"Thank you for coming to my NEWMAN talk."
Posted on 04/01/2022 5:41:32 AM PDT by Fitzy_888
The United States Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the post office, was “not legally authorized” to conduct blanket keyword searches of social media for terms such as “protest,” “attack,” and “destroy,” an inspector general investigation found, because it is only supposed to investigate cases with some connection to the post office or the mail.
The USPSIS is the oldest police agency in the country, called the United States Postal Inspection Service, or USPIS. Its job is to police the mail and crimes related to the mail such as mail fraud. USPIS dates back to a time when the postal service was the largest and most significant branch of the federal government and the USPIS was its only national policing power.
Of course, the federal government has many policing and law enforcement arms nowadays, which is one of the reasons that a Yahoo News report from April 2021 was so surprising to many Americans. Yahoo reported the agency’s Internet Covert Operations Program, better and somehow not satirically known as iCOP, was monitoring social media for “inflammatory” postings associated with protest movements on both the Left and the Right. This puzzled First Amendment watchdogs and security experts since the federal government has no shortage of agencies to monitor social media for inflammatory posts, yet for some reason postal cops were doing it. Yahoo News also reported that iCOP included use of Clearview AI, the highly controversial facial recognition system that is built on a database of images scraped from social media.
As a result of that investigation, the House of Representatives asked the USPS Office of Inspector General to investigate this program. The USPSOIG has just published that report which found iCOP used “proactive searches” that “did not include any terms with a postal nexus,” meaning they had nothing to do with the post office. The USPIS did not immediately respond to a Motherboard request for comment on the report.
In the months leading up to the Yahoo News report, which was published on April 21, iCOP used “one of the 10 profiles established in the [redacted] intelligence tool to conduct searches that were not legally authorized,” the report said. The USPSOIG found iCOP searched social media for terms that “did not include any terms related to the mail, postal crimes, or security of postal facilities or personnel.” The report gave three examples of keywords iCOP did use: “Protest,” “Attack,” and “Destroy.” After the Yahoo News report was published, the agency’s legal counsel suggested the term “protest” be removed to “protect people’s constitutional rights.”
Instead of starting by investigating crimes with a link to the post office, the program manager told the investigators that they went with the opposite approach, casting the widest net possible and then working their way backwards to see if it has any link to the post office “in an effort to broadly identify threats that could then be assessed for any postal nexus.”
The report also found that analysts working on iCOP did not retain investigative materials according to the agency’s record retention policies making investigating the use of such investigative materials difficult.
The report outlines several changes the USPIS made to iCOP in the months since the Yahoo News report, but notes they have not provided the necessary oversight to make sure such abuses don’t continue. However, the report does say that USPIS officials did move quickly to make one change immediately after the Yahoo News report. By the end of April 2021, they changed the name of iCOP. It is now called the Analytics Team.
In August, Motherboard published an internal USPIS slide presentation that showed how the division described itself. “Analytics Team specializes in providing actionable intelligence through cryptocurrency tracking, open source intelligence and social media analysis, geospatial mapping, and data visualization, and USPS backend and network data exploitation," the presentation reads.
The unit’s goals were to attribute “previously unknown individuals,” the presentation said. The document added that the unit’s training sessions are spread across 4 days over Zoom.
“You will not be an expert by the end of the training,” one of the slides reads.
It makes sense that the post office is essential to force the implementation of a totalitarian digital money tracking system.
I wished they’d just deliver the darn mail.
Aren’t they one of the government agencies (among many) some years back that bought up millions of rounds of ammo when there was none to be had for us?
The Democrats aka Demoncrats are weaponizing all parts of the US government tto cement their efforts to form a new Socialist Democratic Dictatorship.
The US Postal Inspectors are just like the FBI and CIA now..
Instead of policing the Post Office and its employees, it is being used against citizens.
I spent 10 years with the P.O. during the 1990’s. Back then, if anyone thought they could pocket ANYTHING, they were escorted to jail.
Now, we REGULARLY get our cards opened (very neatly, with a razor) and anything with cash for our little one gone. It happens EVERY time.
Of course, the relatives who send them are lefties; it’s THEIR money being stolen, but they refuse to think that the “hard working Postal people” would do such a thing.
So, 3 weeks after every holiday and birthday, we get the empty, opened card in a plastic bag..
So when they clamor for more funding for the USPS, they are not asking for money to make it more efficient - they are looking for money to expand their spying operations.
If you trust anything the government tells you you are a fool.
Cops illegally using something? Next they’ll tell me water is wet.
Theft is so prosecuted at the USPS.
Any letters that appear to have been purposely opened were opened by the machining of mail.
I work on those machines and the mail goes through them at 27mph and anything that is not flat can cause the mail piece to be torn open, and it appears like a razor opened them.
I won’t say no they happens, but the machines tear mail.
I worked the OCR’s and BCS machines too. When those get jammed, they crunch the mail like an accordion before they’ll rip to shreds. And they get oil marks all over them.
What I am encountering now is - very neatly sliced at the top seam cards. They’ve been sliced with a razor, not jammed by the machine.
And it’s pretty much guaranteed every holiday.
When I call the PO, the standard answer isn’t -“we’ll look into this..” ; rather, it’s “I can’t say that it happened at OUR office..”
Man, if I so much as stepped on a lawn and someone called to complain - back in the day, it was like the Nuremberg trials.
Laws don’t apply to feral government bureaucrats.
Nobody saw that coming when the program was announced. Uh uh, nope nobody.
A cautionary tale for those that say “Even though the government has the ability to abuse their authority, they would would never use that ability to spy on citizens.”
Former BIL held a VERY high (corner office suite high) position with the PO cops in Manhattan. Any organization that would put such an individual into that level leadership position is beyond redemption.
Is there a single fedgov agency that has not been corrupted? That has not been weaponized to go after deplorables???
One? A single one? Anyone? Beuler?
"Thank you for coming to my NEWMAN talk."
Exactly
I once ordered diatomaceous earth filter powder in a 5lb bag. It was to be used to kill insects. The sharp diatomaceous miniature rocks rip them apart as they get stuck in their bodies. Harmless to pets : )
The post office delayed the delivery. I checked with them about it and it was delivered but it had small holes in it like it was “sampled”. I bet they thought it was cocaine....!
I bet I am on some report and to be on the look out!
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