Monday, August 15, 2011

So, today I complained to the post office.



Friday, I got one piece of mail and a tee shirt. Today I got a piece of junk mail addressed to another PO box.

(The letter, praise the Lord, with modest subscription enclosed, came from an "Old Soldier" and got us through the weekend. May the Lord bless and keep him. Rosey got paid today. The very funny tee-shirt came from a "Professional Russian.")

The lady who runs the Post Office here in Pinson denied that any mail interdiction was happening at her end and she swore that there was no way to divert it when it comes in to the main PO in downtown Birmingham.

So, if I believe her, no one else has sent me any mail for three weeks, more or less.

Sheesh. I'd complain to my Congressman but he hates my guts from way, waaay back. Besides, maybe the lady's right.

Beats the hell out of me.

18 comments:

Nebraska Sentinel said...

Seriously, is there a better way to send you written communications? Put it in a box and send it United Parcel Service to your house? Federal Express? I'm concerned that my subscriptions may be diverted.

Kent McManigal said...

Several years ago, and in another state, a friend of mine noticed that he had stopped getting mail after being warned by the local enforcers to "shut up about that Constitutional crap". After months of not getting things people said they had sent him, he asked the mail carrier about it while she was putting stuff in the big shared semi-rural mailbox unit. She denied anything was unusual. So he went to the PO and asked about it- again, and probably did get a bit irate (I wasn't there so I don't know, but he was a bit twitchy on occasion). A few minutes after he got back home (riding a bike about 2 1/2 miles) town cops (he was not in town) pushed his unlatched door open and told him it had been reported that he threatened a mail carrier. Nothing other than vague threats by the cops happened but mail started showing up in his box the very next day. I'm not suggesting you follow his example.

Anonymous said...

Saw the shirt on u-tube it was a hoot.

Ironwill - III said...

If you can't afford to send Mike mail via UPS or FedEx, try using a Priority Flat Rate Small box. It costs about $5 and you can get insurance and a tracking number for it. They tend not to 'lose' those types of mail.

Ironwill - III

Dave said...

I would like to send you a donation as well. You've done more to protect MY freedom than I have done myself and incurred numerous expenses in doing so. For the FBI to prevent or hinder me from freely communicating with you sounds like a violation of my First Amendment rights. Perhaps the ACLU can help us out here. (I'm not joking - the ACLU successfully represented Derek Fenton recently and has offered to represent Mrfuddlesticks if he chooses to come forward.)

Anonymous said...

Having people send 'random' (non-periodic) test mailings at least proves whether or not diversions are happening. Sending them yourself doesn't work if you put return addresses from local sources - you need mail from a few different regions. Arrangements need to be FTF, not over your tapped line or via email, as the screws will tell their minions to let those through if they know somebody's likely to test things once in a while. Have the sender wait about a week, then call or email to ask if it arrived. Their diversions will probably stop after a few of these, but it may take a hand written notice of postal reg's regarding delaying of mail. In my "patriot" heyday, we had stamps made up with the pertinent postal reg, it got so bad.

Others may also take note.

UPS and FedEx are less likely to reroute, but they also get orders from the feds . . .

On the other hand, you can use this propensity they have for scanning your unopened mail to screw with their heads. Sortof like checking out a series of really weird titles at the library once in a while to throw off their psych profiling. Turn their psyops back around on 'em.

John Smith. said...

No mail for 3 weeks??? I would definitely be beating the bushes for it... If I did not get bills for 3 weeks then I would be letting my creditors and the bank know that someone is stealing my mail... Start kicking up a shitstorm and see what huge turd falls out....

Anonymous said...

Mike, you'll be getting a series of post cards from the west coast. There will be 14 of them. They will be sent one per day with photographic evidence of them being deposited in USPS mailboxes being collected on this end. [are you paying attention DOJ?] They will have a visible message warning their handlers that a test is being conducted and documented. Plus some warning about felonious conduct with the US mail and perjury regarding warrants, etc. You will know them by the "coded" message in Greek. BTW they will be handled in such a manner as the originator's fingerprints will not be left on them, so don't bother dusting them, and so on. I'll let you know here precisely when they start. Which should be in a day or two. III

Dedicated_Dad said...

Unopened mail?

How do you know they're not opening it?

It's not that difficult to open most things in an essentially undetectable way...

I once had a problem with my carrier. Long story short, I'd upset her girlfriend in the process of doing my duty in a position I held at the time.

Suddenly we seemed to have problems. Mortgage statement didn't come - no problem, we know when it's due...

Then other bills began not coming - or coming after they were due...

I finally just said "look... I'm not one to make accusations - and to be clear I'm not making any NOW... That said, if there continues to be a problem with our mail, I'm going to have to call the FBI and the Postmaster general's office.

Since this is SUCH a rural area, I doubt if it would take them 5 minutes to figure out who is responsible - and as I am sure you know, tampering with the mail is a Federal FELONY.

I'd sure hate to see somebody not only lose their job, but end up in Federal prison, so....

Would you please pass the word around back at the office so we can hopefully fix this locally before it gets REALLY ugly?"

The very next day I'm got the biggest pile of mail in history, and never had another problem.....

DD

Anonymous said...

maybe you should send yourself a huge box of dog shit and see if that get's diverted? Maybe chocolates stuffed with ex-lax.. Whoever the culprit the will change their ways after they change their drawers...

Anonymous said...

Obviously it has to be diverted at a central station and of course that means you will never know who, what, when, where, why and how it's happening, well maybe who, where and why but nothing specific, Unless you develop friends on the inside,,,

Another gift from Mr.Bush ET,AL.

SWIFT said...

I had a problem with my mail coming through already opened. I assumed I was not a target of a mail drop, but that the Fibbies had my own rural carrier opening my mail, especially official and business mail. I complained and received the usual denials, but it stopped. While nothing in my mail, or my personal activities would reached the level of probable cause for a crime, I felt (correctly) that all information about me was being data mined for an FBI file. I know I'm right!

Mark Matis said...

For Dedicated_Dad:
As if they are gonna care about an FBI investigation. Hell, it's probably the FBI that's doing it! I mean, once you've got the murders of at least two Federal Agents on your hands and nobody gives a damn, what's a little mail diversion?

Anonymous said...

Get yourself a GPG encryption public key. Then we can all send you emails with encrypted messages to let you know when things will be sent and so forth. At that point you will have a bertter idea of when things are being diverted that no one else can read but you.

Grenadier1

Jonas Parker said...

Mike, if on a given day ALL of your readers mail you a "letter" (basically 5 letter random letter groups simulating encryption yet meaning nothing), such a volume would overwhelm your mail intercept team. If enclosed in each "letter" was a self-addressed return postcard or empty envelope, you could mail these back and those not receiving a reply in a reasonable time could then "pitch a bitch" to their local postmasters. Could stir the pot a bit anyway...

Dedicated_Dad said...

Mark: Understood...

My problem was that my carrier was dumping/diverting/delaying my mail - but only stuff that she knew would cause us problems...

She was the one I spoke to, and clearly realized her little "revenge" game was about to blow up in her face.

If Mike's problem isn't really the Feebs, a similar tactic may help...

Anonymous said...

re scanning unopened mail (using off-the-shelf image processing equipment): they use a low light level camera fed into an image processor over a kind of conveyor feed system, flash a very bright light through the envelope and store the image. The processing separates out the pages or folded page(s) based on the density of the paper. The split images are pasted together and re-oriented using character recognition software. Keywords/phrases are tagged and the letter flagged for later perusal and analysis/threat assessment by humans. Most of the process is automated and very fast, but it's done in batches at a regionl or central location (depends on the agency interested).

Increasingly sophisticated forms of this technology has been available since at least the early 70's.

Mark Matis said...

For Anonymous at 4:02 PM:
So you're saying a strip of aluminum foil, sized to match a folded sheet of paper, would defeat that process? A true die-hard would probably put in two such sheets, shiny side facing out...

And Dedicated_Dad, we ALL know it ain't his letter carrier doing this. Good ol' FedPig at their finest, because they KNOW they have nothing to worry about. The stench is overwhelming.