[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: Private Address Forwarding proposal to USPS

[Sai]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 11:45 PM, Andy Isaacson <adi at hexapodia.org> wrote:
> What's the rate limiting mechanism here?  (Maybe we don't need one, but
> I suspect we do.)

Unspecified.

I'd like you to be able to have a unique PAF ID for every person
shipping to you, or at least for every privacy-different category of
mail you might receive. I also would like it to not be abused by
spammers, scammers, etc.

I don't know how to strike that balance properly.

> strlen() is a dishonest comparison, and you should be ashamed of being
> so dismissive.

Fair. But it *is* short enough to be usable. Even if it's a little
harder, I consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

> What's the Clearly Legal overwhelmingly common use case?  If a
> technology is theoretically usable for legal ends, but is mostly used by
> shady characters, you lose the social messaging war.

Abused spouses. Ordering your porn. People with stalkers. Anyone
famous. Preventing data-mining by cross-association. WHOIS privacy
that still delivers to you. Being able to publicly disclose your
mailing address without disclosing your location to wackos.

"Shady characters" are unlikely to want to register their legal IDs,
which this does require.

> You can't file a "change of address" form on paper anymore (or at least,
> they don't have any forms at the SF Post Offices I checked); instead,
> there's a flier full of advertising that tells you to fill out the form
> online.

You *can* file a PO box application on paper. And last I checked, you
could file change of address in paper too; it's part of a "so you're
moving, what spammers do you want us to point to your new address"
booklet, but so it goes. The USPS gets a lot of its business from bulk
mailers. :-/

- Sai