Bowing to pressure from Congress, the private mailbox industry and privacy advocates, the U.S. Postal Service is reconsidering some of the new rules it imposed on commercial mail receivers last April.
The rules require commercial mail receiving agencies to obtain a wealth of personal information from their customers and turn it over to their local postmasters. The USPS claims they will help reduce identity theft and mail fraud.
The USPS received more than 600 complaints from private mailbox companies, their customers, privacy advocates and more than a dozen members of Congress, including Reps. Dan Burton (R-IN) House Government Reform Committee chairman, and John McHugh (R-NY) House postal subcommittee chairman.
The post office is now developing tighter control over the dissemination and use of that information and expects to reveal what those controls are in a notice published in the near future in the Federal Register. Meantime the USPS is prohibiting employees from publicly disclosing, except to law enforcement officials, any information it receives about private mailbox renters.
