Monitoring U.S. Mail
by Paranoia
For readers, including this one, reluctant to subscribe because they fear being added to some sort of spook hit list, here is some more fuel for the fire.
I'm sure readers have noticed the barcodes sprayed on the lower-right front comer of all letters delivered by the United States Postal Service. These 5-, 9-, or 11-digit (plus check digit) codes are derived from the destination ZIP or ZIP+4, and the 2-digit Delivery Point.
The goal of the system is to imprint each mail piece with a number uniquely identifying the destination mailbox. Ideally, the mail can be machine processed up to the point where a bundle is given to the letter carrier in the exact order that he or she walks the route. These codes are pre-printed by bulk mailers (to earn discounts by saving the Postal Service some work) and by Postal Service OCRs (Optical Character Readers). The OCRs are very high tech. They are constantly being improved and at this point can read virtually anything that is machine printed and most hand printed addresses at about ten pieces per second.
Nearly all possible destination addresses have been put in "standard form" and entered in a master database. The OCR must reformat each address into this standard form and look up the barcode. Naturally, variations in address preparation are a nag. The whole process is daunting. Math majors may want to figure out how many combinations and permutations of "201-C South Second Street" might exist (Hints: "S", "S.", "s", "2nd", "2 nd", "ST", "ST.", "St.", etc., plus misspellings and "-C" may also be written as "APT. C").
With a system of discounts, large mailers are encouraged to use the automated Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) to improve the accuracy of mail preparation and facilitate automated handling. Discounts are earned if 85 percent or more of the mail pieces have been checked and approved by a certified program working from a certified master file of addresses. Everything must be re-certified regularly. Also available is NCOA processing (National Change of Address), which tracks all moves registered with the Postal Service.
When the system works, it's dynamite (in spite of its bad rap, the Postal Service tries very hard and, in my opinion, succeeds most of the time). In a recent mailing, we submitted our list for NCOA processing at the end of a month and received data on moves occurring during that month (posting of moves can take up to six weeks). The completed First Class Mail pieces were submitted to a bulk mail center half a state away at 5:00 pm on a Friday and most were delivered in the next morning's mail. We saved time, money, and trees by not mailing to the addresses we knew were bad - in advance.
But what happens when the automated system fails and the OCR can't decipher the address? Obviously, a person must get involved with these strays. In a new, still experimental, program an image of these stray addresses is sent electronically to an off-site processing center, coded, returned to the Barcode Printer and reunited with the letter. You can tell when a letter went through the new process because it will bear an iridescent orange barcode on the back of the piece.
Now the spooky part. Let's assume that the spooks are gathering data on you. It doesn't take much imagination to assume that they would be interested in your mail. Even if they didn't actually read the contents of each piece (this would require a court order if they wanted to play by the rules), they could make a quiet deal with your letter carrier or show up at your local Post Office each morning and photograph each piece. Given the processing power now available at each OCR, it would not burden the system to include a list of thousands (or tens or hundreds of thousands) of destination addresses to watch. Think of the power! A terminal near the spook on a case (mobile terminals are not out of the question) beeps and displays an image of the letter that entered the mailstream at OCR #12-3-A just two minutes ago addressed to Dangerous John Hacker.
Now, with all that time and energy saved, the spooks can expand their watch. Technology to the rescue - I'm feeling safer already!
For The Curious
The POSTNET barcodes are made up of long and short bars at 22 per inch.
Long bars (nominally 0.125") are about twice as long as short (0.050") bars. Nominal bar width is 0.020 inches.
Each complete barcode is framed with one long bar at each end. Individual digits are made up from five bars , two long and three short.
Digit values are:
"1" represents a long bar and "0" represents a short bar.
Another way to view the codes is to assign weights 7, 4, 2, 1, 0 from left-to-right and define eleven as digit "0".
The rightmost code is the check digit, assigned such that the sum of all digits, including the check digit, is a multiple of ten.
Valid codes will have a total of 6-, 10-, or 13-digits. A 9-digit ZIP+4 plus the 2-digit Delivery Point will total 62 bars.