
Mysterious government spy cameras collecting data at post offices - electic
http://kdvr.com/2015/03/11/mysterious-spy-cameras-collecting-data-at-post-offices/
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4sdt6pie6hgl5ip
Advice from Bruce Schneier's latest book:

Notice Surveillance. This is the first step. Lots of surveillance is hidden,
but not completely invisible. The cameras might be small, but you can still
see most of them if you look. There are sites online that identify
surveillance cameras. The more you know, the more you'll understand what's
going on.

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themoogle
This is the dumbest thing any news agency could ever do. What the camera was
put there for was to gather evidence of people tampering or trying to steal
mail.

Now if who ever was doing this saw the news they will stop and go un punished.

This happened at my local post office. Someone would drive up to the mail
boxes with a vacuum cleaner and suck the mail out.

Eventually they caught the guy red handed with a cameras just like this.

Shame on the journalists for blowing this sting operation.

~~~
appleflaxen
And here is one of the many problems with government surveillance: prior to
the Snowden papers, I would be completely open-minded about the legitimacy of
these actions.

But knowing what we know now about the scope of extra-judicial surveillance, I
am incredibly grateful that the journalists blew the whistle.

The US government and all of its actors have lost the presumption of good
faith, and it's a useful thing to possess.

~~~
ethanbond
Serious question: Why? All we really know is that the US is dragnetting as
much data as they possibly can. Have there been any solid exposures as far as
actual misuse of the data? Not just hypotheticals (as realistically scary as
they are), but real abuses which have already occurred?

~~~
DanBC
Last year someone was fired by GCHQ for wrongful access of data.

[http://stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/11850150.MPs_to_repor...](http://stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/11850150.MPs_to_report_on__snooping__laws/)

> In a long-awaited report on privacy and security, the Intelligence and
> Security Committee (ISC) reveals MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have disciplined or in
> some cases dismissed staff for inappropriately accessing personal
> information obtained through bulk data collection.

~~~
ethanbond
Ah, very solid example. Thanks!

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rdtsc
It looks like it is pretty firmly positioned, enclosed and wired to be a
temporary criminal investigation case. It looks like it is there to stay.

> "Employees of the Postal Inspection Service are sworn to uphold the United
> States Constitution, including protecting the privacy of the American
> public" phrase.

It is like the when I caught my kid sneaking a cookie, and asked them what are
they doing, the reply was "I am not sneaking a cookie".

~~~
Estragon

      It looks like it is there to stay.
    

The reporter claims they were ripped out hours after he asked the USPS LE arm
about them.

~~~
rdtsc
Right but it was only after the reporters starting asking questions. The solid
enclosure looked like it could be there permanently.

~~~
wahsd
That doesn't look like a solid enclosure to me at all. Sure it's somewhat
tamper-proof and meant to look like some phone/electric company component, but
it really doesn't look permanent to me at all.

I suspect it was an investigative agency like the FBI or DEA or even DHS doing
surveillance for a somewhat specific reason. It could be drug trade, it could
be domestic militants, it could be threats against the president

~~~
sitkack
could be. what else could it be?

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coldcode
A smarter news reporter would have put their own camera hidden (outside of the
PO property) to watch the camera and THEN ask about. Imagine the horror to the
PO of the video on youtube :-)

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jolan
Most logical explanation: trying to find people mailing marijuana out of
state.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Out of state license plate and visiting a post office in Colorado? I'd bet
that whatever you mailed to your home address would have a great chance of
being intercepted en route.

~~~
tomjen3
We can all create conspiracies here, but that wouldn't fly over the fourth
admenment.

However the US post office uses an automatic scanner system to read packages.
I cannot imagine the NSA, with its insane desire for meta data hasn't tapped
into it yet.

~~~
akira2501
They may have added the functionality by now, but when I worked on the system,
it only encoded the destination address.

They don't take pictures of the mail for fun or for tracking, it's purely for
sorting. You want all the mail in a letter carriers truck to go into the truck
in the order it's going to be delivered in for efficiency.

So the system was in one of two modes, destination address coding or return
address coding. Which mode it was in was determined by the mail processing
plant itself.

Also, it only photographed letters that did not have a presorted barcode
printed on them. If it already had a barcode it just got sorted immediately.

I'm not sure what there really is to tap into here.

~~~
detaro
What about this?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-
mai...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html)

~~~
sehugg
The stamp machines surreptitously took portraits of users in 2004, it's likely
the self-service package kiosks do too.

[https://epic.org/privacy/postal/](https://epic.org/privacy/postal/)

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spyder
They should have put another camera to see who comes for it. Watching the
watchers ;). Or just casually put a recycle bin before it.

~~~
krapp
Unless it's a clever ruse, and the _real_ camera is somewhere else, to watch
the watchers watching the watchers.

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eli
Dumb question: why is this such a big deal? Is there something about a camera
at a post office that is worse than e.g. the cameras my local police
department has mounted on certain street corners?

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Presumably it's to tie an individual to a piece of mail they sent. I assume
people worry because its a way to bypass getting a warrant to directly open up
mail.

~~~
tacotime
So the problem is more about the subversion rather than the surveillance. I
would agree.

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ZanyProgrammer
I've been to the post office twice this week to check a po box, and both times
I didn't notice any security cameras in the lobby. I'm surprised there aren't
any, and it'd be perfectly normal and natural to have them installed without
people thinking anything suspicious. Most people would just assume they are
there for security. To me that seems a lot better and less likely to arouse
suspicion than some secret camera nonsense.

~~~
code_duck
I agree, cameras are so commonplace that if they wanted to monitor people
inside the post office, no one would blink an eye at a big fat camera pointing
at the counter.

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MichaelCrawford
I experience paranoia as a result of my Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder;
at times the paranoia is quiet severe, requiring that I admit myself to a
psychiatric inpatient unit.

The prevalence of security cameras and other surveillance devices makes my
paranoia worse. I must take more medicine as a result, but even so my medicine
is not completely effective.

It is difficult for me - it really is - just to exist in modern society
without going crazy.

~~~
wahsd
Sorry to hear that. I don't know if it really helps, but you might want to try
an internalize that as much surveillance as exists, they aren't interested in
regular people not involved in crimes they or their superiors and corporate
masters deem major.

~~~
a3n
I.e. if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

But even people who have nothing to hide have a lot to worry about, because
merely coming to the attention of the government can be disastrous.

Say you're caught on camera at the post office or the corner gas station.
There's an ongoing investigation, and the government observed that the subject
of the investigation passed that camera yesterday. They decide to capture all
other passers by within N hours of that event. You fall within that window.

The investigators do this with every other camera available to them.

Since you and the subject are going about your business at one location,
there's a fair chance that you both have gone about your business in other
nearby locations. Say you pass that filter.

There's a fair chance that you both were at some location at the same time,
maybe even within eye sight of each other. Now you're a person of interest,
and your name appears in the investigation.

Now remember that any law enforcement agency is fundamentally a bureaucracy.
Almost no one actually knows how to manage; some are accidentally good
managers, but most have been "Peter principled" up into management. Since
we're enlightened enough to know by now that almost no one knows how to
manage, we've tried to bring some fairness into the employee evaluation
process, by using metrics.

"That which gets measured gets done." Any rational employee is going to pay
attention to what he gets evaluated on. Number of tickets written. Number of
suspects questioned. Number of arrests. Number of convictions resulting from
arrests.

The investigation is going slowly. The investigator hasn't been out of the
office for a week. His boss has been glaring at him lately. The investigator
picks you to get himself out of the office. He visits you at work because you
both work days and it's more intimidating to a subject to be embarrassed and
nervous in view of co-workers. You've just suffered a minor injury to your
reputation.

Surveillance shows that you both visit some location often, and often at the
same time. Church. Store. Post Office. Or maybe you have an acquaintance in
common, even if you don't know each other.

"We'd like you to wear a wire and contact the subject." Nah, I don't want to
do that.

"It looks bad for you that you come into contact with this subject often. I'd
hate for you to be investigated yourself." No really, this is not my thing.

"Remember that thing you thought was innocent and legal? It actually wasn't,
and we're prepared to offer you a plea deal." Um ... OK

Totally made up but plausible scenario, and probably played out with different
details daily. But at least the investigator is still in the running for an
upgrade to his GS rating.

~~~
darkhorn
And the corruption; police who search your house randomly to find ot you use
drugs which were placed there by police to fill their quotas, or your car. Or
judges who were working with private jails. Or police officer who shoots you
because you get out of your car. Or you were killed by police becouse your
neigberhoods thought that you were Muslims making bomb, in fact you were
watching Conan lights closed. Or you know that you are innocent but the
hearing is once per 3 months and that makes your life suck. You are that taxi
driver, you carry that killer, well fuck you, will question evry detail for 12
hours and we'll make you talk about him...

~~~
a3n
Yes, all that. Corruption is everywhere. It's one thing to be a victim of a
corrupt gas station clerk, and quite another to be a victim of a corrupt law
enforcement officer who is literally given benefit of the doubt in legal
procedings. Or as the cops say, you may beat the rap, but you can't beat the
ride.

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curiously
God damn it.

I am SICK and TIRED of governments behaving badly, and even more so that we
can't stop it. It pisses me off.

