World In Brief (10/24/06)

Underused mailboxes disappearing, thanks to rising Internet use

Richard Clough,… Underused mailboxes disappearing, thanks to rising Internet use

Richard Clough, Chicago Tribune

Like the phone booth before it, the blue, street-corner mailbox is rapidly becoming a casualty of the digital age.

As more people send e-mails and pay bills online, the decline in first-class mail is forcing the U.S. Postal Service to remove tens of thousands of underused mailboxes from city streets.

“People just don’t write letters as often anymore,” said Yvonne Yoerger, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service. “It’s not a part of our culture anymore.”

The removal of mailboxes, though, represents more than just a transition to the Internet age. To many, it means the decline of an American icon.

Seen and used by hundreds of millions of Americans for more than a century, the corner mailbox is one of the most recognized pieces of Americana, said Nancy Pope, a historian at the National Postal Museum in Washington.

“You recognize them in Chicago, you recognize them in D.C., you recognize them in Florida, you recognize them in Montana,” Pope said. “It’s a piece of American iconography that has a wonderful history behind it.”

Since 1999, the Postal Service has removed more than 42,000 collection boxes. As of last year, about 295,000 mailboxes remained in use.

Along with mailboxes, the Postal Service is facing a drop in jobs. In the past five years it has reduced staff through attrition by more than 80,000 employees. The current postal workforce stands at about 700,000.

The Postal Service’s 2007 budget accounts for an expected reduction of about 3 billion pieces of first-class mail from last year’s levels. Last year, about 98 billion pieces of first-class mail were delivered.

Although people are sometimes upset when boxes are removed, the current round of removals has received fewer customer complaints than earlier ones, said Mark Reynolds, a spokesman for the Chicago postal district.

“Seniors tend to complain if there’s a box close to them slated for removal,” Reynolds said, because traveling farther to a new mailbox can be an increased burden on the elderly.

Citizens in communities across the country have circulated petitions to save mailboxes, and postal officials say they take such campaigns seriously.

Before any box is uprooted, officials will post a 30-day public notice on the mailbox, informing users of the nearest alternative drop points. And once a box is removed, some post offices will consider returning it if there is significant public outcry.

The post office tries to leave at least one mailbox per square mile in residential areas.

Price, not politics, prohibits easy Web access in Cuba, report says

Frances Robles, McClatchy Newspapers

On a month-long assignment to Cuba, a French journalist hopped from Internet cafe to cafe on a hunt to determine to what extent the government censored the Internet.

The results were surprising: Her report, released Thursday by Reporters Without Borders, says Internet cafes at hotels and the post office allowed mostly unfettered access to Web sites, even those considered “subversive.” But prices were excessive and security warnings popped up when the names of well-known Cuban dissidents appeared on the screen.

“I was surprised I could visit all Web sites,” the journalist — who used the pseudonym of Claire Voeux to write the report so she would be able to return to Cuba — said in a telephone interview from France.

“But then when I opened an e-mail that had the names of dissidents on it, this pop-up warning came on saying the program would switch off in a few seconds,” she added. “I thought, ‘No way!’

“It was like a spy movie.”

She said she quickly bolted from the Internet cafe, in case anyone came after her.

With just 2 percent of its 11 million people online, Cuba has one of the lowest Internet usage rates in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders. Thursday’s report said Cuba has one-thirteenth the Internet usage of Costa Rica, ranking it alongside countries such as Uganda and Sri Lanka.

Computer ownership is 3.3 per 100 inhabitants, the same as Togo, the report added, citing the International Telecommunication Union.

The Cuban government argues that the U.S. trade embargo keeps the nation from purchasing the fiber optic cables it needs to offer broader access to the Web. Cuba currently depends on satellites, which offer spotty and slow service to privileged Cubans who have access at work or have the $4.50 an hour it costs at post office Internet facilities.

The price amounts to several weeks’ pay and is an effective method of controlling Internet access, said Julien Pain, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Internet Freedom program. The French media advocacy organization considers Cuba one of the “15 Enemies of the Internet.”

But even Reporters Without Borders was surprised to learn that the Cuban government does not block Web sites it considers hostile, such as The Miami Herald’s. Only once during her month-long stay did Voeux find a site — a Mexican page about a post-Castro Cuba — blocked.

“I was expecting many things would be censored online, for example the Reporters Without Borders page,” Pain said. “They are controlling the Web in a different way. It’s about surveillance and controlling access, not censorship.”