Bombshell from
NYT just up, on Postal Service, it turns out, taking photos of every piece of mail it handles, some 160 billion pieces a year, since the anthrax attacks of oh so long. And yes, they do target individuals, too. A former FBI agent warns: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have
to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a
form.”
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.
More:
The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose
Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, was awarded nearly $1 million by a
federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known
for his immigration
raids in Arizona, who, among other things, obtained mail covers from
the Postal Service to track her mail. The judge called the investigation
into Ms. Wilcox politically motivated because she had been a frequent
critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of
Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. The case is being appealed.
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