Slashdot Mirror
US Post Office Increases Secret Tracking of Mail
HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports in the NY Times that the United States Postal Service says it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations, in many cases without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization. In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests. The surveillance program, officially called mail covers, is more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful investigative tool. The Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000 requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an average of some 8,000 requests a year — far fewer than the nearly 50,000 requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit (PDF).
In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. Wilcox sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Andrew Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. "I don't blame the Postal Service," says Wilcox, "but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. Wilcox sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Andrew Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. "I don't blame the Postal Service," says Wilcox, "but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
Tuddy (Frank DiLeo): "You know this kid?" Mailman: "Yeah." Tuddy: "You know where he lives?" Mailman: "Yeah." Tuddy: "You deliver mail to his house?" Mailman: "Yeah." Tuddy: "Well, from now on, any letter from that school to that kid's house comes directly here. You understand?" Mailman: "Yeah." Tuddy: "Another letter from that school goes to that kid's house, in the bleeping oven you're gonna go, head first." Henry: "That was it. No more letters from truant officers. No more letters from school. In fact, no more letters from anybody. Finally after a couple of weeks, my mother went to the post office and complain."
If a large portion of these requests are due to Tor marketplace activity.
The first class mail delivery has to be opened to the competition, the USPS has a monopoly on it, if you don't want to be tracked you may want to choose a competitor who will not provide your data to the government that way. Of-course USPS is government, so this story is a bit strange. The government postal service is tracking your mail... you better hope it does, otherwise how can it deliver it?
You can't handle the truth.
Wilcox sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011
I assume it came out of the salaries of the officials responsible for the mail tracking?
We listed the government agencies that do not spy on us in illegal, unconstitutional, and downright wrong ways...
Peter.
Next week's your big chance. Use it or lose it... All these "scandals" have been coming fast &furious. Let's see if it means anything. Clean the House, if you want it to. If not, I got a bucket of tomatoes just waiting for the first complainers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Seems like Joe Arpaio is the J Edgar Hoover of Arizona. What a piece of work that guy is.
It's like Wikileaks never happened. Despite the public outrage, despite the revelation that the spying achieved nothing the politicians (so far in Australia and now Canada) have responded with even more spying, plus legal oversight to crush future whistle blowers. Undermining our commercial systems whilst imposing the presumption of guilt on our citizens whilst authorities everywhere say "Papers please".
This is what our tax dollars are paying for.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
.. means it is ok and will continue forever. .
It all started with George Washington and that damned Cumberland Highway. If he hadn't set a precedent of using money from outside of the actual area where the highway was built, the government wouldn't have gotten in the way of free enterprise which would have certainly built a toll road there. Redistribution of wealth by the government has happened ever since and I lay this precedent firmly at the feet of our first president!!!
The former County Lawyer has been disbarred.
That jackass is financial road kill.
There is no insurance for this kind of judgement. The county is on the hook. They are worse than broke, since this judgement spans bankruptcy.
That county is dead. The residence of the county are legally responsible for the debt.
Their home values are in the dumpster, and paying for the privilege.
Nice to see the legal system work.
I'm not being sarcastic, the people that have the most to loose are paying, as it should be, for a change.
will anyone learn?
My dad retired 10 years ago from the USPS. Having grown up listening to the stories of what the people and management were like there, I find any conspiracy theories with USPS being involved (on any level) questionable at best! I'm sure anyone who has ever worked for the government (local/state/federal) would agree. Both the workers and management are either too lazy or too incompetent to tie their shoes.
This story illustrates the reason why when I send mail, I don't put any names or addresses on the envelope.
You know what else? I'll bet UPS and FedEx are tracking letters and packages too! In fact, the last time I sent something, they accidentally printed the tracking number right on my receipt. They must really think I'm stupid, but I'm not. I'm smart.
You are welcome on my lawn.
With his basic contempt for his fellow Americans and blatant disregard for the Constitution, it is incredible that Maricopa County keeps re-electing Joe Arpaio. It's unsurprising he would try to intercept the mail of his critics.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
That's all? Compared to the typical panopticon it sounds almost reasonable. Except for the abuses of course.
300 000 000 000 / 50 000 is sort of the ratio you might be able to say is legitimate investigative activity levels.
Wish the NSA was at that level.
You vote for whatever keeps balance. Like you say, both a and b are bad - so if you keep things even then neither side can implement the full extent of their evil plans.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Where do they get these settlement figures? Is this for pain and suffering?
...you want to do this process from a comfy chair.
"whenever a package for Mr. Jeffrey Smith is being shipped,open it. If contains information technology, notify Mr Donovan of Special Technology Modification Services. He is going to check the stuff for contraband and modify it so that it suits National Security Needs".
Sure. It is the People's fault if they do not roll over and present the belly to the wolves of FtMeade.
He is just a False Flag Agent Provocateur. Paid by the criminals who run the show.
The modus operandi apparently was: "break the law for us and get some nice, 70% profit contracts from NSA in return".
Qwest cannot "stand their ground" and get the NSA bribe at the same time. At least according to my moral system.
I once personally tried to sell something to our military, but I have given up this idea, because they are in bed with the U.S. war criminals. Better eat smaller pies and have a proper conscience. There is plenty of business with moderately corrupt people out there. No need to work with the Big Time Criminals like Blair, Bush and Merkel.
So we have electronic mass surveillance and now they're actively reading our mail for political purposes. This is exactly the same thing that the KGB was doing to Soviet citizens in the 80s and they've been demonized for it (and rightfully so). But if our government does it, it's ok then? It's wrong in both scenarios.
About a month ago I had a small incident. I was waiting for my drivers license for about a month and after contacting the states DMV they said it should only be a few days, a week at the most. Finally I received it, with a big stamp saying 'X-rayed DOJ' followed by a date that I assumed was the day it was xrayed. Also my license should have been white with the usual holographs and what not was a darkish brown color, almost the same color of cardboard with the holographs barely readable. I laughed about it because I don't do anything illegal but it made me wonder.
Arpaio is a big, fat windbag who whores on any issue that gets press, purely for the purpose of getting press/scoring points with voters. He's not a particularly good sheriff or, when you analyze the numbers, effective. However, he creates the perception of effectiveness, which is often more important.
Wilcox is a politician who has used her connections to get food concessions at the airport for her family business, demolished a historical building without any kind of permit, and has a superiority complex so large she wouldn't let lower level employees use the bathroom on her floor (top floor of the building) when theirs (on the floor below) was under construction. There are a large number of people who wouldn't have minded seeing the nutbag who tried to shoot her a while back succeed. When she leeched an extra $1M out of the county while county/city employees were getting pay cuts didn't endear her to people either.
Bottom line: using either of these as examples in this story is lazy journalism. Go find some real victim, not a professional leech.
Just don't put a return address on anything. I haven't done it for several decades because of the Mail Covers program.
When 9/11 hit - the USPS started demanding return addresses (as if that'd help stop terrorism). I gave them one
1060 W. Addison, Chicago, IL 60607
1060 is Wrigley Field, no idea if the zip is right or not. GIGO
There are plenty of third party canidates, everytime I go vote, there is no shortage.
I also don't hear any of the juevinile whining, and third grade antics out of any of them either.
Good grief, have you ever even been to the Constitution Party's web site? They're on the ballots here fairly often, and they're all bat-shit insane. The Libertarian Party, probably the most significant minor party, has a few good ideas and a bunch of bad ones, not unlike some tasty sprinkles on a turd cake. The other minor parties have either one or two redeeming ideas (from my own perspective) at best, or have absolutely no chance of gaining any traction - the Communist Party will never get anywhere in US politics solely due to its name. I consider nearly all of them to be even worse than the big two, which is quite a low bar to slink under. I used to hold out some hope for the New Whig Party, but it seems to be going nowhere.
George Washington had the right idea about political parties, but there's no constitutionally valid way to outlaw them (short of a potentially very dangerous amendment). I think the only hope now is to convince my fellow citizens to eschew all political parties, and vote for independents wherever possible, as long as that candidate isn't horribly worse than the partied candidates. If we can grow that movement over the next half century or so and eventually strangle the political parties through lack of resources, volunteers, and ultimately votes, then we might have a chance at a truly representative government.
- T