Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans' mail, records show [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Mon Jun 24, 2024, 11:51 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: Washington Post

WP EXCLUSIVE
Law enforcement is spying on thousands of Americans' mail, records show

The Postal Service approves thousands of requests every year from police officers and federal agents seeking information from Americans' letters and packages.

By Drew Harwell
June 24, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans' letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order.

Postal inspectors say they fulfill such requests only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade's worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.

Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved, according to the data. Postal inspectors recorded more than 312,000 letters and packages between 2015 and 2023, the records show.

The surveillance technique, known as the mail covers program, has long been used by postal inspectors to help track down suspects or evidence. The practice is legal, and the inspectors said they share only what they can see on the outside of the mail; the Fourth Amendment requires them to get a warrant to peek inside.

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By Drew Harwell
Drew Harwell is a reporter for The Washington Post covering technology. He was a member of an international reporting team that won a George Polk Award in 2021. Twitter https://twitter.com/drewharwell

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/24/post-office-mail-surveillance-law-enforcement/

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I hope they like looking at utility bills.