Postal Service tests certified e-mail

By David George
CNN

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Postal Service is testing a system that delivers certified mail over the Internet.

Certified mail is among the post office's most secure services. The sender of a letter or package gets a written receipt when the piece is mailed, and the recipient must sign for the mail when it is delivered.

The Postal Service says it delivered more than 270 million pieces of certified mail in 2000. The Social Security Administration is one of the government's biggest users of certified mail.

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Would you trust sending certified mail over the internet? No. The internet is not secure, no matter what they say. Maybe. But only if I could be sure the government was not reading every message. Sure. Its a great way to bring the Post Office into the 21st century. View Results

The huge agency uses the service to move hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents -- like employment records and birth certificates -- between offices. The SSA is helping with tests of a prototype certified e-mail system called NetPost.Certified.

The Postal Service developed the system in cooperation with a team from the private sector that included AT&T and IBM.

Cost factor

With NetPost.Certified, both sender and receiver are equipped with software, a "smart card," and a card reader supplied by the Postal Service. Users identify themselves with a digital certificate stored on the smart card. Material sent via NetPost.Certified is encrypted before it enters the system and is not decrypted until the authorized recipient retrieves it. The sender gets an electronic return receipt verifying delivery.

Conventional certified mail can cost consumers up to nearly $7 per item. During the test, the Postal Service is charging the Social Security Administration 50 cents per transaction. Former SSA Deputy Commissioner William Halter said NetPost.Certified appeared to offer his agency a way to make itself more "cost effective."

As of now, NetPost.Certified is limited to government use. The Postal Service says it doesn't know when the service might be available to the general public.

However, the Postal Service does offer consumers a slower, less-automated, Web-based certified mail service in which letters written online are printed out by the post office and then hand-delivered. Customers pay online with their credit cards. The Postal Service says that while the consumer service is not entirely automated, it does save senders of certified mail a trip to the Post Office.

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The United States Postal Service

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