They say that dangerous weapons such as letter bombs are given only to the famous by a coward. True or not, such items can be easily opened with a sad prospect for the opener. Do you know how to detect if your mail is rigged?
(Below) From: Securityusa.com
In the mail room the first precaution would be to look for mail with handwritten addresses (and no return address) or from unusual locations. However, many larger companies screen all incoming mail (letters and parcels) using conveyor-type X-ray equipment as found at airports for scanning hand luggage. Unfortunately, although a deterrent, these devices are not infallible as they depend on under-paid operators who might have to screen thousands of objects every day. Such expensive one-by-one screening devices also cause backlogs in the mail room leading to the operators becoming even more perfunctory in their procedures.
Are we to believe that the post office has enough time in the day to scan each of these individual pieces of mail? I dont think so! In any case, I would expect letter bombs to be crude at best, if they were deployed, and most likely would not detonate or do so prematurely. I dont recall hearing about letter bombs in the recent past, so it does not seem to be an imminent threat but it is certainly an option for cowards that cannot be overlooked.
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I remember LDS telling me about an incident where a guy was putting explosives in mail boxes (white US citizen), to scare people, but his act of terror was short lived. Recently there have been several letter bombs addressed to US officials which shows they may be gaining in popularity. We have to consider that there are kinds of packages, shapes and sizes and to detect what is good and what is not is really a task.
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I just read this article on cnn.com about a 6th governor receiving a suspicious letter rigged to explode when opened. Apparently this has happened in the last 2 days, which is why I wasn't aware of it yet. Here is an excerpt:
QUOTE |
Sixth governor gets suspicious letter BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Gov. Mitt Romney's office received a suspicious letter Friday similar to those received by five other governors a day earlier, which were rigged to ignite when opened |
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While I don't think I"ll ever be a target for a letter bomb, there are always those in public office, or in the public eye in some other way, who must be cautious. With the volume of mail received by those individuals and groups, I can understand how difficult it would be to screen out the crazies.
I recall Oprah once discussing this on her show several years ago -- as you can imagine, she gets a *lot* of crazy mail -- and she mentioned some of the types of mail that are not even looked at twice; in particular, tiny little handwriting that goes all over the page, filling every corner so that the writing even goes sideways up the paper so as not to waste any. (Interesting note, my last ex-husband always did that...!)
It would sure be a difficult task to have to screen and sort the mail for Congress or the White House.
Roz
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