The post office

So I was talking to some guy at work today and the subject of the post office came up... I worked at the Lancaster P&DC in Pennsylvania for 3 years ....seems like ages ago... And part of the reason why the subject came up was that I got outsourced there sort of like I am getting outsourced again now.... (#3 if your counting).. I worked on what was called a LSM or letter sorting machine... A letter would drop in front of me (one a sec) and I would key in a code related to the zip code....I listened to a lot of books on tape back then...Well the post office bought 2 huge machines that replaced a bunch of us... What they do is... The letters are run through the machine.. A picture is taken of each letter and a neon orange bar code is sprayed on the back of the letter... (look at your mail and you will prob find it on some of them) then they let the mail sit for a few hours and the picture of YOUR mail is sent to a offsite outsourced company and someone sits at a computer and looks at the picture of your letter and keys in a code for where it goes... That code is related to the picture and the bar code #...That information is sent back to the machine....Later when the mail is rerun through the machine again it reads the neon orange barcode and looks up the # and sees where it should be sorted to....

all well and good.. But it doesn't have to take a overly paranoid mind to see that a data base of mail could be stored with ease and with OCR anyone's true physical address could be recorded and tracked with a good track record ... Receiving or sending would not matter for both could be tracked....

technology convince with the ability to be misused to track citizens