U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Together, the two programs show that snail mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.

While it is understandable why this guy might have been covered, I guess this goes much further than even I realized.



Apparently, pretty much any agency can request these covers:

"...you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.”

For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests.

The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public.

Interesting to say the least.

The wonders of synchronicity!
Just yesterday I spoke out to a friend for the very first time about that very topic.

I worked for the US Post Officer (later the Postal Service) from Oct. '59 until Aug. of '74. I was there when the zip codes were introduced to "mechanize" the handling of mail. Few know and fewer still were there in those days when the machines started reading your address (to and from) and even could direct specific letters into special areas for further inspection which including examining the contents via various means without opening the letter.

No body cares much or took the "threat" seriously.

Will the herd care when TPTB want to slip nanochips into you?
...Not enough to get it stopped. Because the eligibility for Obamacare will probably depend upon it.

Existing thread , here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Please add further comments to the ongoing discussion.

Thank you.





-closed-