HiPointDem]

11. thanks for the information.

[Occulus]

4. It just didn't go the way you thought it would, did it, dkf?

I'm only kicking this to show others what you are really about.

It was a pathetic try, and you should be ASHAMED of yourself.

[Kingofalldems]

7. Seems to be a daily occurrance.

[dkf]

8. Good government requires good watchdogs.

I'll do it since you refuse to.

[Occulus]

10. You have to know what you're talking about first.

You do not.

I will school you in this, dkf, not the other way around; do not presume to tell me what my job of so many years involved.

[dkf]

17. They are already using it for these purposes.

Just because you think it's being erased doesn't mean it is. I bet they are keeping this set of data and that it won't ever be erased otherwise they have lost their evidence.

If you can do it in this case you can do it period.

This is just like saying the gun background check and registration data will be erased. Puhleeze

[Occulus]

18. I did this for a living, dkf

I have seen the data be irretrievable myself. We could only track back so far when it comes to the actual images. Address data is stored in each run report and always has been. I have had to request that mail be rerun through the machine and have had to rerun mail through the machine because there was a crash and it wasn't possible to restore the image data or the address required further resolution provided by the remote coders, all of whom were actual people at an actual workstation coding actual live mail that could not be automatically resolved.

I have worked at all points in this process, dkf. I know every last nook and cranny of this entire system as it relates to how it is used on live US mail. Again: do not presume to school me regarding any of the particulars of my job. I will school you, because I did this exact job, and because you have not.

Again: this entire process is not in any possible way analogous to any telephonic spying against any person, be they American citizen or foreign national.

[FSogol]

15. +1. n/t

[BainsBane]

5. No wonder they are going broke

[Savannahmann]

16. Really, storage for that many photographs must be a mother.

Good Grief, I mean the electrical demand to power the storage must be insane.

[FarCenter]

19. Around 3000 letters per GByte or 3 million per TByte.

IIRC, a TByted drive is around 15 watts.

So to store 300 million letters would be 1500 watts, which is like a coffee pot or a hefty microwave.

PS - the banks image the front and back of checks, and store them redundantly for 7 years.

[treestar]

21. This is bizarre

One thing I am curious about, and apparently the reporters are not, is: why does the Post Office do this? There must be some benefit in aid of their operations.

[1-Old-Man]

23. Its how they sort mail mechanically at extremely high speed

If it were not for optical scanners it would take dam near forever to sort and then deliver mail. The real question about this practice is are the sorting images used for anything? Now ask yourself this, with the number of (disgruntled) employees it has do you think the Postal Service could be producing and keeping classified information on every letter sent in the country and nobody find out about it? Remember, this would have to take place in every local post office in the country.