Postal Service Tops in Trust Ratings

In an annual survey conducted by a think tank devoted to assessing privacy issues, the U.S. Postal Service is rated by Americans as the most trusted government agency -- for the fourth year in a row.

In the Ponemon Institute report, which assessed 74 federal agencies, the Postal Service earned a "privacy trust score" of 86 percent, up from 83 percent last year. The other top trusted agencies were the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, the Census Bureau and the National Institutes of Health.

The least trusted agencies were U.S. Customs and Border Protection (with a score of only 20 percent), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That's not a surprising list, given the hot-button nature of immigration issues, recent scandals at Justice and the super-secret mission of spy agencies.