Jim McElhatton reports:
The White House has secretly questioned the U.S. Postal Service about whether its change of address “welcome kit” program used by tens of millions of Americans violates the federal Privacy Act.
Despite telling The Washington Times that it had no such records, the White House Office of Management and Budget made inquiries into the Postal Service’s MoversSource program, which is managed under a 10-year, exclusive contract with Pitney Bowes Inc. subsidiary Imagitas, according to internal emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
[…]
Under its arrangement with Imagitas, the Postal Service doesn’t hand over this information directly to advertisers, but instead gives Imagitasexclusive rights to manage the program. Imagitas then sells ads to retailers, though it does not turn over the personal information to ad buyers either.
In a previous statement to The Times, Pitney Bowes called the change-of-address program a “model public-private partnership” that has helped reduce postal operating costs by “millions of dollars a year while connecting countless Americans to valuable discounts from local businesses.”
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