US Postal Service wants to provide digital ID and collect more biometric data:
In a new report on the role of the US Postal Service (USPS) in identity verification, the Office of the Inspector General for the agency has pushed for it to have an expanded role in the collection of biometric data and the rollout of digital ID.
The report suggests extending the provision of in-person biometric data collection to the 4,800 locations where the USPS already provides a Passport Acceptance Service to the US Department of State. It also notes that the USPS could provide biometric and verification services to other government agencies.
In an example of how the USPS's expanded verification services could be utilized, the report proposes that the USPS could provide online name and address validation to government agencies by providing these agencies with a "confidence level" that a person lives at a specific address. The USPS notes that this confidence level could be generated by querying national databases such as the USPS's Address Management System (AMS), the National Change of Address (NCOA) database, and the USPS's Informed Delivery database.
The report also pushes for the USPS's Informed Delivery service (a service that gives subscribers a digital preview of their incoming mail and currently has 47 million subscribers) to potentially be expanded into a digital ID verification service. Additionally, it suggests legislative reforms that would allow the USPS to provide ID verification and digital ID services to the private sector.
If these legislative reforms are carried out, the report proposes that the USPS' digital ID service could be rolled out as an online single sign-on service for government services and a mobile app that can provide online and in-person verification for public and private sector services. One of the potential private sector applications described in the report is bank loan applicants using the mobile app to verify their identity.
Not only does the report propose that the USPS have a more prominent role in biometric data collection and digital ID services but it also admits that the USPS has already partnered with the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on biometric data collection pilots.
[...] The publication of this report follows the USPS already facing major backlash for its "Internet Covert Operations" program last year. This program surveilled social media for "inflammatory" content, including anti-lockdown posts.
The report in question can be found here.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @12:00PM (1 child)
good.
the right people which deserve a package, get one.
and the ones that don't, won't.
some already got a exploding surprise delivered by drone, tho not by the united states postal service.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 27 2022, @01:12PM
What did you think the ZIP+4 codes were for, anyway?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @12:25PM (6 children)
They do not seem to know what their mission is and they therefore do not respect any limits on it.
All they want to do is GROW. Citizen surveillance is in now? Gimme sum dat tax money to be part of it!
Their mission is to DELIVER THE GODDAMN MAIL.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @12:43PM
You must be naive if you think that they're just now surveiling the population. I used to work for UPS, and even those drivers that aren't necessarily at given address or even purposefully spying know far more about you than you'd realize. It's just an inherent side effect of being the ones that make all those deliveries. Even without knowing what exactly is in many of those boxes, the addresses give a fairly decent sense of what's going on.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Friday May 27 2022, @02:08PM (3 children)
One would think that their primary job is to deliver the mail. That said there are a lot of adjacent things then that they can always flow over into. After all if they are going to deliver your mail, it's not far fetched that they would also like to ID you so they know that it's the right customer that have gotten the right mail etc. Also the USPS already have their own police force (USPIS) that I assume deal with all types of crimes that involve the postal service -- so everything from things that go boom in the mail to identity fraud and if you start to send things that do not for some reason belong in the mail or just to basic theft of mail. So with that in mind they are probably already taking a good chunk out of 'em tax money to provide their service.
Also the mail carrier probably knows a lot more about you, or everyone else, then one like to think. After all they come to your house every day (or however often you get mail). They sort of know what kind of mail you get. They can also more or less spy on your property when they are there, or just notice weird things like if you house all of a sudden start to smell like a growhouse or druglab.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @04:01PM (2 children)
It's ridiculous that they have their own police force. Are the countless police agencies both state and federal NOT ENOUGH for the USPS to work with? By their logic, I could make a case for Amazon having its own police force. Except private companies can't just grow by passing a law giving them more money -- well, at least not as obviously...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Friday May 27 2022, @05:01PM
"..Amazon having its own police force." Do you really think it doesn't
https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/infosec [amazon.jobs]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @01:38AM
Think "jurisdiction" when you consider local police forces. City police jurisdiction ends at the city's limits. County sheriff's jurisdiction ends at the county line. And, state police ends at the state line.
If you're investigating postal fraud and similar crimes, you need jurisdiction beyond whatever podunk town you're actually standing in, at the moment.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2022, @10:12PM
The last pilot under this guy was internet spying using the USPS to skirt government restrictions.
This is just more of the same. If he succeeds, it's more power/authoritarianism under conservative rule. If he loses it's another black eye against the USPS and ammunition to defund/replace it with private mail services (not merely package delivery.)
America is getting uglier by the day.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 27 2022, @02:52PM (1 child)
I was just thinking that we need another surveillance system that can sell our info to the highest bidder. We already have the NSA, CIA, etc etc, but they don't sell data. Important data, like, how many packages you get annually, and from where. How much mail, and from whom. How many vehicles and/or pieces of equipment are on your property at any given time. Who lives with you can be important info, even if the mailman can't tell exactly what your relationship might be. Or, maybe they can tell? They probably know exactly why uncle Bill stayed at your house for 4 months last year. All that potentially valuable data not being harvested - we need to do something about that, and monetize it!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday May 27 2022, @05:07PM
No wonder the dogs always bark at the mailman. :-))
This all more joy from Louis DeJoy. It's what we get when we hand the keys to a big corporation guy.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @04:33PM (1 child)
How do you opt out?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @06:05PM
The entire point of mass surveillance is that you can't opt out, and anyone who objects is a criminal because only criminals have 'something to hide'.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @04:52PM (1 child)
Glad to know they have money to piss away on this instead of paying for the jeep to cover the few dozen houses (including mine) at the end of the road. Happy they'll be able to track us, and yet somehow still fail to deliver mail to me without the PO Box, even though they know DAMN WELL that my street address is tied to the box. /sarcasm type=obvious.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @06:48PM
These are not words that belong in the same sentence as govt, or any huge bureaucracy. The saving grace for us is that large businesses can eventually die, but govt, funded by taxes and maintained by force, never does, unfortunately.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @04:55PM (1 child)
Currently, the IRS sends you off to a private company with a TL domain of Montenegro for ID verification. This is insane on multiple levels.
The IRS is training users to trust random domains (in other countries even) as being legit for official US government business.
The private company collects biometric data as part of this verification process. Which they presumably compare to biometric data they have obtained from the government and other sources. After a barrage of complaints (including a letter I sent), the IRS committed to changing this, but hasn't yet. They also got "assurances" from id.me that the company would delete any biometric data they collect as part of the verification (but, the biometric data they have collected to perform the verification against is not mentioned).
The company the IRS used for identity verification prior to id.me was Equifax who did not keep their infrastructure patched against known exploits, leading to compromise of PII on nearly half of all US citizens (including SSNs). For the private companies, keeping information secure is a cost and they want to focus on generating profit. Hopefully a government agency with the sole duty of keeping the information secure will be more motivated to do it, and will end up with better results. But, the bar has been set very low by private companies, so the government almost cannot do worse even if they tried.
The post office is perfectly positioned to provide the verification portion of this service. The post office used to provide banking services too. They had a far greater scope, historically, than they have today, but there is no reason not to increase it again. The post office teaming up with id.gov would be a great combination to both address fraud and limit the scope of our data being shared with every random company that wants it. But, we will need legislation that prohibits sharing this collected data with private companies and the police.
The US should look at Estonia for an example of how to roll out a proper digital ID. And, look at NSW AU for an example of how NOT do do it. Of course the religious crazies will oppose it. Privacy advocates (I am firmly in this camp) will have reservations, but one entity subject to the will of the people is infinitely better than an unlimited number of private entities that police and TLAs currently use as an end-run around the 4th amendment protections to spy on Americans without warrants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:45PM
I'm not sure how you can look back on the last two years and think any area of US government is particularly subject to the will of the people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @07:01PM (2 children)
In case anyone doesn't know, what USPS does with its "Informed Delivery", is that every day you have mail scheduled to be delivered to your address, Informed Delivery will send you an email with images of the front of the envelopes you're getting. They've said they're working to do the same for packages in the future.
I've found this to be helpful, in that I'm handicapped and now don't have to haul my pain-wracked carcass out to the multi-address mailboxes unless something I actually need to get has been delivered.
As for the ID stuff, the post office already does this sort of thing for the State Department's issuing of passports. It's mostly just a "yeah, this looks like the same person as in the picture" check. I can see their point; if they're already doing this for passports, why not do it for the other parts of government that occasionally need an ID check for what can otherwise be an online process? It's easier for people to get to local post office than to wherever the closest IRS office, for example, might be. From the post office's perspective, getting their small post offices all over the place to be able to provide more services to the locals will not only bring in more revenue, but since Congress pitches a fit any time a Postmaster tries to close any of 'em, might as well get more use out of them.
Sure, having to go to the post office for an ID check is Orwellian, but we're long past that point already. This is just moving that process to the post office instead of a different government agency's office, or a contracted third party company.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday May 27 2022, @09:52PM (1 child)
Well, that depends. Their identification system they are suddenly so proud of is only able to associate a single person with a given address, so for our Post Office Box, I and only I officially live there and get the informed delivery mails (not my wife), and for our house, my wife and only my wife officially lives there and gets those informed delivery mails (and I can't get them. I officially live at that post office box, remember).
This single-person-per-address seems rather a glaring shortcoming--many if not most addresses have multiple occupants that really "live there"--and certainly isn't something to boast about nor build a nationwide ID system upon that other things might depend on.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @01:43AM
I will confirm that only one person can live at an address. In our case, my wife gets notifications, etc, but I cannot. She already registered, and the system will not accept a second registration for this address.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.