Washington Post - free registration required Mail Tracking System Raises Privacy Fears (Te.... Critics warned that there is too much of a threat to Americans' privacy rights if Intelligent Mail is applied to all mail.
"You have to question the Big Brother aspect of the government being able to document who is writing who," said Rick Merritt, executive director of the Virginia Beach-based advocacy group PostalWatch. "There will be some serious privacy concerns if it becomes mandatory that all mail be sender identified."
The proposal contradicts the Postal Service's cherished notion of anonymous correspondence, said "Ari Schwartz", associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C.
"There is a rich history in this country around the concept of anonymous mail that goes back to the Federalist Papers," Schwartz said, referring to the documents anonymously authored by the nation's founding fathers which helped sway public opinion in favor of ratifying the Constitution.
"There are way too many unknowns about expanding this idea beyond its original scope, including who would have access to the information, and what this would mean for tracking individuals in the future," Schwartz said. "We just haven't dealt with those questions yet."
"Banning anonymous speech through the mail would be a major revolution," said Peter Swire, former chief privacy officer during the Clinton administration, now a law professor at Ohio State University.
Zoe Strickland, the Postal Service's chief privacy officer, declined to discuss specifics of the report, citing an ongoing internal review of the recommendations.
"Privacy is a major value with us, and we will make sure those values are integrated into any program, including Intelligent Mail," Strickland said.
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