They read our mail

[Anonymous]

Thanks again, Jerry (though I don't believe I mentioned the Secrets Act - just secrets).

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

HI

founded this on mail interception in the UK

the entire article is well-worth reading.

source:
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http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:H5m2fXCoDRkJ:www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4464.htm



quote:
------------------------


MAIL INTERCEPTION

POID Special Section, GPO Headquarters and King Edward Buildings, King Edward Street, St Pauls, EC1.
Foreign Sorting Office at London Chief Office - MAIL INTERCEPTION CENTRE.

For many years housed a sizeable MI5 section which coordinated mail and phone interceptions with 'Special Sections' established within all central GPO offices around the country. Later moved to:

'Post Office Bureau Services' unit within the 300 strong POID Special Section CPD(SS), Room 202, HQ Union House, St Martins-le-Grand, near St Pauls, London EC1A 1DQ.

---------------------------------------------

endquote

from a long and very detailed article at informationclearinghouse.

this got from the cache as informationclearinghouse was not available!!

Mal F

 

[Imperial_Call]

If this sort of thing really is going on, then I seriously doubt every single envelope is being opened - it's fairly obvious which envelopes contain bills, circulars, bank/catalogue statements etc. it's the other nondescript letters that would be being monitored. Still a big job, but cuts down the volume by how much ... ?

 

[Timble2]

...- it's fairly obvious which envelopes contain bills, circulars, bank/catalogue statements etc...

So all the bad guys would have to do is disguise their communications as bills or junk mail....or even more subtle actually start a business sending out junk mails for some dubious offer, concealing the messages to their operatives in among the avalanche of 'real' junk.

R

 

[SoundDust]

or even more subtle actually start a business sending out junk mails for some dubious offer, concealing the messages to their operatives in among the avalanche of 'real' junk.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to inform you that you could be the winner of £1 million, or a brand new sports car. Kill The Prime Minister Tonight. To claim your prize please ring out premium rate helpline and ....



just a thought

 

[Anonymous]

Apparently, the Royal Mail employs hundreds of people to open, read, log and re-seal all mail sent to and from locations within the UK. My friend was told that every sorting office has a hidden area used for such a purpose and this is why first class mail takes longer than it should to be delivered.

Has anyone else heard anything similar to this?

Well, I do believe it because a letter I sent from the US to the UK, which contained a card, photos and a second sheet letter arrived with the envelope sealed, but the card had been slit along the fold. I was asked why the card was in two sections and not a single sheet, folded. I was baffled because the card was definitely in one piece when it was sent. "No, the envelope was sealed" I was told. Finally we gave up trying to figure out what had happened.

This explains it.

 

[Timble2]

Re: Re: They read our mail

Well, I do believe it because a letter I sent from the US to the UK, which contained a card, photos and a second sheet letter arrived with the envelope sealed, but the card had been slit along the fold....

...This explains it.

I don't doubt that mail coming into the UK from overseas is monitored as its entry points are known, and no-one excepts it to be particularly fast, but it's impossible to read all mail within the UK, unless a very large proportion of the population is spying on the rest and are all keeping quiet about it

Possibly your letter raised interest because it was thicker than usual.

BTW: whatever happened to small ads as method of communicating between those with nefarious plans?

O

 

[Anonymous]

they cant open everything ...i was talkignto the parcel people when collecting a parcel they tried to deliver when i was out.... there was a big sign on the wall sayingto watch out for parcels that ticked,smelled funny, leeked liquids or dust...the guy told me that they had indeed recived a supect package a few weeks erlier..... one with, Death to the Infidels (in big letters) and adressed to a former ambasidor to Pakistan (or india i forget)...and sure enough its was leeking dust....so the chief sorter opend it, un protected, right under the air con inlet to the office.....que full contamination alert and cold baths for all.... turns out its was a meliciouse fake full of talc....fact is if that got all the way to a local office then they cant even look very close at most parcels.

 

[Shoegazer]

Does this explain why my FT is going missing??

 

[Min Bannister]

Hey I wonder if this is why some correspondance with a UFO group has gone missing! I've never normally had letters missing, just magazines. Perhaps there IS a conspiracy regarding UFOs. Perhaps they (Royal Mail) ARE reptilians!


*adds Tinfoil to shopping list just in case*

 

[Kondoru]

My pirated `Gatchaman` DVD I ordered from the States was most definatley opened. (and it took a month to deliver, which is what got me. I dont mind them watching my DVDs but...)

Thats was Customs and Excuses though.

I hope they had fun. Its not every day you get to watch a 32 year old anime that no one else has ever heard of....

 

[Anonymous]

Should be easily tested. Take one sheet of writing paper. Write a letter to yourself on it. Fold it, take one human hair and place inside letter. Seal in envelope, post to yourself. If the hair is gone when it gets there, it's possibly true.

I know a better version. Write the letter. Add at the bottom; "I think somebody is reading my mail. I put a living tick in this envelope, so check if it's still here..."

Then DON'T put any tick in the envelope. If it arrives at the desitination with a tick in it, you can be sure they have opened it.

 

[Imperial_Call]

So all the bad guys would have to do is disguise their communications as bills or junk mail....or even more subtle actually start a business sending out junk mails for some dubious offer, concealing the messages to their operatives in among the avalanche of 'real' junk.

nah there's a difference between junk that you chuck in the bin, and junk you have to open and act on lest they send a big fella called Frank to your door to loudly ask why you've not paid such and such a bill ... (which happened to a friend of mine in Scotland )

 

[escargot]

All postal workers are aware of the vast, gloomy catacombs which moulder beneath large post offices.

I used to work nights loading sacks onto trains. The sacks were carried on huge wooden hand-pulled trucks which clanked and rumbled. You loaded your truck in the lower reaches of the post office, then dragged it to an ancient lift, down further and along the laughably-named 'subways'. All this was normally done alone.

The subways are long underground interconnected tunnels which run under the railway station. Some are used regularly by rail and postal staff and some seem to tail away into darkness.
Very creepy places in the early hours. Possibly the eeriest place I've ever been in. sigh Heaven!

 

[Mythopoeika]

Did you see any weird stuff, Escargot?

 

[Anonymous]

Royal Mail is in a pickle at the moment but mainly due to a combination of bad management, bad decisions, and being lined up for an inappropriate privatisation that will ultimately, make railtrack seem like a model of organisation and good business practice.

Plus while DHL and Deutsche post et al wait with slavering jaws for the day when they are allowed to cherry pick the business centres of Britain, the Royal Mail has the regulator stuck to its leg like a demented Jack Russell.

I could go on about this all night, and frequently do. I don't work for Royal Mail by the way, but I know lots of people who do.

It has been known for the domestic security services to read people's mail and these days they don't need kettles, they have all sorts of ways of doing it, but like one of the posters above said, although it probably does happen, and probably happens in carefully designated areas at main sorting offices, (eg Mount Pleasant) it can only really effectively be done against targeted individuals rather than on a blanket basis. The logistics just boggle, otherwise. I think I am right in saying that like a phone tap, they previously used to have to have a warrant, though recent anti terrorist legislation might have changed this.

It's not as if you are ever going to get Osama Bin Laden sending Abou Hamza a postcard from Afghanistan saying "weather here, wish you were beautiful" or anything. And with GCHQ reading all our email and Menwith Hill kistening in to all our phone conversations, I'd say the Royal Mail is the least of our worries.

 

[Anonymous]

Not to mention Echelon reading all your posts and emails.

:_omg:

 

[Anonymous]

Sneaky Beaky Postman Pat

Take two knitting needles and insert in gap at the top of the envelope, Catch top length of letter with pressure on needles and then rotate so letter rolls around needles until end, extract and copy, reinsert and unravel, after a quick trip through the system you wouldn’t even know it had been tightly wound. That’s how they used to do it, nowadays they have all sorts of neat gadgets; they wouldn’t need to open them at all I shouldn’t wonder.

 

[escargot]

No, sadly not. An extremely atmospheric place though. Make a great fillum set!

 

[Anonymous]

My friend will always remain anonymous so don't play the Secrets Act card with me!

Was he made to sign the offical secrets act before being shown this? If so, he's a very naughty boy for letting the cat out of the bag.

 

[Graylien]

Maybe it's time to look at some figures. According to This Page , the Royal Mail delivers 77 million items of mail per day, via 84 main sorting offices. According to the goverment census there are 21 million households in the uk, not to mention all the business mail on top of that, so I think we can accept the figure of 77 million as being fairly credible.

So, we've got about 900.000 items of mail going through each sorting office every day. Now lets assume that the whole process of opening and scanning then resealing an item of mail takes at least 30 seconds. Thats 7,500 man hours per day. That means you'd need 312 men working all day to read the mail. Of course, in the real world, people don't work all day. They work 8 hour shifts - so each sorting office would need to employ at least 936 people just to read our mail. It just doesn't seem credible.

I've also had mail which has obviously been opened, but I put that down to the dishonesty of individual postal workers rather than some massive conspiracy.

 

[Kondoru]

I've also had mail which has obviously been opened, but I put that down to the dishonesty of individual postal workers rather than some massive conspiracy.

Considering some of the losers I have met who were employed in the sorting offices, thats no big suprise.

Ive lost parcels too.

But that DVD was blatantly opened. (and delayed)

 

[Yithian]

we once recived a letter form a friend in Ireland that had been obviosly opened...like torn open!

Northern or Southern?

Interestingly enough Belfast is one of the few post offices in the UK where mail may be legally opened in order to ascertain it's destination when it is unclear. (Interferring with the mail still being an offence). I recall this as, while doing christmas work at the Post Office we had to send Harry Potter letters to the publishers and Father Christamas letters with no obvious foreign address to Belfast Sorting Office...

 

[Pinklefish]

Timble - My friend is not one for practical jokes.

If he's the ultra serious straight laced type then, is it possible that his new workmates are perpetuating a windup of grand proportions?
Common thing, initiating the new staff in this manner.

 

[Anonymous]

When my daughter was very young, 'we' wrote and posted a letter to Father Christmas (the days before email), with the postcode 1CE SN0W

To my surprise, we got a reply. Admitedly it was just a bad photocopy, but I was amazed that anyone opened letters to Father Christmas, let alone replied.

Anyway, back to the numbers game. Apart from having to employ that many people to read the mail, you would also have to keep them motivated. I couldn't open mail AND log them all AND not make silly mistakes like putting the mail into the wrong envelope (water bill sent in the bank statement envelope) OR tearing envelopes, for 8 hours a day every day. Not unless there was a 'find a terrorist and win a holiday in the Seychelles' type bonus scheme.

I think they are having a laugh

 

[Anonymous]

Apparently, the Royal Mail employs hundreds of people to open, read, log and re-seal all mail sent to and from locations within the UK.

False. Or in your 'dear friend's' case he's been misinformed.

 

[Pinklefish]

Re: Re: They read our mail

False. Or in your 'dear friend's' case he's been misinformed.

Care to sink to the level of usual message board practice and state a reasoning for that opinion? It's the done thing, y'know...

 

[Anonymous]

Well, if this is a UL, then why was the card I sent, whole and undamaged when placed in the envelope, slit into two pieces before it arrived at it's destination?

And trust me, the recipient could not have seen this thread!

I'll buy that they can't open 100% of the mail sent, but I also believe that mail is read on a regular basis, particularly mail coming in from out of the country.

 

[mejane]

Dead letter department, anyone? If a letter is not correctly addressed then the computers will get confused and a human will have to deal with it. Sometimes this involves opening it.

Off-topic, but my book club has mislaid my last order. It was for a biography of Pitt the Younger by a former Conservative Party leader; a book on English grammar and a guide to world religions. Nothing suspicious there surely?

If I was paranoid I would start to wonder why "they" were digging up the road this week which meant that I had no phone access for 2 days and my radio blew up

Jane.

 

[filcee]

According to my brother, who has worked for the Royal Mail for the past 15-20 years, certain items of post are opened as a matter of procedure. Anything that looks as if it contains 'restricted materials' (plain brown wrappers from Holland, say) will be opened and the contents inspected (at length, and by most of the staff sometimes ), if they don't contravene any laws they'll be resealed and sent on their way. If they are illegal, they're forwarded to the police with any address details included. Also, the current rate of post delivered correctly, on time or at all is about 85%.