TPA Sends Letter to Homeland Security Committee on Postal Service Surveillance

April 22, 2021

The Honorable Senators Gary Peters and Rob Portman

U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

Re: Postal Service Must Disclose Surveillance Activities

Chairman Peters and Ranking Member Portman:

On behalf of millions of taxpayers and consumers, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is writing to express concern about the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) bulk data collection activities. On April 21, Yahoo News reported that the agency’s law enforcement arm, “has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests…” under an initiative called the “Internet Covert Operations Program” (iCOP). The agency’s refusal to explain this program to the American people is unfortunately not surprising, given the USPS’ long track-record in hiding information from the public.

According to the Yahoo News report, the USPS has been collecting social media data to monitor “significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically” and identify locations and times for protest events. Data collection has included taking screenshots from Facebook, Telegram, Parler, and other social media sites and disseminating these posts through agency bulletins, despite screenshotted posts seemingly not containing threats or other actionable intelligence. While iCOP exists to combat digital misuse of the postal system, it is unclear as to how monitoring protests and broadly collecting social media information furthers that goal.

Government surveillance of civilians is nothing new. Revelations about a sprawling federal surveillance apparatus prompted the Obama administration to undertake a review of bulk data collection and produce a report on the subject. But, it is especially alarming that America’s mail carrier has taken part in this surveillance along with intelligence collection agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA). University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, who was appointed by then-President Obama to assist in reviewing the NSA’s bulk collection activities, recently stated, “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”

The revelations are particularly alarming given the USPS’ decades-long track-record in keeping information from the public. Analysts and researchers regularly submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the agency, only for these requests to be spurned for little apparent reason. In fiscal year 2019, the USPS fully denied more than a third of processed and finalized FOIA requests. In contrast, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security fully denied less than 10 percent of FOIA requests even though those agencies regularly handle sensitive criminal justice and national security documents. It is inexcusable that America’s mail carrier keeps more secrets than departments in charge of public safety.

It is time for the agency to commit to greater transparency and come clean about their clandestine data collection activities. Continued secrecy and mission creep is eroding public trust in the organization while resulting in the inefficient allocation of the USPS’ scarce revenues. We urge you to investigate the USPS’ currently classified activities and hold the agency accountable for any misuses of taxpayer dollars.

Sincerely,

David Williams

President

Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo; Illustration