Released records show the Postal Service monitored protests on social media with few rules, and lost emails about it
EFF links the actual bulletins and emails it won through a lawsuit, so you can read them yourself.
Records released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other requesters under the Freedom of Information Act show the US Postal Service's internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored social media posts about protests in 2020 and 2021, with little record of oversight or legal justification, EFF says. Bulletins covered events across the political spectrum, including a planned "Million MAGA March," a Virginia gun-rights rally and counter-protest, a Save the Post Office protest and protests outside then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's home.
EFF sued in 2021 after Yahoo News revealed the program. The agency says it renamed the program and stopped issuing bulletins, but EFF notes the records don't say the monitoring stopped. Emails about the program were kept on an external hard drive that, officials said, someone dropped, making it unreadable; the originals had already been deleted under the retention schedule. Few documents on internal safeguards were released.
Across the spectrum 2
Libertarian
In a July 2021 Reason feature, Elizabeth Nolan Brown described iCOP as the Postal Service's "side hustle in online snooping," noting postal inspectors used fake online identities and Clearview AI facial recognition, and that sharing iCOP reports through fusion centers "could allow federal agencies to receive information they are not allowed by statute to collect themselves."
Reason ↗Republican
In an April 22, 2021 letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan and 30 other Republicans wrote that, if the reporting was accurate, iCOP "raises serious questions about the federal government's ongoing surveillance of and encroachment upon Americans' private lives and discourse," and that it was unclear why USPS was "taking on the role of intelligence collection."
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ↗-
United States Postal Inspection Service
After exploring Postal Service Surveilled Protest Activities Online With Little Rules, Oversight | Electronic Frontier Foundation, the agency's law enforcement arm is profiled in United States Postal Inspection Service.
The Postal Inspection Service is the federal law enforcement arm of the US Postal Service, enforcing laws that protect the mail system.
Wikipedia · Wade · 5 min
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