Steve,
I stopped by the Post Office over the weekend, and found out that in
1991, the PO quietly added three new (pseudo-)states to the Union
to handle APO/FPO mail for overseas military mail. The new ones are
AE (Europe, Middle East, Africa, and ships in the Atlantic/Mediterranean),
AA for the Americas (except US and Canada), and AP for the Korea, Japan,
the Philippines, other Pacific and Alaska (sic - seems to conflict with the
"except United States and Canada" provision), and Pacific/Indian Ocean
ships.
Sample standardized addresses per the PO include:
Major Jeff Cameron
24 AIRPS
PSC 2 Box 415
APO AA 34001-0605
SFC Gloria Blackshear
246th Quartermaster Det
Unit 15366
APO AP 96258-0102
PC1 Tim Larson
X-1 DIV/ADMIN
USS Nimitz (CVN-68)
FPO AP 96697-2820
Now some general questions and observations:
1. I am assuming that AP, AA, and AE will be acceptable as a
stateOrProvinceName within the DIT. Does anyone know whether
the NADF has taken a position on this? (The only other choice for a state
would be the individual's state of residence, and why would we care where
a person pays his income tax and votes?)
2. Since there is obviously no Secretary of State for these "states",
it should follow that for organizations, merely qualifying an organization
name with the state would not be sufficient, since that should imply that
that the organization was incorporated in that state and that is impossible.
3. According to the PO, the term APO or FPO is equivalent to a city.
The logic I have been trying to follow would reserve the use of the
Locality attribute to an incorporated city or town within a state which has
a governing body responsible for naming streets, at least. In this case, the
governing body is the DOD and the US Post Office, and their naming
authority extends to at least the ZIP code level. So I (reluctantly) suppose
that saying S=AP, Locality=APO is OK.
4. Thinking back over all the PEM messages I have read, I don't recall
ever seeing anyone mention the postalCode attribute, which would obviously
contain the 5 or 9-digit ZIP code. I'm looking at the 1993 X.500 and don't
have access to the '88 version. Will the use of the postalCode attribute
cause any serious problem with anyone?
Now, what the heck should we do with the organizational type of
information, and how do we distinguish between an organizational person
and a residential person in this case? I am assuming that such a distinction
is potentially important for a number of legal and privacy reasons.
I am inclined to suggest that we cram this information into the streetAddress
attribute, although might be stretching the semantics a little. The 1993
definition says:
"The Street Address attribute specifies a site for the local distribution and
physical delivery in a postal address, i.e., the street name, place, avenue,
and the house number. When used as a component of a directory name,
it identifies the street address at which the named object is located or with
which it is associated in some other important way."
I would feel a lot better if they had said "e.g." rather than "i.e.," but I like
the "site for local distribution and physical delivery" part. I also notice that
no other attribute is defined for apartment, room or suite numbers, floors,
in care of, General Delivery, etc, instructions, which will presumably
have to be included within the streetAddress.
(Out of curiosity, how would would a multiple-line streetAddress be
encoded? As two or more separate attributes, or as one attribute with
line separators? I don't know this level of ASN.1).
Unless someone has a better idea, I would propose the following for the
representation of the RESIDENTIAL person in second example above:
C=US, S=AP, L=APO, postalCode=96258-0102,
streetAddress="246th Quartermaster Det, Unit 15366",
CN="SFC Gloria Blackshear"
(Note that unlike a conventional residence where there is a very small
chance that two people would have the same name, in large institutions
the probability may be significant. As you and I agreed regarding the use
of the serial attribute in order to ensure uniqueness over time of an
organizational person, the use of a serial or other qualifier may be required
here as well.)
On the other hand, if Gloria were being addressed in herofficial capacity or
role as a member of the armed forces, I suppose that something more like
the following would be in order:
C=US,O="Department of the Army", OU="246th Quartermaster Det",
OU="Unit 15366", CN="SFC Gloria Blackshear"
In this case, I have not included any of the state, streetAddress, or
postalCode information. Doing so would not be wrong, but would be
unnecessary, because the Army presumably knows where the 236th
Quartermaster Detachment is presently located, and can find her as
necessary.
(I guess this is making the implicit assumption, as we have in the case of
corporations, that we are corresponding electronically and therefore do not
need the postal address, and/or that if it becomes necessary to track down
that individual for redress for something they signed, it will be possible to do
by means of the organization's records.)
Are you comfortable with both the need for clearly separating the residential
from the organization persons, and the proposed method of encoding?
I.e., a Residential person will always have a streetAddress, and will not
have an Organization or OU listed, whereas an Organizational person will
always have one or more organizations/OUs and generally (but not always)
not have a streetAddress. Now that I think of it, this will apply to college
students living on-campus, and to "inmates" of various other institutions as
well.
Question to all: do any other countries have status of forces agreements
that permit delivery of mail to military personnel in foreign countries without
using the mail system of the host country? If so, please describe the
addressing conventions used. How do other countries handle personal
mail for naval personnel at sea?
Are there any other forms of nomadic people that we ought to seriously
consider at this time, i.e., anyone who routinely has no fixed address,
but can be located through an organization? I can think of some tribal
people, particularly the Eskimo/Inuit and perhaps certain African tribes,
to whom this would apply. How about merchant seamen? Any
suggestions?
Finally, I would particularly appreciate having examples ffrom other
countries of some of the more obscure mail conventions for residential
persons, especially in rural areas. For example, how do Canada and
Mexico handle the distribution of mail to people living outside of towns
and villages, where there are no street names? I am going to try to
have a compilation of all these examples and recommendations for the
ABA workshop in New York next week.
Bob