Anime Online

Quote:

U.S. Postal Service Says No More North Pole Letter Deliveries
Email this| Posted Nov 19th 2009 12:30PM by Sandy Maple

This year, the postal service won't be delivering letters to Santa -- at least, not at the North Pole.

For generations, children have written breathless letters to Santa Claus in the hopes that he will fulfill their deepest desires on Christmas Day. And since 1954, the U.S. Postal Service has employed volunteers to read and respond to the letters that are addressed simply to "Santa Claus, North Pole." But no more. Citing privacy concerns, the U.S. Postal Service will no longer deliver such letters to the volunteers in North Pole, Alaska.

What would move the U.S. Postal Service to put an end to such a popular and seemingly harmless program? The answer is a registered sex offender thousands of miles away.

Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized a local Operation Santa Claus volunteer as a registered sex offender. The sex offender was stopped before being allowed to respond to any children's letters, but the damage was done.

As a result, new policies were put in place that prohibit volunteers from having access to the personal information of the children who write the letters. As part of the Operation Santa Claus program, the Postal Service now removes the last name and addresses of the children and replaces that information with codes that match computerized information available only to the post office. Individual post offices are allowed to decide whether or not they wish to go through all this trouble and many of them still do.

But the Alaska town of North Pole is not one of those places. According to a Postal Service spokesperson in Anchorage, the new restrictions are just not feasible in Alaska. Now, letters that are generically address to "Santa Claus, North Pole" will no longer be forwarded to the volunteers in the Alaska town of North Pole. Instead, they will be sent to other sites that are still participating in the Operation Santa program.

Despite the fact that North Pole, Alaska, isn't answering Christmas letters shouldn't stop kids from writing to Santa. Children can still send letters to Santa and receive responses through local Operation Santa programs. But those who are expecting an official "North Pole" post mark on their letters from Santa will be disappointed.

Is this good protection for kids, or just an overzealous, knee-jerk reaction? what you think about this matter