A Case For Using Snail Mail Through The USPS – Legal Protection
2 min read
The government ran Unites States Postal Service (USPS) is on hard times. Electronic communications is killing traditional snail mail, paper communications. However, the past couple days stories have popped up that have me gravely concerned. As the technology around us expand and grow in complexity exponentially the laws that surround us about it’s use unfortunately have not.
Right now there are very large and powerful government organizations that know this fact and are using the technology for their benefit to potentially hurt you, the citizen.
The Internal Revenue Service or better known as the IRS has apparently been reading emails and they think that have the full legal right to do so. The problem is they are operating under the Electronics Communication Privacy Act that was put into place in 1986. This act says that you don’t need a warrant to read an email that has been opened or has been stored on a server longer than 180 days. So as soon as you open that email from your bookie the IRS can read it without a warrant. Think it’s time to update the laws that protect you?
Snail mail, the physical kind, is far more protected. They can’t touch it without a warrant which requires, or supposed to, evidence to get one. So that same communication from your bookie talking about all the income you just got cannot be read.
Then there is a little thing called the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution that is supposed to protect you from illegal government search and seizure, but the IRS thinks the 4th doesn’t apply to email.
Think about that for a second, email communications are being viewed as not your property and laws of privacy are not applicable. There may be life for the USPS after all. A day or two to communicate important documents back and forth but your information will be protected. At least that what’s supposed to happen.
The entire world pretty much lives and dies through email. With banks, investment firms, brokerage houses, financial planners all moving to electronic methods they are walking into a free roaming prairie of zero privacy if you take the IRS’ point of view. All your balance sheets, annual statements, capital gains, side income, anything and everything that hits your eyes through email is no longer under privacy protection.
The time has come to have the out of touch, archaic, elected officials to update our laws to meet the changes brought to how we live.
As soon as they get used to reading emails free and clear, the government machine, their buddies will be facing an uphill war to try to take that away. The time to act is now because later we will go back to 1984.
End of Line.
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Binary Blogger
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Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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