It is pretty straight forward to understand why we have a postal system as the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, in the enumeration of the Powers of Congress states “To establish Post Offices and Post Roads”. This first developed the Postal Department which eventually reorganized into the Postal Service we have today. For over 220 years, America has benefited from a well developed system of Postal delivery, which was critical for the development and expansion of the Republic.
More than providing an initial communications cohesion for a new country, the development of the Postal system became the foundation for several important legal processes and concepts:
- The use of the Postal system was universal. It was never limited to just to Citizens, or to economic groups, or bounded by race. If you could write and afford a stamp, the mail would go and it would get delivered even if you were a minority
- The Postal system provides First Class Mail which is mechanism for communication that is officially recognized by law. You can officially communicate with the government using mail, and optionally use Certified mail for proof of delivery for proof in legal proceedings
- The Postal system is protected by law, and has wide powers of enforcement. Tamper with a mailbox, whether at a residence or a pick-up mailbox on the street and it is a serious Federal crime and it will land you in jail. Moreover, mail fraud will also send you to a Federal Penitentiary. There are Postal Police and a Postal Inspector all to make this happen, and all well founded on the government executing its Constitutional requirement
So you say, what is going to happen to the Post office in 2020? Will it still be around in a form that we recognize today? Email and social networking computer services have all-but eliminated personal first-class mail use except when someone wants to send a message with special impact. Web-enabled bill-pay is available from virtually every bank (and from all the virtual banks!). The real issue is outside of the social communications arena, but squarely in the legal one. Will our method of communicating legal issues with the government or for business become completely divorced from government run Postal services? If so, how do we keep the official and legal aspects of the current system to support official government and legal system operations?
Clearly, much communication happens outside of the Postal system today and its impact on companies is dramatic. Due to Sarbanes-Oxley, as well as other requirements, companies keep and track essentially every communications both internally to a company as well as externally. This is in case of audits by government regulators or for discovery related to a legal proceeding.
This may work well, at a cost, for businesses, but what does it mean for communications with Citizens and residents either to the government or legal matters? How does this person ensure that delivery was made? How does this person know that the email message was not tampered during delivery? What is the person’s recourse if it gets lost in the email?
As we contemplate issues like Net Neutrality and subsidized Broadband Access, have we forgotten to update our concepts of mail fraud and wire-fraud to today’s email-box stuffing spamming and intentional sending of viruses and spyware? Are these not the analogues of fraudulent offers and items sent in the mail that could damage your home and cost money and time to repair? If we use email to communicate with our government, is causing the outage of an email service provider on the same level of hijacking a mail delivery truck?
I know that these are all questions and I have not provided any significant answers. However, the transition to electronic commerce and government continues and accelerates and we need to help our government find the right approach to replace some of the critical government and legal functions that our Postal Service provides today. Moreover, are these issues that Postmaster General should be addressing or will the Postal Service continue to whither away?
1 comment:
Good post, Wes. I think questions are often more important than the answers, anyway.
There are three things about which I think when considering the future of the post-office.
1) Law. I don't believe that the laws associated with electronic documents are as robust yet as those for paper. You cover this, but I believe it is key. And it is a fundamental gap in the new concepts of net neutrality. If our government wants to use the Internet as the primary means of interacting with it's citizens, then we need much more robust legal treatment of electronic agreements and supporting documentation. However, before that happens, we need to be able to prove beyond an reasonable doubt that the parties of an agreement are whom they claim and that they have the authorities they claim.
2) Non-repudiation. A key problem is proof-of-sending identity. There are several solutions to this, but no specific standard. It's funny, because in many ways, modern electronic authentication is overwhelmingly superior to paper documentation.
3) Material. Some things you just like to get in the mail. Birthday and Holiday cards. Love letters. Invitations to parties or celebrations. Certificates. Legal documents. It's nostalgic, fun, and comforting.
One thing that we've lost -- long ago -- was the art of letter writing. I don't think any form of electronic media will ever replace the richness of a well crafted, hand written note or letter. Perhaps well crafted multi-media will get close, but for person-to-person, heart-to-heart discussion, hand written notes on paper is just really nice.
Steve Goeringer
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