Post Office Takes Pictures of EVERY Piece of Mail

No wonder the Post Office is going broke.
This is an extremely expensive process they have going on.
And they say they've only had to check the photos of the mail 'a couple of times'??
Is it worth it?
Oh .. and they claim that there is no big data base and that they dont' snoop on customers.
(yeah .. okay ... I believe them ... )

US Post Office Takes Pictures of EVERY Piece of Mail

The Postal Service takes pictures of every piece of mail processed in the United States - 160 billion last year - and keeps them on hand for up to a month.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the photos of the exterior of mail pieces are used primarily for the sorting process, but they are available for law enforcement, if requested.

The photos have been used "a couple of times" by to trace letters in criminal cases, Donahoe told the AP on Thursday, most recently involving ricin-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

160 billion pictures!! I wonder how many stamps that is worth, how many dollars? The server space for that many pictures would run millions of dollars a year... I don't think they care about cost cutting.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
No wonder the Post Office is going broke.

No, they are going broke because CONgress has ordered them to prefund their pension fund for the NEXT 75 YEARS.

But what has been lost in the political debate over the Post Office is why it is losing this money. Major media coverage points to the rise of email or Internet services and the inefficiency of the post model as the major culprits. While these factors may cause some fiscal pain, almost all of the postal service’s losses over the last four years can be traced back to a single, artificial restriction forced onto the Post Office by the Republican-led Congress in 2006.

At the very end of that year, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”

Think Progress.org

They've been set up to fail, probably so someone can come in and take their place. Someone who's greased a lot of Republican palms, no doubt.

The photographing of the mail is creepy and hugely invasive (no doubt ordered by the NSA) but, its only one of many reasons the PO can't pay their bills.

Surprised.

No, not surprised that the mail is being imaged for "law enforcement" reasons. That rather goes without saying nowdays that everything is monitored.

I'm surprised that this seems to be the first thread on ATS where this facts gets mentioned since it became news a whole month ago.

Edit - turns out there is a thread after all.
Cool.

reply to post by FortAnthem


Bingo! Very few people pay attention to the real reason the Postal service is "in trouble". They actually make money...but are required to prepay the pensions as you stated.

As far as taking pics of the mail.....that's old news. This was known long before the NSA crap came about.

Originally posted by alfa1

Surprised.

No, not surprised that the mail is being imaged for "law enforcement" reasons. That rather goes without saying nowdays that everything is monitored.

I'm surprised that this seems to be the first thread on ATS where this facts gets mentioned since it became news a whole month ago.

It's not the first thread.

Here's one from a month ago.