From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@openpgp.net>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:44:53 -0700 (PDT)
To: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@securitydynamics.com>
Subject: Re: I'm from the government, and I'm here to control your email....
In-Reply-To: <D104150098E6D111B7830000F8D90AE8017958@exna02.securitydynamics.com>
Message-ID: <199808101944.PAA17053@domains.invweb.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In <D104150098E6D111B7830000F8D90AE8017958@exna02.securitydynamics.com>,
on 08/10/98 
   at 02:56 PM, "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@securitydynamics.com> said:

>There is an utter cluelessness here which assumes that there is and/or
>should be a strong corrospondence between an individual,  a physical
>location, and an email address. This is not suprising,  considering that
>this is from the Post Office, which is mired a 19th century concept of
>what constitutes 'mail'.

>I suspect that the PO will want to be able to charge for 
>all mail sent to these addresses. The miserable failure 
>of the USPS to generate any interest in their offer to 'frank' email (for
>a price) may play into this.

>Once everyone has an government registered email address, it will be a
>simple matter to forbid the use of uncontrolled email addresses (for
>either sending or receiving) at least within the  US. It's to be expected
>that government agencies will refuse to send to any other address.

>In my opinion, the proper response of the USPS to competition from email
>and parcel delivery services would be to wind down USPS  operations.
>There is no longer a critical need for a protected  monopoly in postal
>delivery.

Well this is the last thing the USPS wants to do (power corrupts and all
that) and they have a few congress critters on their side. 

A while back they had the postmaster general on C-Span giving his yearly
report to congress. USPS is scared to death of the internet and have been
scrambling around trying to find a way to generate revenue from it. Back
then they were talking about establishing USPS as a national CA and a
center for certified e-mail. I guess they realized that there is no way
they can compete in the marketplace and the only thing to do is to force
their system on everyone.

Now enter the usual suspects and their agenda:

Mandate USPS e-mail addresses for everyone.
Mandate National Electronic ID's (security measure for USPS e-mail).
Mandate use of National CA for ID's (run by USPS).
Mandate GAK for all e-mail on the USPS system.
Mandate all communication to & from government use USPS system.

*Big* tax increase to pay for it all with plenty of pork to go round. Hell
in a few years you will have them whining and crying that computer
ownership is a "right" and we need to *pay* for all those welfare bums to
have one (how else will they get their mail?). At a very minimum every
post office will be set up with public computer terminals so people can
get their mail.

Many of the unusual suspects that will go along with this plan will be
from the states like Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, ...ect who are fearful
that their constituents will actually have to pay a fair price to have
mail and packages delivered to bum-fuck nowhere. I don't recall the name
but one of the critter from Alaska was very upset that if USPS looses it's
monopoly delivery in Alaska would no longer be subsidized and that they
might have to pay market value to have packages delivered by plane to the
far reaches of the wilderness (god forbid!!).

-- 
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William H. Geiger III  http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html
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