Regarding spying on Americans, the Postal Service may have the Central Intelligence Agency beat.
A recent report by The Washington Post confirms that, once again, America’s mail carrier has no qualms about cooperating with law enforcement agencies to snoop on citizens sending letters and packages through the postal system.
According to the Post, “A decade’s worth of records … show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers” to hand over personal information gleaned from the outside of envelopes and parcels. An astounding 97 percent of these extra-judicial requests were fulfilled, and postal inspectors “recorded more than 312,000 letters and packages between 2015 and 2023.”
Instead of illegally spying on the American people, the Postal Service must get its act together and rebuild trust with taxpayers and consumers.
The service has a troubling history of invading Americans’ privacy. These extracurricular escapades were first revealed in 2021 when Yahoo! News reported that the service runs an investigation unit known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP; since renamed the “Analytics Team”) that “involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.”
According to recent watchdog reporting, the scope of surveillance is even more significant than previously reported. A Postal Service inspector general report finds that the agency has 10,000 pieces of law enforcement surveillance equipment valued at more than $65 million. This equipment “typically records sensitive data such as location, voice, phone numbers, and call log details.”
Ironically, the agency cannot be trusted to keep track of the surveillance equipment it is using to spy on Americans. The inspector general identified “134 of 404 (33 percent) pieces of electronic surveillance equipment and 464 of 1,238 (37 percent) pieces of technical surveillance equipment that … were either recorded with errors or were not recorded in the inventory management system.” Further, policies and procedures around equipment use have not been updated, increasing the risk that employees will abuse surveillance resources.
When the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the service for more information, the agency responded with a slew of redactions. Clearly, it wants to keep its spying apparatus shielded from public view.
Unfortunately, the service has shown no sign of giving up on its snooping and surveillance “investments” despite scrutiny from watchdogs and lawmakers. In 2022, NBC News reported that the service is facing legal scrutiny for “seizing shipments of Black Lives Matter masks intended to protect demonstrators from Covid-19 during protests after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.” These (and other items) were seized because of the external physical characteristics of the parcels, leading to the possibility that agency employees will jump the gun and open packages based on the mere suspicion of counterfeit postage. That’s a lot of power in the hands of an agency with a track record of disregarding Americans’ privacy and political beliefs.
The Postal Service should focus its law enforcement spending on fighting mail theft instead of spying on law-abiding citizens. For example, postal police officers can and should be deployed to protect mail carriers on their routes and safeguard collection boxes.
Members of Congress have already pressed postal leadership on this issue, but the result has been less than encouraging. During a May 2023 House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy whether the service has “continued to prevent postal police officers from doing their jobs … by traveling to wherever the problem is taking place?”
DeJoy responded, baselessly, that he doesn’t have the authority to deploy the 700-strong police force to high-crime areas because of laws on the books.
The proper application of law enforcement resources can go a long way toward rebuilding trust with the public. The Postal Service needs to stop pretending it is the CIA and start delivering for consumers and taxpayers.