How-to receive shipments anonymously

[dontblocktor]

Simply read the serial number off any piece of fiat that happens to be in your possession and have the shipment mailed via USPS to:
Bearer of Federal Reserve Note F12345678P
General Delivery
ANYTOWN, NY 12345-9999

Then when you go to the post office to pickup the package, present your federal reserve note with the appropriate serial number, which has been officially endorsed by both the Treasurer of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury with the most sophisticated anti-forgery technology available, so that there's no way that the postal clerk can deny that you have, in fact, suitably identified yourself as the one and only addressee and legal recipient of the package.

Finally, to obtain full anonymity and ensure proper service, you should then dispose of the fiat by giving it as a tip to the clerk who handed you the package. Make sure you use "9999" for the last four digits of the zip code so that it fully complies with all postal regulations and, to also safeguard against other workers in the delivery chain incorrectly routing the shipment as undeliverable, it's good idea to add the exact street address of the post office along with instructions for the postmaster as follows:
Bearer of Federal Reserve Note F12345678P
General Delivery—Postmaster Hold for Pickup
123 Main St
ANYTOWN NY 12345-9999

http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub28/

[1715244887]

1715244887

[dontblocktor]

I also want to point out that this is much safer than using PO boxes because even privately administered PO boxes are required by law to obtain the names and physical addresses of their recipients, but this method does not require such things and is unlikely to be compromised in this way as it's founded on two of the oldest and most basic mandates that the federal government has ever fulfilled.

Pickup from General Delivery is also more secure than using a box for pickup because every package can be picked up from a different location, which minimizes the risk of having one's anonymity compromised by a correlation attack (ie ambush). There are over 30,000 locations at which one can receive anonymous General Delivery without any prior contact.

[guybrushthreepwood]

Does this actually work?

[TheButterZone]

Aren't USPS employees legally prohibited from receiving tips?

[Malexo]

This is a great tip.  while you won't befully anonymous (because shipping places tend to have cameras) its still probably as close as you can get unless you get a surrogate, but even then...

[kolev]

Have you tried this before?

[SaltySpitoon]

Aren't USPS employees legally prohibited from receiving tips?

Yes, you can give them tips in the form of presents up to a $20 value however 

I'm not sure what to say about your method, first, the chances of them opening your packages in that senario are INCREDIBLY high. So that sort of eliminates the need to have something shipped anonymously. Id say there is also a good chance that the employees at the post office would have no idea how to handle the situation. After reading this, I'm sort of tempted to try it with something like small/valueless to see if it works.

[sidhujag]

This is so obscure why would the fed have a special law
for it and open it up to the public?

[Kluge]

This is so obscure why would the fed have a special law
for it and open it up to the public?

Not really a special law, just holding a package at USPS until someone presents ID. In this case, ID is a specific FRN. No idea if they'd honor this, though, and it seems like a good way to bring a lot of extra attention to whatever you're shipping. Hold for pickup: http://about.usps.com/mailpro/2011/jan-feb/page6.htm

[dontblocktor]

I'm not sure what to say about your method, first, the chances of them opening your packages in that senario are INCREDIBLY high. So that sort of eliminates the need to have something shipped anonymously. Id say there is also a good chance that the employees at the post office would have no idea how to handle the situation. After reading this, I'm sort of tempted to try it with something like small/valueless to see if it works.

Packages are ALWAYS at risk of being treated in ways that violate the recipient's wishes and it's IMPOSSIBLE to do anything about it because, when you entrust physical property to another person (such as a mail carrier), you're not there to exert any influence over what they do or to stop that snoopy mailman, NSA, etc from doing whatever it wants. This is true no matter what verbal or contractual assurances you've been given and no matter what "protections" the politicians have so eloquently written on pieces of paper that've been safely locked away in some government filing cabinet.

Likewise, your physical body is also ALWAYS at risk of being attacked no matter where it is because it's always possible for any person who crosses your path to kidnap you, harm you, etc no matter what verbal or contractual assurances you've been given and no matter what "protections" the politicians have so eloquently written on pieces of paper that've been safely locked away in some government filing cabinet.

So the ONLY thing you can protect absolutely is information and the anonymity of yourself and your belongings so that if ever someone chooses to violate you or your property, they CANNOT POSSIBLY be doing so because of what they think you've done in the past or because of what they think you'll do in the future, no matter if their actions against you are justified or not.

In any given situation, a truly anonymous person is as safe as the safest person can possibly be because, indeed, there is nothing to distinguish between the two. A truly anonymous person cannot be punished for past crimes nor can he be stripped of the wealth he has provided for the future, but every step and every breath he takes stands independently, as if each moment of his life took place in a separate universe, and it is only AFTER a person has achieved this "separation of universes" that he can even begin to take whatever actions are necessary to gain control over the rest of his situation.

So, no, having packages inspected does NOT eliminate the need for anonymity, but on the contrary, it increases the need to insulate the risks so that if/when you or your property is ever suspected of something illegal, you don't end up being charged as a criminal mastermind and having millions of dollars stolen from you like Ross Ulbricht. Think about it, if Mr Ulbricht had maintained his anonymity, then what basis would those who arrested him have for charging him as anything other than a law abiding library patron who accidentally logged on to the silk road for the first time on the day he was arrested and was merely browsing it in order to figure out what it was? Those who don't protect their privacy risk going to jail whether they're doing anything illegal or not:
http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc

[dontblocktor]

it seems like a good way to bring a lot of extra attention to whatever you're shipping.

You can have attention on your shipment or attention on your body; Your choice, but I'd gladly let them take the shipment to keep my body out of jail or my home and life savings from being subject to civil forfeiture.

But if you don't trust the postman to deliver the contents of your shipment without setting you up to be ambushed, then who will you trust to deliver it and, even if they'll deliver it, how can you trust them to keep the history of your deliveries confidential if the cops threaten them into helping to build a case against you? I never claimed this method ensures anything except anonymity, but even perfect anonymity can't protect you from being caught red handed if your shipment contains contraband and you don't use other mechanisms to obscure its contents.

[countryfree]

Which mail order company will accept to ship anything to the Bearer of Federal Reserve Note N°_?

Your girlfriend can do it to send you jelly, but it won't work with Amazon.

[sidhujag]

Which mail order company will accept to ship anything to the Bearer of Federal Reserve Note N°_?

Your girlfriend can do it to send you jelly, but it won't work with Amazon.

I think you may have missed the point. Its not for that purpose usually.

[dontblocktor]

Which mail order company will accept to ship anything to the Bearer of Federal Reserve Note N°_?

Your girlfriend can do it to send you jelly, but it won't work with Amazon.

Sure it will work with Amazon which is exactly what I had in mind because they sell everything and you can buy their gift cards with cash (which is actually anonymous, unlike bitcoin unless the http://zerocoin.org/ extension gets implemented). Smaller online stores will sometimes require a telephone call before authorizing payment from a credit card that isn't registered to the same name and address as the shipment, but Amazon.com will definitely send your shipments to whatever name you give them no matter what method of payment you use.

Also, if Amazon were to begin distributing anonymous currency to sellers, then sellers of contraband could have a high degree of safety by using Amazon's warehousing services:
Step 1. Obscure the contents and ship to Amazon warehouse.
Step 2. If the contraband is detected during shipment to Amazon or when Amazon warehouses it, then neither the seller nor the customer can be found to blame.
Step 3. If the contraband makes it to the point of being dispatched for final shipment, then it probably won't be detected in the final shipment to customer either.
Step 4. Thanks to the anonymity of goods delivered via FRN and payment received via cryptocurrency, buyer and seller are both free and clear because there is no way to prove that the transaction ever occurred and, with no historical patterns to analyze, no way to predict the likely origin/destination of the next shipment.

The only risk is if, between Step 2 and Step 3, Amazon knowingly ships the contraband as part of a sting operation, but it's unlikely they would be willing to waste much time mounting these kinds of efforts against first time customers (they are, after all, trying to run a business) and I'm not even sure it'd be legal for them to do so without a judge first signing off that the suspect should be the FRN bearer instead of the Amazon warehouse employee (without any evidence to support that suspicion). Then even if the recipient were caught receiving the contraband red handed, the almost complete lack of evidence would make it almost impossible for the prosecutor to obtain conviction (for example, if the recipient claims she was freelancing as a courier then why would she be more culpable for accepting the package than USPS or Amazon?).

I think you may have missed the point. Its not for that purpose usually.

Actually you have missed the point and it is for "that" purpose because the authorities typically use legal loopholes to punish their victims extrajudicially. If you're suspected of committing a crime then the authorities don't have to arrest or prosecute you...they can and do simply take all your money and possessions or, if a higher level authority like the NSA, they just keep tabs on where you are until it suits them to whisk you off to Gitmo: No accusation, No trial, Do not pass go, Do not collect $200.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=all
http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/08/property-civil-forfeiture.html

Anonymity it isn't about WHETHER the authorities might find evidence that you've committed a crime, it's about limiting WHAT they CAN (and I mean CAN, not MAY) do to you WHEN they eventually find what looks like evidence of crime because, in the age of information, the only question is how long it will take for a pattern of apparent "evidence" to emerge by accident (even if you haven't actually done anything).

So it's incredibly stupid to think you don't need to protect your anonymity if you aren't engaged in crime or that you only need to do so while engaging in the act because actually engaging in crime only increases the probability of someone having an excuse to come after you, but the probability remains elevated even when the postman delivers your toilet paper from Amazon so that the best thing you can do to protect yourself is to make sure that whoever might decide to come after you will have a hard time finding where or who you are. I'd have thought that a cryptographically minded community would have a greater appreciation of this, but instead I'm being surprised by all these stupid "anonymity won't protect my drugs" comments.

PRIVACY about what you are doing reduces the chances of someone wanting to harm you, but ANONYMITY about who/where you are LIMITS the possibilities of how someone can harm you (regardless of why they are doing it). They are two different tools for building two different (though complementary) kinds of protection.

[luv2drnkbr]

uh yeah there is zero percent chance that will work.  there is nothing about bearing fiat as proof of pickup anywhere on the USPS site.  the link you gave in your OP does not mention let alone validate your claim OP.

you did get the format for general delivery down though, kudos on that.

[sidhujag]

I was thinking this would be used more for parcels coming from person a to b without risk of being caught in delivery.... and not buying your favourite cook book off of Amazon.

[drtitan]

http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm