Worker: Postal Service sold private data

Source: Houston Chronicle/Associated Press

July 30, 2007, 10:08PM
Worker: Postal Service sold private data


By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

SEATTLE — A Postal Service employee sued the agency Monday, accusing it of selling the personal information of its workers to credit card and other companies without consent.

Lance McDermott, a mechanic for mail-processing equipment, said in the complaint in U.S. District Court that he has been inundated with credit card, cell phone and life insurance offers in the past two years.

In some instances, it appears the agency provided the companies with eight-digit employee identification numbers, used for sensitive tasks such as accessing health care records, the complaint said.

McDermott said he was deluged with offers from Visa, Sprint Nextel Corp. and other companies.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other Postal Service workers, the return of any money the agency may have made by violating the federal Privacy Act, and other damages.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5012967.html

:kick:

this really bothers me. Some of us feel that some of the new people on the Board of Governors have a death wish for the PO and would love to force privatization. I'm sure that someone made some $$$ on this.

It just seems like some of their decisions are more Republican in nature, whereas before the Post Office was just supposed to meet operating costs- not make a profit but to provide delivery to everyone equally.

years leave me really scratching my head. So many things they do seem calculated to be annoying.

For example, there's no line anymore. They put chairs arround the permiter of the waiting room. So, when someone finishes at the counter, the next person up is at the farthest point from the counter possible without actually being outside the post office. So a good chunk of the transaction time for each customer is taken up by the cutomer walking up to the counter. I have to say, I'm not so impressed with the intelligence of my fellow cutomers, since nobody realizes this is happening and they don't chose to form a line anyway. And once I decided to do this and the guy behind the counter gave me a lot of shit -- he had to take my number, check it slowly, tell me "whoa, whoa" like I was rushing the whole transaction and making it hard for him to think. It was weird. I still line up. But nobody else does.

Now, why make the transaction as slow as possible? One reason might be to drive business to FedEx, or to the USPS website where they charge you extra for stamps.

Another, thing I've noticed is that they never put the specialty stamps in the machines. You always have to go to the counter for them. It seems like one person in five just wants to collect (and not use, and therefore, increase the post office's profits) specialty stamps. If they were in the machines, the lines would be a lot shorter. I'm sure the PO knows this. (Then again, if the transaction cost for getting the specialty stamps were lower, they might not be so desirable.)

Also, I have noticed that packages from businesses are NEVER misplaced. They always make it to my PO Box. But once a month, a package from an individual gets misplaced. Is that a coincidence?

I can't wait till I tell him about this OH my.....