Registered letters have become extortionately costly in Belgium (around €10). So to save money I make hand-deliveries and request recipients sign for it. I have no idea if this ad hoc proof of delivery would meet courtroom standards of evidence. But I’m fine with the risk.
The recipients are not natural people. It’s always companies, orgs, and gov agencies. It mostly works as far as getting the signature. Most receptions treat me like bPost.
But there are exceptions. A gov agency refused to sign for a letter. Since I was not wearing bPost swag, they were alienated and said “we don’t do that… that is not how we work… send an e-mail”. I said “what if I send this by bPost registered letter? Would you accept it or refuse it?” They said they would accept that because I have to pay bPost. That’s bizarre, is it not?
I realise some people are like robots. They want every task to be in their job description. They want everything scripted. And if an unfamiliar request or situation arises, they’re like “nope, can’t do it… that job is not on my list so I cannot handle it”. Because of this, I sometimes have to go through a few people. But in the case at hand 3 different staff independently confidently refused to sign for the letter.
So the question is, is this legal? The sketchy legal theory I am envisioning is that this is kind of like bundling. That is, they are imposing a 3rd-party purchase on their otherwise free reception service. I wonder if anti-competition law can be stretched in this way. So I also wonder if there are any more direct laws that require gov offices and companies to sign for deliveries when asked.
It was going to DM a reply using this URL:
https://fedia.io/u/@Servais@discuss.tchncs.de/message
but I got 403 forbidden.
But I must say I object to the forced digital transformation that is happening. I believe using the net should be optional and that people should have a right to be offline. My very specific problem with e-mail is that most e-mail is hosted by a surveillance advertiser who I boycott (Microsoft or Google). All gov agencies are using MS. That means you cannot e-mail the government without sharing your data with Microsoft. I do not trust Microsoft with any personal data. And trust aside, Microsoft profits from their e-mail service so sending mail through their servers contributes to Microsoft’s business. I will not feed that company.
(edit) Even if I were willing to have MS in the loop on everything, MS’s mail servers refuse to connect to my mail server. So Microsoft-hosted e-mail is exclusive; and I am in the excluded group. I can get around that by relaying my mail through a server that MS is willing to connect to, but being forced to dance for Microsoft heightens my contempt for them even more.
I’m going to be honest here, but in your case I would just register an email with a privacy-respecting organization such as https://tuta.com/, https://disroot.org/en/services/email or https://mailbox.org/en/ and use it to email the agencies.
Seems just more effective to get things done without having to compromise on your privacy.
I already have accounts at tuta and disroot. There is nothing I can do on my side to keep Microsoft out of the e-mail loop. When an email goes from a Tuta user to a Microsoft user (and vice versa), Microsoft still sees the e-mail. In both directions. Every single gov agency I have encountered uses Microsoft as their e-mail provider.
You know that government agencies use Azure right? So even if you use paper letters, your data is still on Microsoft servers
I did not know what they used for hosting. I would have guessed AWS (which I also boycott).
Microsoft and Google have deliberately tailored their email services to harvest data for their surveillance advertising. People know that and accept it, which further reinforces the snooping. It would take an extra big pair of balls for Microsoft to snoop on customer files on their hosting platform and commercially exploit that exposure.
While I’m disturbed at any and all public money and resources going toward giant foreign technofeudalist surveillance capitalists, what individual action can I take? My choices are make contact through MS Outlook, or paper letter which potentially entails MS storage of a potentially OCRd letter. The latter is the lesser of evils and lesser risk of abuse. E-mail has textual metadata that is trivially exploited and likely also has exposure to Azure anyway, in addition to Outlook.
You do you, but as government agencies use Microsoft programs extensively, at some point or another, your personal data is going to be hosted on an Azure server.
Their internal infosystems are not on public display, so the general public has no realistic or definitive way of knowing what the gov’s inventory of software and services looks like. Many German gov agencies use linux-based systems. When you submit a paper document you are blind as to how it will be processed. That blindness shifts responsibility and accountability wholly onto the recipient to protect it. If the data is abused, the person submitting physical paper is absolved of accountability because they did everything on their side to promote responsible processing.
At the same time, we absolutely know from a simple MX lookup before sending an email exactly who we are connecting to. It is like handing the document to someone wearing Microsoft logos. This implies consent from the submitter. It sends the wrong message by signalling to the gov that the submitter approves Microsoft handling the document. It also signals that the sender was willing and able to dance for MS to get the msg accepted successfully. If some harm results from MS’s involvement, the e-mail recipient has wiggle room to weasel out of accountability and point a finger to the sender who volunteered to give the data to MS and who also chose what MS could see.
By submitting paper, the receiving office has the burden of scanning the doc (if they find it necessary). They have the burden of specifying languages used on the doc if they find it necessary to OCR it. There is no machine readible metadata like you have in an email header, so they have the manual burden of associating the doc to a person. Most importantly, when they need to respond they have the burden of composing a formatted letter, printing, stuffing the envelope, and using a stamp that costs them. The burden arises out of their choice of a controversial privacy-abusing e-mail supplier. It is the duty of digital rights activists to ensure that this burden manifests. It’s a form of voting. We are casting votes against their e-mail processor. A critical mass of this kind would force them to wonder why their digital process is being resisted, and investigate what they need to do to save money (use non-controversial EU-based suppliers).
Note as well that when you send an email to the gov, you also signal to them that there is no need for an offline option (regardless of who serves their e-mail). The right to be analog and offline is also worth fighting for on its own merits (but largely as an alternative to enshitified tech).
This information is usually available after some research. Belgium is known to be a Microsoft organization.
https://www.ptb.be/actualites/le-ptb-demande-que-le-spf-finances-arrete-de-se-soumettre-microsoft-et-protege-la-vie
https://www.lesoir.be/149600/article/2018-04-06/quand-le-spf-finances-se-lie-microsoft
This is never going to change anything as the vast majority of citizens are going to use email if they can. If you really want to make a change, support parties who fight for that, like PTB in the link above.
Also, with bpost reducing its collection to 2 times per week, good luck.
https://www.rtbf.be/article/le-courrier-habituel-ne-sera-plus-distribue-que-deux-fois-par-semaine-des-2020-10255093
Probably not for every agency. More importantly, what would the point be? There is no decision you can make in the course of your workflow that would influence an agency’s internal storage systems. When submitting documents, your choices are email via MS Outlook, paper letter, or sometimes fax (which likely traverses MS e-mail servers). That’s it. Given those choices, it helps to know which the couriers are involved and what they see. It does not help to know about processes and tech you have no control over.
Exceptionally, you might also have the choice to not interact at all, in which case you can avoid their internal storage. But that is a rare option with public services as gov interactions are typically essential. Would you move to Germany over it? Probably not. So if you choose to live in Belgium and the gov chooses MS for their data storage, you are trapped. But at least you still have your choice of couriers.
I do cast my insignificant blunt drop in the ocean electoral vote once every 4 or so years, which is not mutually exclusive with taking other actions. But a single ballot has very little influence. I also vote every single day with my wallet and my data. That’s far more important and carries more influence. You can’t make significant change with your ballot alone.
W.r.t the election, I scrambled last minute to learn about voting options. I ended up voting for Ecolo, which had some pro-FOSS positioning (public money → public code IIRC). Glad you point out PTB, which superficially seems equally reasonable on digital rights.
Thanks for the link. That certainly reinforces the importance of using postal mail which is apparently under threat to shrink and further reduce service quality. I hand deliver a lot of my mail which does not directly help bPost, but then the recipient always responds via bPost because I withhold my email address from recipients whose address is MS hosted. So I am helping bPost indirectly this way. bPost’s continued existence is important for maintaining people’s ability to be offline at a time when the gov wants to force digital transformation down everyone’s throat.