The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts

Pretty much any federal agency you have heard of has an investigative dept that employs federal special agents. These are law enforcement roles with the same training, authority, and responsibilities as investigative agents in the FBI, etc.<p>They were created to meet the specific law enforcement needs of each agency. Dept of Education agents investigate misuse of Dept of Education funds, for example. The Postal Inspectors investigate illegal use of, or threats to, the mail system.<p>After 9&#x2F;11 a lot of these depts got new infusions of resources, and instructions to do a lot more information sharing. There was a feeling that the attacks of 9&#x2F;11 could have been prevented if existing disparate info had been better collected and collated.<p>So it’s not that surprising that these agencies will seem to stray out of their lanes. If Postal is monitoring broadly for threats against their systems, but sees other concerning info, they are supposed to share it.<p>This is all intended to be explanatory; I’m not saying that it’s how things should be.<p>I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that people intended to be privately communicated to other people.

Lots of sentiment today that the USPS is way out of its zone of expertise in doing this -- and that is possible.<p>But it&#x27;s worth noting that the USPS has had its own legion of postal inspectors going back to the 19th century, when they were a (comparatively) huge part of the U.S. government, and the FBI, etc. did not exist.<p>Some 1,200 postal inspectors are still around, and they play important roles on federal prosecutions related to mail fraud, drug shipments, etc. There&#x27;s a good Wikipedia entry on it all: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_Postal_Inspection_Service" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_Postal_Inspectio...</a>

This is a tough issue for a government. We do have crazies out there and we do need to investigate potential dangerous groups and individuals and reel them in before they do something crazy.<p>On my FB feed I have seen friends and friends of friends call for armed revolt many times over the past few years. Most all of them are blowing steam and many are in their 60s or older and couldn&#x27;t run a block in gym shorts, and much less if they were carrying any kind of real military gear, but they like to think they can. We all grew up with &quot;Rambo&quot; movies.<p>But some of those who&#x27;s comments I&#x27;ve seen I don&#x27;t know at all.<p>The ordeal at our Capital proves there&#x27;s a problem that needs to be monitored. Most of those who went there were not armed or dangerous, but there were enough kooks to cause some real damage and lives were lost. And last year we had the guy who blew himself and his motorhome up on a Downtown street.<p>If we had another &quot;Timothy McVeigh&quot; event people would be howling, and if we had several they&#x27;d be freaking out and demanding something be done.<p>We all have good reason to be wary of &quot;Big Brother&quot; type surveillance but we also have to acknowledge that we have a problem with people getting crazy and shooting into crowds and blowing things up.<p>There&#x27;s not always a good solution to a shitty situation.

I work in cyber security ML engineering (open for interviews, hmu) and frequently see federal contractor firms hiring for cyber data&#x2F;engineer positions for USPS. Always puzzled me.<p>example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobs.rtx.com&#x2F;job&#x2F;-&#x2F;-&#x2F;4679&#x2F;4267185376?codes=INDEED" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jobs.rtx.com&#x2F;job&#x2F;-&#x2F;-&#x2F;4679&#x2F;4267185376?codes=INDEED</a>

I feel like the key sentence in this article (edit: which is ironically no longer verbatim in this article, which I see hours later has been heavily expanded) which purports to answer the &quot;but... why the USPS?&quot;--is: &gt; The agency told Yahoo News the Inspection Service collaborates with law-enforcement agencies to identify and assess threats to the Postal Service and its &quot;overall mail processing and transportation network.

I&#x27;m surprised by the comments here. People seem clueless to real threats the USPS faces and are puzzled why they have inspectors.<p>Last year or maybe it was 2019 a delivery worker was murdered. Agg robberies of delivery workers has been going up. Breaking into mail boxes and mail theft has been going up. Using mail service to conduct fraud and other criminal transactions is going up. I&#x27;m on mobile so it&#x27;s hard to get the links but just google it, not hard to find.

It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and packages not investigate material on the internet.

It is not the USPS running this operation. It is the US postal inspection service, which is a legitimate law enforcement agency that mostly oversees crimes related to mail, but has long handled investigations into other types of crime including cybercrime, identity theft, and child exploitation. The title would make it seem like mail carriers are spending time looking at our social media accounts in the back of the local post office.

One thing I haven&#x27;t really seen discussed (or maybe I&#x27;m just blind) is the fact that the USPS <i>isn&#x27;t</i> a government organization quite like the others. It&#x27;s supposed to be a more-private entity that competes in a market.<p>Feels weird to give them law enforcement powers while still putting them up against private industry as competition, couldn&#x27;t they just arrest all the UPS workers or something (gross oversimplification but still)?

&gt; The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings<p>What exactly constitutes &quot;monitoring&quot;? This sounds like some agents spent a few hours using Twitter&#x27;s built in search to look for certain keywords...

Oh so this is why they were so concerned about the post office funding in 2020.

I read that in the 60s to the 80s, a lot of civil unrest was taking place and there were so many “protest” bombings (whatever that means) that it became a almost normal in some cities (according to articles I found). This might have been a precaution against something like that, considering the current political climate in the USA?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;4501670&#x2F;bombings-of-america-burrough&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;4501670&#x2F;bombings-of-america-burrough&#x2F;</a><p>Edited to add a reference and correct a detail

Even the mail man is glowing now.

&gt; The postmaster general is the second-highest paid U.S. government official, &gt; based on publicly available salary information, after the President of the &gt; United States.[13]<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_Postmaster_General" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_Postmaster_Gener...</a><p>PmG is a very powerful position.

Given the weird arrest of General Flynn by USPS and then the weird ensuing court case, this is not really surprising.

Crossing the streams, the USPIS are a Cellebrite customer:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uspis.gov&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;FY-2019-annual-report-508-web.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uspis.gov&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;FY-2019-ann...</a> (p. 35)

Still think anonymous communications platforms like Freenet, I2P and Tor are just for conspiracy theorists?

Were the 2001 &quot;Amerithrax&quot; letters the justification for this program? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2001_anthrax_attacks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2001_anthrax_attacks</a>

Oh is that why so many people I don&#x27;t know with no mutuals add me on Facebook? They&#x27;re going to have to impersonate someone I know for that to work.

Heh and here I was worried about my weed shipments from California. Would iCop be the same organization that enforces that kind of thing?

Do others also find it strange that the postal service has their own police force?

The things that troubles me the most is abysmal record when it comes to delivery (pun intended) of fundamental services, e.g. interruptions in delivery of mail for weeks, then only partial delivery, critical documents lost, medication lost, credit cards &quot;lost&quot;, etc., etc.

Hah, remember this story? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;1e42c1a6fd324f5784c414fcd2adbd17" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;1e42c1a6fd324f5784c414fcd2adbd17</a><p>&gt; The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of most of the guns, including two found at the scene where a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was fatally shot in the Arizona desert. The operation sparked a political backlash against the Obama administration.<p>&gt; Attkisson left CBS in 2014 and is now the host of “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson,” a weekly Sunday news program broadcast by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.<p>&gt; In her lawsuit, Attkisson says that two computer forensics teams identified an unauthorized communications channel opened into her laptop was connected to an IP address belonging to the U.S. Postal Service, “indicating unauthorized surveillance.”<p>&gt; Government lawyers argue that Attkisson’s lawsuit does not include any evidence that Holder and Donahoe had direct involvement in spying on her.<p>&gt; “At best, plaintiffs’ complaint suggests a mere possibility that Holder and Donahoe could have participated in developing or enforcing policies concerning electronic surveillance generally; there are no allegations that they conducted or ordered the particular incursions about which plaintiffs complain,” Justice Department lawyers argue in a legal brief filed in the 4th Circuit.<p>The Obama administration used USPS to spy on journalists investigating Fast and Furious. It sounded ridiculous at the time -- &quot;The USPS is spying on journalists, and not the NSA, and not the FBI, and not the CIA? Suuure.&quot;<p>Not so ridiculous anymore.<p>I&#x27;m tired of being angry about this, I&#x27;ve been asking for change for most of my adult life. Our constitution isn&#x27;t worth anything anymore. The federal government needs to shrink. Asking nicely to not be spied on does not work.<p>On a more silly note, this whole scenario reminds me of this Seinfeld clip. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;On3cQ0sPvSY?t=46" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;On3cQ0sPvSY?t=46</a>

This is a truly bizarre story. I agree with others that other government agencies should run this particularly given USPS already well known financial challenges.

I&#x27;m not surprised

I&#x27;m surprised no one&#x27;s mentioned GDPR, or similar extra-territorial laws.

This is a power grab by the USPS to inject themselves into the industrial surveillance complex.<p>It most likely tries to tie a social media profile to a physical address and provides a pen register of all the mail sent and received by that citizen along with a collection of the &quot;inflammatory opinions&quot;.<p>It is unconstitutional and folks at the USPS and organizations they shared the data with should go to jail.

News flash: people read things that you make public on the Web.

Weird, and scary.<p>But maybe I can kind of see it. Here&#x27;s a protest. Let&#x27;s say it&#x27;s Proud Boys, and Antifa shows up. And here&#x27;s a mail carrier out trying to deliver the mail, who drives (or worse, walks) right into the middle of it. The Post Office might have a legitimate reason for wanting to know, so they can keep their on-duty employees from harm.<p>Is that what&#x27;s going on? Is that <i>all</i> that&#x27;s going on? I don&#x27;t know.

USPS is the new DEA

&gt; <i>“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,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “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.”</i><p>&gt; <i>A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to 5G. “Parler users have commented about their intent to use the rallies to engage in violence. 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,’” says the bulletin.</i><p>&gt; <i>“No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats,” it adds.</i><p>Oh, that doesn&#x27;t seem like an asymmetric allocation of resources at all. It&#x27;s totally not trivially exploitable like the ticket presales in Tulsa or anything.<p>This &quot;we have to respond to all potential threats, no matter how trivial&quot; doctrine is a ridiculous waste of time and resources even in the best case. In the worst case, it overcommits to an impossible task.<p>I think it&#x27;s reasonable to rate their competence level at &quot;the cybers&quot; around the same level as their ability to keep a &quot;covert&quot; operation off of Yahoo News.

I bet FedEx could operate a domestic intelligence agency for like a quarter of their budget.

<i>The USPS is running a &#x27;covert&#x27; program to monitor Americans&#x27; social media posts</i><p>Of course it is. Why wouldn&#x27;t it? Crazy people put all kinds of crazy things in the mail. Have we so quickly forgotten the Unabomber? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ted_Kaczynski" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ted_Kaczynski</a><p>The next time anthrax or ricin shows up in a politician&#x27;s mailbox, the same people gritting their teeth about this will bark about why more wasn&#x27;t done to detect and prevent it.

Everyone has their tin foil hat with stuff on like this, but unless they are paying a 100 - 1000 engineers 250k-500k a year, I doubt theyve built anything useful with uptime. Maybe they could just scan a massive dataset of everyones posts, with some string searching, but still. I just dont see any entity like this being able to accomplish this task effectively.