How did the mail become such a sacred right in the US?

Question

Larry Lawton is a favourite YouTuber of mine. He tells the story of while he was in prison he asked his father why he stopped writing him letters. His father told him that he never stopped sending him letters, he then said to his father he thinks the prison is tampering with his mail.

His father then said he would handle it. The post office then said that they have some sort of mail tampering test that they can do to see if mail is getting to its intended receiver. It turned out that the prison official was indeed tampering with the mail. The post master general of the area then decided that every inmate at the facility would from then on have their mail delivered in person by a post officer and no prison official would ever handle inmates' mail again. A lot of prison officials, including the warden, lost their jobs as a consequence during the process.

This story being good and all did make me think that Americans take the mail very seriously. Makes me wonder if taking a baseball bat to someone's mailbox would get you 20 years. Why does the US take crimes against your inbox so seriously? It all seems rather strange to me.

Answer 1

Secrecy of correspondence isn't unique to the US. It is actually a fundamental right in many European countries (in Germany, it eg goes back to 1690, in France to 1742, and it was also part of the constitution of the USSR).

While the US doesn't have a direct equivalent in its constitution, the supreme court ruled that privacy of the letter still exists, based on the fourth amendment (which prohibits unreasonable search and seizures). Some exceptions may apply though (especially with regard to newer forms of communications, such as electronic mail).

Answer 2

The US constitution provides for few national enterprises: A military, a mint, a justice system, and a post office.

This is in contrast to most governments in Europe which have extensive public sectors encompassing education and health, and sometimes energy, food, construction and other industries.

Unlike most other activities, the post is protected by the national government and explicitly established in the constitution. It is this special status that creates special rights for the mail and creates the mail as a special cultural institution in the USA.

Answer 3

The story about the prison is suspect to me. Depending on the security level of the prison, inmates’ internet usage, phone calls, and mail are routinely monitored and inspected. Prisoners do not have a right to or expectation of privacy; that’s a right they forfeited when they were convicted of their crimes. So there must be more to that story than you know.

Outside of prison, your mail is private correspondence with another person and is protected like any other privacy right would be. You could no more open someone else’s mail than you could eavesdrop on their phone calls. The government likewise would need a legal warrant to open a person’s mail.

As for the mailbox thing, nobody would get 20 years for destroying a mailbox. That’s misdemeanor vandalism at worst. That being said, a mailbox is considered U.S. government property, so vandalizing one or tampering with the contents inside is a federal crime (as opposed to a state or local crime). Mail fraud CAN potentially get you up to 20 years in prison, but it would have to be some very serious criminal activity indeed.

In short, the U.S. Postal Service is not some sacred institution that Americans are particularly serious about. Quite to the contrary, many Americans regard the it as a typical example of a bloated, expensive, inefficient government bureaucracy that fails to deliver (pun intended). That’s the whole reason why companies like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and other courier services are able to make a profit while often being a more expensive option. People trust them more.

Answer 4

Postal services have always been sacred in the US, even before the actual founding of the Union. Before the time of the Revolutionary War, many colonists relied on the British postal service, which was manipulated by the monarchy to prevent colonists from organizing.

Naturally, the founders were concerned with civilian right to organize against a tyrannical government, so it was one of their top priorities when forming the US government.

If you read historical accounts of the American Revolution, you might notice a seemingly unnatural reverence for the postal service. You need to remember that it was essentially the only way people could communicate over distance. If you could not rely on the post, it became difficult to do business, connect with relations outside your city, learn about current events, or organize a revolution.

Today, we have many alternatives to the postal service that make it somewhat less relevant, but I believe a lot of the anger over censorship in other media stems from similar feelings to postal censorship in the 1700s. The founders created the postal service so that anyone could communicate with whoever they wished, even if they had powerful enemies.

Answer 5

Mailboxes are very vulnerable, usually unattended and often not next to the house. Since it is so easy to tamper with someone's mail, and difficult to enforce, the penalty has to be very high to actually deter people. This is the same logic as the $1000 fines for littering.

So while the high penalties might look like they mean "mail appears to be a sacred right", it may be that they are just being set at the level needed to serve as an actual deterrent.

Answer 6

Keeping in mind that most of these laws were established before airplanes and the internet, even before the telegraph, it seems the main reason is military relevance.

If the enemy can interrupt your communications, it is much easier to launch a surprise attack, as nearby bases can't immediately warn you. For the same reason, Germany built a highway system in the run-up to WW2: So the tanks could advance more quickly. Fortunately for everyone, it was the enemy tanks that were able to advance more quickly in the end.

The US still has the concept of electoral delegates, because the country was so large that, by the time the person carrying the election results for a federal election from one state arrived in the capital, the situation may have changed. So they got permission to modify a result if needed.

All the large empires of history were based on communications networks. Post coaches, horse messengers, semaphores ...

It seems logical to me that, just like the US protect vital infrastructure from being sold to foreign countries, the postal service would be protected as well.