Why on earth is a government website linking anything from Facebook, Snapchat, etc? USPS isn't a trendy coffee shop or a designer brand, they're a federal agency of the United States government and should be held to a higher trust and privacy standard.
As the parent comment has explained, all USPS is doing -- at least from their perspective -- is to use some third-party analytics tools, without intentionally or specifically linking to Facebook or Snapchat.
Or put it this way -- is there a data analytics platform that is suitable & easy to use for any US government agency? Not that I am aware of (but please let me know). Without such infrastructure, these government organizations understandably are looking for those commercial options.
While I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place, there are self-hosted analytics tools that they can use. One Google search turns up plausible.io which, even if its less convenient than Google would help with trust. It seems we've completely normalized the State conducting mass surveillance, tracking and metadata collection on citizens with the aid of corporate tech giants like Google.
The US government does run its own self-hosted analytics platform (https://analytics.usa.gov), which the USPS does in fact use. Which makes it all the more questionable that they were additionally using third-party analytics.
I don't think basic analytics is objectionable for a government org web service. I'd hope they'd be tracking "Do people use this? What kind of devices do people consume this site on? Is the page even loading properly for most people?"
> I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place
I don't agree with them using known abusers of personal data for the tooling, but this is what I was talking about.
I don't like them using Facebook for analytics, I don't know what they were getting from it. But the basic premise of analytics, I think they should do.
Sure, but the answer they gave to this reporter was the same usual corporate garbage response that included "we need analytics to market our products" (???)
I think it's fucked up that any agency is "marketing products" at all, but inasmuch as this is necessary in some way, surely they don't need the kind of surveillance marketing that's questionably even worth it for corporate advertisers to use. It literally reads like a google or facebook lawyer wrote it
The problem is that the USPS isn't really a "government agency". It's a weird hybrid where in some ways the USPS is more or less forced at act as a private company would. I agree that it's bonkers that a national postal service would need to "market its products", but the USPS is constantly facing funding issues (in no small part due to its weird setup), so they have to do something to... well, drum up business.
I agree that they shouldn't be using tracking code from Facebook etc. for their analytics, but they do need analytics of at least some sort. I think that should hopefully be uncontroversial.
That wasn't always true, and changes in that direction were made to a lot of government agencies, doing things like making them pretend their budget is a business and that they need revenue streams is nonsensical and doesn't work, and I can say that with confidence because every time such changes are implemented the value of the department goes downhill fast, to the point where some people speculate that the intention of such policies is to kill those agencies. I sometimes buy that, but I also think we should acknowledge that while neoliberal political projects are often cynical and greedy, they are also often the result of incompetence. I see a certain naivete in people whose core competency has been gaining power through social influence not knowing how to actually build systems that work
i mean the entire last few decades or so people have been banging the drum that parts of government, like the USPS, should "operate like a business" or even be privatized. so this being an end result of that is not that shocking, unfortunately.
What's even sadder is that this is said in an economic and regulatory environment that has gradually winnowed away all the examples of businesses that made the argument even the slightest bit compelling if you squinted
Some of us do in fact believe that the only way to avoid common issues with mishandling information is not to gather it in the first place. I see sides of the same coin.
Still, I'd expect the government's bean counters to ensure that any usage of third party analytics involves some ironclad agreement to the effect of, "If you fail to meet <Herculean privacy desiderata>, then we f---ing own you", so at least the government gets something when said third party inevitably violates the agreement.
Except it was the government agency that violated their agreements by providing this data. At least Facebook, based on their response, specifically put in the agreement that this sort of data should never be provided. It seems like the proposal of consequences flows the wrong way here.
I must be missing something. Their list of who they are data with is vague such as "other organisations if this is necessary as part of providing services to you or them."
I suppose it is nice that they tell you that they may send your name, contact information and purchase information to market research companies?
The worst part is that it had been working just fine for me before. I already had a login that I think had been verified via postal mail. My IRS account obviously isn't going anywhere. Why do I have to create a completely new login, just to use less secure surveillance based authentication? It smells of corruption where someone gets a kickback based on how many people they can herd into the surveillance industry slaughterhouse. There are probably several layers of indirection (grift) because "government can't do anything", but that's still the underlying dynamic.
If I had to guess, the kickback isn’t from the auth provider.
Maintaining a system takes people & resources. For 40+ years, there’s a push to not allow the government to actually hire and manage those itself, but use commercial entities, because “big government is bad”.
So it is easier to get the approval to pay x2 as much for a 3rd party than do it for half the budget internally. And as things need to be done, you end up saying f*k it and help ruin public service because it was mandated you’ll do so.
And then you end up with shitty services, which was the intent all along: it’s not about big government, it’s about outsourcing government contracts to you and yours.
The person that you’re replying to already called it negligent. It’s clear that it’s negligent.
That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere.
I’m not even American, but I just spent 30 seconds on the USPS site and came across an online store where you can buy gifts, etc. This reasonably puts them well within the ballpark of an organisation that’d seek to use this sort of tech. As anyone that’s worked with anyone in ecommerce marketing will tell you, there’s always organisational pressure to shove these ‘tracking pixels’ onto your site.
Again, it’s negligent that they did it, from a privacy POV. But let’s not conflate that with ‘old man grumbling about social networks’.
> That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere.
I don't think the USPS has any legitimate reason to be hosting tracking pixels from any entity outside the US government. USPS should have analytics on their website, but the USG has a hosted analytics package[0], and that's what they should be using -- which they are[1], so they should already be getting the data they need.
This isn't exactly true. Even with junk mail they aren't profitable. But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people, not to allow 3rd parties to harass them endlessly.
That's not really the point. If they didn't push junk mail so hard, they'd be insolvent and fail. Profitability is not the issue.
> But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people
Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that.
The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.
Sounds like they exist to serve big business pumping out tons and tons of land fill routed trash, subsidized by the federal government/taxpayers. Given they're unionized, they can just lobby whomever to keep this unicorn status. Federal agencies should not be allowed to unionize.
Not filtering, no, but I would like them to set bulk mail prices high enough to actually reflect the cost of the externalities of sending (and trashing) that mail. Fewer companies would send so much junk if they had to pay for its true cost.
They don't have to provide bulk-mailing services to non-government entities. This is where someone says "Mail one of these advertisement packages to every person in this district", and it's not actually addressed to you. This would raise the cost of mailing spam to the same cost as mailing real letters.
There’s been some back and forth about the sudden mandate for USPS the pre funding retiree healthcare out 65 years, which nominally created a great deal of debt to the government as they failed to meet that sudden obligation. However, by removing the obligation that ‘debt’ disappeared as the government hadn’t actually spent any money on USPS retirees healthcare.
The United States Constitution requires the United Staes Government to run a postal service. This means that the USPS must exist and it must be properly funded.
To be pedantic, the US Constitution simply grants Congress the exclusive power to establish post offices and post roads. Nowhere does it make any requirements about how Congress uses that power.
So much of the constitution is like that. Take the second amendment for example. "Arms" aren't clearly defined, affordability isn't guaranteed, taxation of such arms/ammo isn't restricted, and other amendment(s) can alter the provision of the amendment (ie, the fifth is why felons can lose their 2nd amendment rights)
The Constitution was never intended to spell out all laws of the country. It's a framework for how our government should work and a list of fundamental rights that should be protected at all costs.
The second amendment doesn't define "arms" because (a) at the time there wasn't much ambiguity there and (b) "arms" isn't actually the most important concept there. The second amendment enshrines the right for citizens to be able to stand up militias and defend themselves. The US didn't have a standing army until WW2, despite Alexander Hamilton's opinions on the matter. The second amendment was put in place because colonists lived under the thumb of a monarch and at the end of an army's barrel with nothing guaranteeing the people a right to defend themselves, their neighbors, or their fellow colonists (eventually countrymen).
The Constitution is a legal document and the foundation of all American law. It turns out a specific definition of "arms" would actually be very useful to the modern legal doctrines of the post-industrial society in which we actually live, as opposed to the pre-industrial agrarian society for which the British re-establishing their colonies, slave revolts and uprisings from Native Americans were problems worth worrying about.
The second amendment was a reaction to having lived under the oppression of British rule, not concerns over slave revolts or native uprisings.
That aside, the concept of amendments exist for a reason. It's totally reasonable for Congress today to amend the Constitution if a definition of "arms" is now needed. It wouldn't be the first time a new amendment modified or entirely voided an earlier amendment.
What we don't need is court rulings, executive actions, or even new legislation short of an amendment trying to modify or redefine an existing amendment. If an amendment needs to be changed or clarified that needs to happen at the level of another amendment, anything less is short cutting the system and, in my opinion, not democratic.
