Full article in ny.politics, same subject.
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB964992560575163504.htm
July 31, 2000
U.S. Postal Service Plans to Offer
Free E-Mail Addresses to Residences
The mailman wants to know your e-mail address.
Actually, it is the U.S. Postal Service. Officials there are planning
to offer people living at all 120 million of the nation's residential
street addresses free e-mail addresses. It would link the e-mail and
real-world addresses in a giant Postal Service database in Memphis,
Tenn.
[snip]
Still, the plan, if it comes off, would put into the hands of the U.S.
government an electronic asset long regarded as the Holy Grail of
digital marketing: a centralized database correlating consumers, street
addresses and e-mail addresses. It could be the most efficient tool
ever created for delivering spam, as unsolicited junk e-mail is known.
"We believe they are developing the largest spam database in the history
of the Internet," says Dave McClure, executive director of the U.S.
Internet Industry Association, Arlington, Va., which represents some
300 high-tech firms doing business on the Internet.
The Postal Service insists it is planning "a no-spamming system."
[snip]
