[Noisebridge-discuss] Private Address Forwarding proposal to USPS

[Sai]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 2:14 AM, Robert Picone <rpicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would say that it might be worthwhile to forgo memorability and direct
> human writing completely and to register this as an entirely
> machine-readable system.

That would require senders to have machine writing. Most senders
don't, and it's not a constraint I'm wiling to adopt as mandatory.
Normal people should be able to hand write letters to PAF IDs the same
as they can to anyone else.

Plus, given the constraints and checksum, OCR of a PAF ID should be
pretty easy. The USPS back end already does this all the time for
normal addresses.

However, I see no problem with having a machine-readable
representation *in addition*, for senders that are capable of printing
one. In fact, that was part of the USPS' reply.

> -Has the potential for a further revenue-stream for USPS in printing labels
> certified to be compatible with their system.  This would minimize
> inconvenience a bit.

You shouldn't have to go to the USPS to obtain a special label to send
something to a PAF user. That would be bad for privacy and make it
unlikely to be used.

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 2:22 AM, ITechGeek <itg at itechgeek.com> wrote:
> Best use of this I can see is for people who move around such as military.

If they're active duty, they already have it in the form of APO/FPO
addressing — at least for the redirection aspect. Not for the privacy
aspect, of course. (Though they could point a PAF ID to an APO
address…)

- Sai