US Postal Service running secret program that tracks people's social media and flags government agencies: Report

[Muda69]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/usps-spying-social-media-posts-reporting-to-government

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The United States Postal Service is apparently tracking social media posts as part of a clandestine program searching for “inflammatory” messages.

The program, known as the Internet Covert Operations Program, or iCOP, has not previously been made public and involves analysts combing through social media sites looking for “inflammatory” postings and then sharing those posts with government agencies, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

ICOP specifically tracks protests across the country. A March 16 government bulletin obtained by Yahoo, marked as “law enforcement sensitive,” showed that “analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021.”

“Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts,” the bulletin read.

A nationwide protest dubbed the World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy was set to take place on March 20 and was intended to signify displeasure with a variety of issues, including coronavirus lockdowns.

“Parler users have commented about their intent to use the rallies to engage in violence,” the bulletin explained. “Image 3 on the right is a screenshot from Parler indicating two users discussing the event as an opportunity to engage in a ‘fight’ and to ‘do serious damage.’”

The bulletin concluded that “no intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats.”

t also contains screenshots about the protests and includes specific names of individuals, such as a member of the Proud Boys, a controversial fraternal organization.

“iCOP analysts are currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats stemming from the scheduled protests and will disseminate intelligence updates as needed,” the bulletin read.

The USPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner, but it provided a general statement to Yahoo News about the authority it has to monitor the social media presence of U.S. citizens.

“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the primary law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service,” the statement read. “As such, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has federal law enforcement officers, Postal Inspectors, who enforce approximately 200 federal laws to achieve the agency’s mission: protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation's mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.”

So is this how the USPS finally turns a profit?

 

[Muda69]

Postal Censorship and Surveillance: A Timeline

https://reason.com/2021/07/15/postal-censorship-and-surveillance-a-timeline/

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1775

A year before independence, the Continental Congress creates the Postal Service—not as a government agency, but as one of several new independent alternatives to the British postal system. One advantage: This allows American dissidents to communicate without the authorities intercepting their letters.

1835

Southern mobs seize and burn abolitionist material sent through the mail. The postmaster general refuses to intervene, establishing a de facto policy of permitting the censorship of such literature in the slave states.

1844

The libertarian abolitionist Lysander Spooner establishes the private American Letter Mail Co. The government reacts by outlawing it, and in 1851 the experiment ends.

1861

The Civil War begins, and both the Union and the Confederacy adopt their own forms of postal censorship. The postmaster general spends a year refusing to deliver papers deemed disloyal to the Union cause.

1873

The Comstock Act makes it illegal to knowingly mail or receive any "filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character," as well as any contraceptives, any abortifacients, or any information about acquiring or using contraceptives or abortifacients.

1878

The Supreme Court upholds the government's right to bar "circulars concerning lotteries" from the mail—and, provided it has a warrant, to open and inspect packages to find such material.

1887

Police arrest the libertarian journalists Moses Harman, Edwin C. Walker, and George Harman for publishing and mailing a feminist argument against marital rape. The author's description of such an assault is deemed obscene under the Comstock Act.

1917

After the U.S. enters World War I, the Wilson administration cracks down on anti-war and anti-draft literature. In the case of the anarchist magazine Mother Earth, the government doesn't just bar the material from the mail—it arrests editor Emma Goldman for "conspiracy to induce persons not to register" for the draft, imprisons her, and eventually deports her.

1944

The government intercepts the international correspondence of tax resister Vivien Kellems—a prominent critic of the Roosevelt administration—and leaks it to columnist Drew Pearson and Rep. John M. Coffee (D–Wash.). Coffee quotes from it on the House floor while accusing Kellems of subversion.

1953

The CIA starts reading correspondence between people in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The covert program quickly extends to a much larger watchlist, with the agency illegally opening more than 13,000 letters a year until the operation ends in 1973.

1970

As part of its campaign against the underground press, the FBI considers a scheme to spray copies of The Black Panther with a chemical called Skatole before the issues are shipped to distributors, thus giving them "a most offensive odor." The bureau drops that particular plan but finds other ways to harass alternative papers using the mails.

2001

In the wake of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, the government creates the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking system to collect the information on the exterior of virtually everything mailed in the United States. One cybersecurity specialist later sums up the program for The New York Times: "Let's record everyone's mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with."