Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The USPS Is Watching You

"The Postal Service is running a 'covert operations program' that monitors Americans' social media posts"

[C]ivil liberties experts expressed alarm at the post office's surveillance program. "It's a mystery," said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. "I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues." ...

[Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice's liberty and national security program] also questioned the legal authority of the Postal Service to monitor social media activity. "If the individuals they're monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI," she said. "If they're simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it's odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns."