High-Tech Memory Traces Letters (US Post Office keeps record of every letter it machine sorts!)

CTNOW (Website of Hartford Courant) ^ | 11/30/2001 | LYNNE TUOHY

[Fixit]

How did federal investigators come to knock on the door of a Seymour family who received mail processed at the same New Jersey postal facility as the anthrax-laden letter sent to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy? The answer lies primarily in a state-of-the-art mail-sorting machine that not only reads bar-coded destination information on envelopes, but also "captures" the information and saves it in a computer file. "This equipment was not intended as an investigative tool, but now we're finding it can be used for that purpose," U.S. Postal Inspector Dan Mihalka said Thursday. Mihalka said investigators were able to determine the addresses of the mail that moved in close proximity to - and within seconds of - the anthrax-contaminated letters sent to Leahy and U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle. Both were processed Oct. 9 at the Hamilton, N.J., mail facility that serves Trenton. The address of the Farkas family on Great Hill Road in Seymour - about a mile from the home of Ottilie Lundgren of Oxford - took on new significance after Lundgren died of inhalation anthrax last week. The source of the anthrax that killed Lundgren remains a mystery. "We were able to take a snapshot in time where this mail was being processed," Mihalka said. "We looked through and saw all these different addresses come up. An Oxford, CT, address would not have generated a whole lot of interest prior to the lady dying there. "Obviously, we looked for a letter going directly to her that was in close proximity to these two anthrax letters, but that didn't happen," Mihalka said. "It turned out to be a coincidence there was some mail going to an address [near] Oxford at about the same time." But what led investigators to the precise "snapshot" that has become a vital part of the anthrax investigation? It was a combination of sophisticated mail-processing instruments developed in the past decade to improve the speed and efficiency of a postal service that now handles millions of pieces of mail daily. Most "flat" mail in the U.S. arrives at homes and businesses bearing two bar codes. On the address side of the envelope, usually beneath the typed or handwritten address, is a 62-bar delivery point bar code that enables postal machines to sort mail right down to the carrier route at its final destination. Bulk mailers, such as credit card and utility companies, get a reduced postal rate for imprinting bar codes on their mail and payment envelopes. Letters that arrive at the post office without a bar code - even pieces with handwritten addresses - are scanned through an optical character reader that will affix the appropriate bar code. This is usually accurate, but not flawless, as the Leahy letter shows. The optical reader misread one of the handwritten digits in the ZIP code on the Leahy letter, and it wound up at the State Department, rather than at his office on Capitol Hill. On the reverse side of most delivered mail is a faint orange bar code, imprinted there by the sophisticated bar-code sorter that processed the mail. This bar code reveals the date, time, location and machine that sorted that particular piece of mail. The bar-code sorter also scans into a computer the destination bar codes of all the mail it processes. Mihalka said he is not sure how long that information is maintained, given the sheer volume of mail that passes through the sorters, but in this case, it was long enough. The orange bar code on the Leahy and Daschle letters was used to trace them to the Hamilton processing center, one of 260 or so major mail distribution facilities nationwide. The codes allowed investigators to pinpoint the machines through which the letters were sorted. The next step was to make a computer printout of the bar codes of the letters that passed through the bar-code sorter at approximately the same time. "I think we're looking at the couple of seconds before, and the couple of seconds afterward," Mihalka said, of the mail that accompanied the Leahy letter through the sorter. The sorters can process about 660 pieces of bar-coded mail per minute, according to manufacturers' specifications. In addition to living in close proximity to Lundgren, the Farkas family lives next door to the house at 86 Great Hill Road, where Oscar Haines, 85, was found dead Nov. 21. Autopsy and other tests ruled out anthrax as a cause, Gov. John Rowland announced Tuesday night. Earlier that day, federal investigators had interviewed Farkas family members, who have declined to comment publicly. "There was no sickness at this other address [the Farkas home] and nothing tested positive," Mihalka said. "It gives you some idea of the thoroughness of the investigation." Although a fresh team of FBI investigators is retracing all steps of the Connecticut investigation, Mihalka said Thursday there is no discernible link between the mail service and Lundgren's death. "Over 700 locations have been swabbed up there," Mihalka said of locations that include Lundgren's home and postal facilities in Seymour and at the main distribution facility in Wallingford. "Everything has come back negative." Mihalka said two weeks worth of mail at Lundgren's home, in addition to her clothing, rubbish barrels and mailbox, were tested. "There's nothing there," Mihalka said.

[Fixit]

I can understand how the information could be useful from a systems stand point. Knowing how much mail in each location is headed to certain destinations must be invaluable for capacity planning.

The most intriguing thing here, to me, is the quote about how they are not sure how long the data is kept.

Given how cheap computer storage is these days, especially off-line storage, I would not be surprised if they keep track of every letter's information indefinitely. Since many Zip+Four+Two's uniquely identify a single address, the potential abusive uses for such databases should be obvious.

[isthisnickcool]

Linux based systems.....

[Free the USA]

bump

[Cowgirl]

Is this big brother or what!!?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[meridia]

Back in the 80s, I read somewhere or another that ALL return addresses were "read" by whatever technology was then operative, and an amazing number of criminals were caught in that manner -- off their return snailmail addresses, usually on something "innocuous" like a utility bill. LOL!

[Alamo-Girl]

As I recall, in the 80's it was common practice for large companies, like utility companies, to capture images of incoming mail on microfilm.

[Fixit]

Heck, any good collection agency does the same thing, keeping track of the addresses and bank accounts of people you might have to sue one day to get a bill paid.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Could divorce lawyers and pre-employment detectives also use this archive?

[Alamo-Girl]

Good point! Thanks!!!

[Fixit]

It has been a while since I had to be up to date on the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act and other privacy/medical/financial-information/credit-reporting protection laws that would be involved here. (That part of my life was a job-and-a-half ago.)

Many collection agencies keep track of the Bank Name and Bank Account number for every check that comes in for one of their debts. Whether they are allowed to share/sell that with/to outsiders I do not remember. Since they are often also in the skip-tracing/asset location business the information can be invaluble for their own pursuits.

In practice I think things like that go on quite a bit, albeit in an informal way. An attorney who works with an agency quite a bit (suing debtors) may have access to the database, or he might just call the manager and get a favor.

[Fixit]

Also, this is ofter further confused a bit, especially in small towns, when the local "credit bureau" is the same business as the local collection agency.

Credit reports carry a lot of bad debt, but many creditors do not want their debts credit reported because they do not want to sour relationships with their clients/patients.

In such cases, collection agencies will often know more about a person's payment habits than the credit report will show.