I’m going the DIY route and I made my first HRT purchase online via diyhrt.info approved sources (mostly because my insurance sucks). I was just checking on my package to see where it was in transit and it hit me that - assuming I don’t have my stuff seized at the border - the privacy around postal services is absolutely crucial for people. It’s kind of assumed your packages are largely not inspected too heavily and that generally the contents are only assessed for safety and security. Without strong package privacy laws, I’m sure DIY HRT would never be an option for me and many others.
I’m super anxious to receive my first shipment.
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I’m not so sure its privacy so much as the absolute firehouse of packages and letters makes it untenable to inspect most mail without a reason.
Well not these days! Postal services were actually one of the first institutions to start using a ML based image classifier to determine zip codes automatically from people’s hand writing. I could easily see something like that existing for X-rays to auto-classify package contents if they wanted. That being said, I agree that they haven’t seemed motivated to implement that (thank goodness).
Also, post privacy is constitutional in most free countries AFAIK.
I mean, yeah, privacy is super important, but for international stuff it depends a lot on how they write the customs declaration. When I was on DIY it was usually marked “personal medication” or similar, and none of them were opened (not that it would have gotten seized, but still). OTOH when I used to use and import tobacco, at least 90% of those were opened and assessed for tax.
I think if any administration tried to crack down on DIY it would just incentivize domestic production instead: inspecting domestic mail is much harder even for a fully authoritarian regime.
Enjoy your hormones <3
