I first received one of these plastic bags with something I ordered from Amazon a couple months ago. On the surface it looks like a good idea. You send your old cell phone in and supposedly it will be given to the soldiers overseas so that they can call home. I won’t even get into the technology compatibility issues here…

But what I will get into is with all the recent news of people being reported for relatively benign things and with people reporting totally innocent acts to help fight the war on terror, is sending used cell phones in little plastic bags through the mail a good idea? Isn’t this exactly what people are reporting? Random electronic equipment that lights up or beeps? And we’re being encouraged to send these through the US postal service? Worse yet, would post workers start to ignore odd shapes and odd sounds coming from these bags since they all supposedly contain used cell phones?

With knee jerk overreactions to non-threats becoming more and more commonplace, and “report all suspicious activity” becoming the mantra nowadays, it seems strange that we’re being encouraged to put little electronic devices into little plastic baggies and mail them en masse…