I mean 100 years ago if you had gotten a letter from "US communist party", your mail carrier would likely have reported it directly, without any fancy automation.
The outside of envelopes has never been particularly private, so I'm not seeing it as a policy change so much as an implementation change to support scale.
I don’t believe the argument holds. Just because individuals could see your mail is not equivalent to an automated agent looking at every piece of your mail every day from miles away and creating a profile of you. This is the true slippery slope, that we allow this processing for more and more data. Eventually, every bit of our lives will be processed and profiled at this rate!
Every time I hear an argument for surveillance that boils down to “well they could just stand there and watch you do the $activity,” I lightly lose my mind.
CCTV, ALNRs, facial recognition, etc. All of these are technically “just” advanced versions of the old fashioned stake-out. But that makes all the difference in the world.
In general, yes. In this specific case a person who lives in your community and looks at the letters going into your mailbox everyday will also have a profile of you.
Even to the naked eye, the scans often clearly show the contents of the envelope. With even a slight bit of basic image adjustment (we're talking brightness/contrast or levels) you can very clearly read what's inside.
The outside of envelopes has never been particularly private, so I'm not seeing it as a policy change so much as an implementation change to support scale.