Don't Want Your Snail Mail Searched????

[brass]

 

[aldecaker]

Good to know, Brass. It only works if the government chooses to stick to its own rules, though, which has been a little hit or miss over the years. I maintain a PO box to have all of my "sensitive" items sent to and from, out of fear of identity theft. The theft of mail being a federal offense seems to be absolutely no deterrent anymore, and thieves will grab anything that looks like it may have a check or credit card number in it.
On a slightly related note, I've noticed a lot of "encouragement" from the IRS to e-file tax returns. Doesn't this

a) take revenue away from the USPS, a fellow government agency, and

b) make very sensitive personal information extremely vulnerable to digital theft?

 

[seacaptain]

On a slightly related note, I've noticed a lot of "encouragement" from the IRS to e-file tax returns. Doesn't this

a) take revenue away from the USPS, a fellow government agency, and

b) make very sensitive personal information extremely vulnerable to digital theft?

Ah, but you forgot to follow the money. The Post Office doesn't pony up huge campaign contributions.
Notice that e-filing is limited to "licensed professionals" and individuals can't e-file on their own. It's designed that way so that money is funneled into the coffers of professional tax companies, who turn around and spend their profits buying votes. It's also why the biggest opponents of tax reform are the same people who profit from the current Byzantine system.
The best way to beat the system is structure your withholding so that you owe $100 or less at the end of the year and then mail in a paper form with a check. Even then, the IRS "wins" to a degree because they need more people on staff to process paper forms.

 

[saltedplug]

rant on*** Don't you think that the Federal Government can find out anything about anybody, what with NSA monitoring of our communications and enough software and hacker expertise to get at that which is not communicated by email, phone and internet monitoring, such as account numbers? Even if there wasn't the NSA incursion into private information, the privacy of information rests as much on this incursion as it does on the integrity needed to keep it secure. I'm sure there are substantial privacy guarantees protecting what the NSA has collected, but everything has its price, and someone with unscrupulous and/or criminal intent with the money to pay off the right people can, I think, get whatever information they want. And as the digital/AI/human-augmented-digital singularity approaches, there will be increasing firepower behind the criminal attack of information. The incursion of corporate payoffs in congress that became widespread as the corporate world's reply to Nader's damage demonstrates that anyone can be bought in the effort to make big business/big money goals attainable, all courtesy of that hallowed American institution, lobbying.
If you're willing to pay the right people, you can get anything done. Increasingly the right people have become moral slugs. It's all about money and a culture that has lost its way due to the disintegration of the American Dream (AD). Used to be that you came to the US and worked three shitty jobs so as to afford your children quality education, and in two or three generations, they would be professionals. Success was defined as attaining a socially defined materiality, which although a bankrupt dream when pursued as the highest human aim, was still very much better than no dream at all, which is where we are now. Jobs still exist in IT, engineering and the professions, but the poor and most of the middle class are excluded from them by the poverty of their education and social skills/social standing. But the AD has failed for the much more important reason that the only job alternatives left are minimum wage jobs. Certainly the unions priced themselves out of their jobs; maybe the unions would not be reasonable about a reduced wage. But from what I know the corporations didn't even try to keep business in the US, nor did they skip a beat in relocating production to third world countries where they could pay even less than minimum wage. What they really wanted was to have goods made for a minimum of the minimum, God bless them.*** rant off

 

[framitz]

Not to rant no soapbox. If corporations starve employees who will buy their products or services our real problem is the ability to overproduce. If the marginal propensity to consume

Is less than the marginal capacity to produce we are stuck. With too many humans. Shel

 

[aldecaker]

I did not realize that e-filing was limited like that, because as soon as I saw the word "e-file" I kind of ignored it and moved on.
Brass, I appreciated your information. Sorry if I pulled the pin on a grenade that didn't need pulled. Wasn't trying to hijack your thread!

 

[danielplainview]

I thought privacy was old fashioned and out of date. Who needs the NSA when there's facebook?
Thanks for the post. I always send my pipes and bakky first class with tracking.

 

[okiescout]

Thanks, Brass. Very good information to be aware of in the current era.

 

[conlejm]

Isn't Cracked Magazine (as indicated in the top left corner of the image) a satire magazine? Are they just making a joke here?

 

[bigpond]

Thank goodness! Now, who do I need to pay to filter out the junk mail?