Winnie Hong sorting packages before Christmas last year in San Francisco. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The US
Postal Service Is Spying On Us
By John Kiriakou, Reader
Supported News
30 November 15
The
U.S. Postal Service is spying on us. And they’re not doing a very good job at
it. I’m not talking about peeking into letters or looking at how many mutual
fund statements you receive. I’m talking about the systematic collection of
information on every single piece of mail you send or receive, including the
names and addresses of the sender and recipient, without a warrant or oversight
and without any explanation to the person being targeted.
Indeed,
the USPS Inspector General has even issued a report saying
that the Postal Service “failed to properly safeguard documents that included
the names, addresses, and financial information used by its law enforcement arm
to monitor the mail of people suspected of criminal activities or for national
security purposes.” The USPS “mail cover surveillance program” is poorly run,
poorly managed, and could “reveal personally identifiable information and compromise
the security of the mail,” the report said.
What
makes this program particularly dangerous is that there is no judicial
oversight, no appeals process, and no way of knowing why any one person is
under surveillance or when the surveillance began or will end. I know. I’m
under Postal Service surveillance.
I
served 23 months in prison for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture
program. After having been locked up for two months, I decided to commission a
card from a very artistically-inclined prisoner for my wife’s 40th birthday. I
sent it about two weeks before her birthday. She never received it. Finally,
about four months later, the card was delivered back to me with a yellow
“Return to Sender – Address Not Known” sticker on it. But underneath that
sticker was a second yellow sticker. That one read, “Do Not Deliver. Hold For
Supervisor. Cover Program.”
Why
was I under Postal Service Surveillance? I have no idea. I had had my day in
court. The case was over. But remember, the Postal Service doesn’t have to
answer to anybody – my attorneys, my judge, even its own Inspector General. It
doesn’t need a warrant to spy on me (or my family) and it doesn’t have to
answer even to a member of Congress who might inquire as to why the spying was
happening in the first place.
The
problem is not just the sinister nature of a government agency (or
quasi-government agency) spying on individuals with no probable cause or due
process, although those are serious problems. It’s that the program is handled so poorly and
so haphazardly that in some cases surveillance was initiated against
individuals for no apparent law enforcement reason and that surveillance was
initiated by Postal Service employees not even authorized to do so. Again,
there is no recourse because the people under surveillance don’t even know that
any of this is happening.
Perhaps
an even more disturbing aspect of the program is the fact that between 2000 and
2012, the Postal Service initiated an average of 8,000 mail cover requests per
year. But in 2013, that number jumped to 49,000. Why?
Nobody knows. And remember, the Postal Service doesn’t have to answer to
anybody.
So
where does all this surveillance information end up? Much of it remains with
the Postal Service, which is always looking for people illegally sending things
(drugs, weapons, etc.) through the mail. A lot of it also goes to the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
But
between 2011 and 2013, 800 “Special Mail Cover” operations were approved. These
dealt with “national security.” Again, because there is no judicial or
Congressional oversight, we don’t really know what this means. Does the
information go to the FBI? The CIA? The Department of Homeland Security? Who
knows? Is it used to target political opponents of the administration? Is it
used to build cases against civil liberties activists? There aren’t any
answers.
The
civil libertarian Reason Foundation wrote in early November that
the system already is being grossly abused. The notorious Arizona sheriff Joe
Arpaio and an Arizona prosecutorused mail cover surveillance against
a politician who criticized them. And a former FBI agent said the mail cover
program is “So easy to use. You don’t have to go through a judge. You just fill
out a form.”
With
that said, there’s at least some oversight. Federal prosecutors a few years
ago charged a letter carrier with a felony for
tipping off a customer on her route that he was under Postal Service
surveillance. There’s justice for you.
John
Kiriakou is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a
former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Reader
Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to
republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported
News.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment