TSA: No more overseas airmail packages over one pound allowed

Tuesday, December 07, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: TSA, airmail, health news

(NaturalNews) The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to tighten the noose of tyranny around the collective neck of America with a recent announcement from the Japan Post Services Co. (JPSC), the Japanese postal service, that no more airmail packages over one pound will be permitted for shipment into the U.S. Coming at the request of U.S. aviation authorities, the rule applies to everyone except for large corporate mailers which are exempt.

According to The Japan Times, the ruling affects 15 percent of the mail processed by JPSC, or roughly 200,000 packages a month. The company press release also indicates that the Japanese equivalents of FedEx and UPS have also followed suit, which means that the only way left to send packages over one pound in weight from Japan to the U.S. is via ship freight.

"Following a terrorist incident at the end of October in which bombs were planted in packages bound by air for Chicago, the U.S. government has notified airlines that it would be strengthening its requirements for shipment of packages by air," says a report in the Japanese newspaper Mainichi. "Due to a strong fear that shipments of packages would be limited, Japan Post Holdings' JP Post announced on November 12 that it would suspend acceptance of some airmail packages bound for the United States."

But the rules do not apply only to Japan. Apparently, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has requested that no foreign country be permitted to send air packages weighing over a pound into the U.S. because of perceived security threats, unless the postal carriers follow strict and tedious new screening rules to verify sender and receiver.

But such rules are so cumbersome and difficult to abide by that many carriers are simply suspending shipments of all such packages. And some commentators believe this is precisely what the TSA had in mind when it created the new rules, since it adds even further to the "security theater" and terror-scare currently taking place in the U.S.

Sources for this story include:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn201...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/...