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Comment by z2600 | Hacker News Reader

I think most people who are not in this group would expect it to be private. My snail mail isn't encrypted, but I have an expectation that it is private.

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> but I have an expectation that it is private

Regardless of what your expectations are, it's not private. Just because you expect something to be private does not mean that it actually is.

Yes it is. USPS first class (ie regular not bulk) mail IS absolutely private and may not be opened by authorities without a warrant (and tampering with them by non authorities is a federal crime).

What security agencies have done is scan and collect all envelope info (metadata) which was ruled to be not private (makes sense) but with powerful enough cameras, lights, and enhancement software that most letters sent in standard envelopes can leak their contents.

And exploiting security bugs is not unlawful? This is a secyrity bug in the transport mechanism of data.

> And exploiting security bugs is not unlawful?

Not when you have all of congress (minus a very select very few) wagging their tails and eager to please you it's not.

Do you think Chinese residents have an expectation that snail mail is private from the government?

Do you think citizens of western countries (eg. US and UK) do? Do you think the government respects that?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/29/report-nsa-... https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-lapt... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_interception https://books.google.com/books?id=2OZgDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA97&lpg=P... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai... http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/81july/mail.htm https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/m...

She's a tech journalist covering China. She knows WeChat is monitored. This was more of a confirmation of how blatant it is.

I live in the US and have had snail mail opened without my permission and forwarded to me at the post office before. Once they put a sticker on it, once they didn't even bother. So, no, your snail mail isn't private at all. Government is free to open it and examine it any time they want. Legally the inspector is only supposed to open discount classes of mail, which is about half of them, to make sure you aren't lying to ship something cheaper, but in practice they are free to open anything and do.

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