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CNN Live At Daybreak
Ways to Make the Mail Safer
Aired October 26, 2001 - 06:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well joining us now to talk about safety precautions that businesses and consumers can take is Michael Critelli. He's CEO of Pitney Bowes, and he is joining us this morning in -- from Stanford, Connecticut.
We sure do appreciate your time this morning. Good morning to you.
MICHAEL CRITELLI, CEO, PITNEY BOWES: Good morning, Leon.
HARRIS: Well you -- your company is so well entrenched in this the mail industry and helping companies across the country and around the world, actually, handling their mail. What kind of advice are you -- have you been giving companies about how to ramp up, especially companies that have never had to consider security of their mail?
CRITELLI: Well, we've been in this secure mail business for 81 years with the postage meter, but it's really not a single solution. It's a combination of people, processes and technology enhanced products which when employed together can make mail as safe as possible.
We do background screenings on the employees that work in the mailrooms we manage, and we manage about 1,300 sites in the United States. We do extensive training of those employees. They use world class safety processes to screen out suspicious mail and we work with the postal inspection service and the law enforcement authorities and we employ that technology that is appropriate for the risk for that particular mailer.
We make available the full range of safety and security technology, but customers make the decision that's appropriate for them.
HARRIS: Well let's talk about some of the technology. Something that's been discussed in the last couple of days or so is this idea of irradiating the mail or blasting it with some sort of electron beam or some sort of a -- whatever it is, I'm not a scientist so I can't fully explain it, to kill whatever bacteria that may be in it. And in fact, it's the same process that's being used to irradiate certain foods as well. And now does your -- you ever use that? Is that something that you can think -- that you think could be widely distributed across the country or what? CRITELLI: I think the postal service is going to deploy that first in its highest risk parts of the network. I think the technology is probably too expensive at this point to be deployed to a single employer. I could see multi-employer mail hubs being done in the future that might deploy a version of this technology. But I would emphasize that technology is going to continue to evolve, and we will stay state of the art and make that technology available to our customers.
HARRIS: All right, we'll keep our eye open for any more announcements of state-of-the-art technologies when they come out.
But for the consumers -- the general consumers who may not be talking about it or care that much about business mail who may be headed to their mailboxes in about, oh, another hour or so when they wake up, you hear the term suspicious package. What is that exactly? What is it that would tip you off if you saw something?
CRITELLI: The key to terrorist activity is that they don't want to be identified so mail without return addressees and also mail with certain kinds of postage on it such as stamps. We use metered mail. We've been in that business for 81 years. It leaves a fingerprint. Permit mail leaves a fingerprint. You can tell where and from whom the mail piece was sent. Stamped mail is anonymous. It's like cash. So anything that has no return address or anything that looks like it's been tampered with. A mail piece that's been taped shut which would suggest that it was sealed, opened and then resealed with tape, those would be suspicious elements.
HARRIS: That could be -- that could be a lot of mail. I've seen a lot like that.
Michael Critelli of Pitney Bowes, thank you very much for your time this morning, and good luck to you. We'll keep our eye out.
CRITELLI: Thank you very much, Leon.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: You've got to be careful and aware...
HARRIS: Yes.
KAGAN: ... things that don't fit.
HARRIS: Right.
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