[Imports-us] USPS mailbox locations database

Bryce Nesbitt bryce2 at obviously.com
Sun Jun 9 03:49:21 UTC 2013


On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/foia/readroom/welcome.htm is also
interesting.  See links to:
>
> Leased facilities by state (
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/foia/leased-facilities/report.htm)
> Owned facilities by state (
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/foia/readroom/ownedfacilitiesreport.htm)
>
> I don't see what date those were last updated.  Is this the one time
release data you were talking about?

The applicable licence for that is:

**"The information contained in the report is provided by the United States
Postal Service under the Freedom of information Act and should not be
redistributed or resold."*
*

Guidelines for Copyrighted Materials and the FOIA
http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_IV_4/page3.htm

A past OSM mailing list post listed several primary sources for the first
blue box FOIA request, and included
this fragmentary writeup:

*"In 2002, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the
Postal Service for an electronic copy of pertinent information from the CBMS
database.  The Postal Service declared that releasing information on
locations and posted collection times of collection boxes would pose a
security risk. I filed a lawsuit, and in March 2005, a federal judge ruled
in my favor and ordered the Postal Service to disclose the data. In
September 2005, the Postal Service provided"
*

The primary sources about this event are no longer online.
An article, no longer online, was titled ' USPS loses appeal of FOIA case -
postalnews blog' from 2007.
 The name of the litigant is something I was not able to determine.

But that was not the last attempt.  Here's one from 2010:
http://maps.huge.info/blog/2010/03/why_the_usps_is_running_a_defi.html

*Dear Mr. Coryat,
....
Our IT Department has estimated the computer processing and personnel costs
associated with your request to be approximately $2,732.00

$1600.00 - 8 hours of IT specialist Time
$180.00 - 3 hours Operator Time
$100.00 - Electronic Delivery Set-up
$6.00 - 6 gigabytes data delivery
$140.00 - PC Usage
$706.00 - Mainframe/Open system usage
...
Paul C Sullivan
Manager
Delivery Systems
475 L'Enfant Plaza SW
Rm 5821
Washington, DC 20260-5821

*
I think the thing to do is make an FOIA act request for an initial update
plus a yearly update.  Or tailor the FOIA request to ask for the same data
but delivered directly from the USPS's existing website via scraping.

*The number of mailboxes [blue boxes] nationwide has dropped to 187,000
from about 204,000 in September 2007, said Don Smeraldi, a spokesman for
the postal service’s Pacific area, which includes California and Hawaii.*
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