This article clearly illustrates how mainstream media is not paying attention to issues important to the American people.
The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
Where was the media when this report came out in June 2014-not May. The audit is DATED May 28, 2014, it was modified June 12, 2014. PostalReporter posted excerpts of this report on June 13, 2014.
Here are two articles from Lawfare:
Will Anyone Care About the Postal Service’s Metadata Program
A Follow Up on the Postal Service Metadata Program
This story kind of proves that my instinct in the previous post was right. The Postal Service is doing something very similar to what the NSA is doing. The activity was reported publicly around the same time. It has significantly less political, legal, internal controls; it has less transparency these days. Yet unlike the NSA program, which generated feverish attention, Postal Service monitoring of snail mail metadata did not. I suspect it won’t this time either.
Anyway, according to the New York Times via Dallas Morning News,
Extensive USPS mail monitoring revealed
WASHINGTON — In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.
The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax.
The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an important role in the nation’s vast surveillance effort since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization.
Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps.
The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox’s personal and business mail.
Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The sheriff’s office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide concessions at the local airport.
“We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the investigation into our business scared people away from our restaurants,” Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. “I don’t blame the Postal Service, but you shouldn’t be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control.”
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
Read more: New York Times (July 3, 2013
The USPS has always done some cooperating with law enforcement, particularly in the area of child support and verification of people living or not at an address of interest. Most of the time a person with a law enforcement body on their trail is gone, having mastered the art of moving every couple to months from one run down apartment or flat to another, never leaving change of addresses, but harassing mailpersons when their SSI checks don’t show up on time because of bad addresses.
However, the kind of surveillance suggested here is far above the pay grade of the USPS and it is getting involved in touchy areas of law, especially monitoring mail without probable cause. Spying on mail just because somebody is critical of that crazy Arizona sheriff should be a federal offense, regardless of whether the sheriff wants it or not. This activity must be stopped.
Furthermore, I believe the USPS looks at this web site and other postal sites, like union branches for example, and makes records of those conversations. They may even be using spyware, and trying to identify those who post opinions for harassment. Given how they’re fearless in breaking the law every other way, only a naive fool would believe they wouldn’t stoop to this behavior.
Never use your real name on this web site or any other, and change the user name often. The USPS has proven they think they can be NSA snitches now, too. Never trust management within the Service with any sensitive information unless you want it to be public knowledge immediately.
Once again, postal mgmt. is busted for not following the rules, etc.
Of course, as usual with them, there will be no accountability.