no, they don't open the mail, but they scan all the addresses as part of their routing process. We should assume that all postal "metadata" is stored forever.

As a veteran of the USPS software industry, I wouldn't worry too much.

hilarious!! since we on the subject, are there any veterans of NSA software industry who can share some insight?

I assume they would be under some sort of NDA.

LOL :)

It is: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...

There is a lot to be said for Snail Mail in that regard. There are far more privacy guarantees (i.e. clearly defined requirements for warrants, and stricter terms) relative to electronic forms of communications.

They take a photo of the front and back of every piece of mail that is sent. Your content is safe, but they still get the metadata.

Couldn't you just leave off the return address? In this case there's not much metadata to collect except for the recipient address.

I did a fun experiment once. I wrote the actual recipient address in the return address place, and put a non existant address in the front. I also didn't stamp it. It did arrive to the recipient 2 weeks later, with a "return to sender" banner.

Working in the mailing business and dealing with the USPS carriers; they are not dummies (the usual people warning here) and if someone gets curious on why so many pieces arrive at a certain address w/o postage, I would expect that address to get flagged for a special looksee.

You can also fake the "from" address in an e-mail, and send it from somewhere in the world via vpn