The United States Postal Service published in today’s Federal Register a notice of a proposed modification to its privacy regulations. One of the modifications relates to customs declarations that postal customers supply to the USPS in connection with exports made by those customers using the USPS. According to the notice, the USPS is proposing to give those declarations for “certain mailpieces” to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), apparently pursuant to a specific request from OFAC.

Needless to say, the notice doesn’t explicitly describe those “certain mailpieces” for which OFAC has requested the Customs Declaration. But a tantalizing clue suggests that only mail to Iran is involved. The notice references three executive orders imposing sanctions: E.O 12957,
E.O.12959, and E.O 13059. Each of these orders promulgates sanctions on Iran. Beyond that, we have little indication of which postal shipments to Iran are subject to this disclosure proposal.

Two minor things are of additional interest regarding the USPS notice. First, the USPS refers to OFAC throughout as “the OFAC,” which, however quaint, suggests that “the” USPS doesn’t have much dealing with OFAC which, for whatever reason, normally doesn’t have the definite article prepended to its acronym in the same way it precedes USPS. Also the contact point for the notice is a USPS employee with a literary name: Jane Eyre. That’s pretty cool, but a contact named Clarissa Harlowe would have been even cooler on a USPS notice.

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