- Since Insight exposed the U.S. Postal Service's customer-surveillance
program "Under the Eagle's Eye" (see "Postal Service Has
Its Eye on You," July 2-9), the eyes of many privacy advocates have
focused like a laser on the agency. "Warning! The Post Office could
report YOU as a drug dealer or terrorist," reads a press release from
the Libertarian Party, which helped generate some 300,000 letters that
helped defeat the government's proposed "Know Your Customer"
surveillance rules for banks two years ago (see "Snoops and Spies,"
Feb. 22, 1999). Until the Postal Service drops its orders to postal clerks
to report certain legal financial transactions as "suspicious activity,"
the Libertarian Party and others are urging consumers to purchase money
orders, wire transfers and cash cards elsewhere.
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- But now Insight has learned that it's not just purchases
of these financial instruments that the post office reports as suspicious.
A training video and manual obtained by Insight indicate that you also
could be reported as a "suspicious" customer when you put money
on a postage meter, particularly if it's in cash. In the video, after a
jewelry-store owner hands a postal clerk $50,000 cash to put on his postage
meter, the clerk is told to report this as a suspicious transaction. Even
though it may be perfectly legal, using this much cash is "strange,"
the video says.
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- But what is "strange" to privacy advocates
is why the Postal Service reports postage-meter transactions at all. Treasury
Department regulations that next year will apply Bank Secrecy Act provisions
to sellers of money orders and other financial instruments, which the Postal
Service uses to justify "Under the Eagle's Eye," say absolutely
nothing about purchases of postage as a "suspicious" activity.
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- "If putting a lot of money on your postage meter
is a sign of criminal activity, I'm afraid we're going to have to have
a little talk with our own office manager," says George Getz, spokesman
for the Libertarian Party, which uses a postage meter to send mass mailings.
"I don't know how somebody would go about laundering money like that.
It seems preposterous. Do you launder money 32 cents at a time? That's
crazy."
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- According to the Postal Service, even transactions of
a few thousand dollars in cash should arouse suspicion. "If they [customers]
wanted $5,000 on their postage meter, they wouldn't pay for that in cash,"
says Gerry Kreienkamp, a Postal Service spokesman. "That's just not
the way business is done."
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- But privacy advocates say it's not unusual for small
retail-business owners to pay for mailings with large amounts of cash.
It is normal, for instance, for restaurant or store owners who want to
send out promotional mailings to go to the post office and put the cash
receipts for that day on their postage meters, says Brad Jansen, deputy
director of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Technology Policy.
"It would not be unusual that a retailer would, one, be using cash
and, two, have to put out a great deal of postal mailings."
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- Kreienkamp says that "Under the Eagle's Eye"
does not apply to purchases of stamps and "philatelic" items.
But why, then, does the program apply to postage on meters, which is merely
"electronic stamps," asks Rick Merritt, executive director of
Postal Watch.
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- Jansen cautions that consumers should assume that any
products they purchase at a post office could get them reported as a "suspicious"
customer. "The intent is to make this as all-encompassing as possible,"
he says.
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- http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200107231.shtml
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