Document
Reveals USPS Is Monitoring Social Media Posts
By Jake Johnson, staff writer
for Common
Dreams
 |
| Trump-appointed hold-over Postmaster Louis DeJoy is doing all he can to undermine public confidence in the Postal Service. |
The sensitive bulletin concerns the
U.S. Postal Inspection Service's (USPIS) recent surveillance of Facebook,
Parler, and Telegram posts related to the March 20 World Wide Rally for Freedom
and Democracy, anti-coronavirus lockdown and anti-vaccine demonstrations organized
by far-right groups.
"The federal government's
sprawling and clandestine surveillance apparatus manifests in a new
way," tweeted progressive activist Jordan
Uhl. "These breaches of civil liberties largely go unchecked because,
again, it targets right-wingers on Parler, but ultimately threaten everyone in
the long run."
Jana Winter of Yahoo News reported that the USPIS surveillance
effort "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."
Winter wrote on Twitter that
USPIS would not answer questions about when
the social media monitoring program began.
"Footnotes in the bulletin citing their authority say the attorney general can give more powers to the postmaster general," Winter noted, "but [the Justice Department] wouldn't tell me when that was either."
The current postmaster general is
Louis DeJoy, a GOP megadonor who remains under fire for implementing
operational changes that dramatically slowed mail delivery across
the country.
USPIS broadly describes its mission as enforcing "federal statutes related to crimes that involve the postal system, its employees, and its customers" and includes in its scope a range of illegal activities, from mail fraud to child exploitation.
As Common Dreams previously reported, advocacy organizations
have grown increasingly worried in recent years about the expanding reach of
the Postal Service's sprawling mail monitoring program.
In a statement to Yahoo
News on Wednesday, the agency said that "in order to preserve
operational effectiveness, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service does not discuss
its protocols, investigative methods, or tools."
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy
director of the Brennan Center for Justice's liberty and national security
program, said USPIS surveillance of social media posts "seems a little
bizarre."
"Based on the very minimal information that's available online, it appears that [iCOP] is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn't seem to encompass what's going on here," Levinson-Waldman told Yahoo News.
"It's not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of
social media that's unrelated to use of the postal system."
Levinson-Waldman went on to note
that "if the individuals they're monitoring are carrying out or planning
criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI."
"If they're simply engaging in
lawfully protected speech, even if it's odious or objectionable," she
added, "then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional
concerns."
Other civil liberties advocates were
similarly baffled—and unnerved—by the covert USPIS program.
"Why is the Postal Service
conducting widespread monitoring of social media? This is the kind of
surveillance sprawl that is happening across government agencies," said Hugh Handeyside, a senior staff
attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the
Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, asked, "Seriously, what is going on
here? What possible justification could there be for USPS running this kind of
social-media surveillance program?"
