JOHN KIRIAKOU: Neither Rain, Sleet, nor Snow Will Stop the Post Office From Spying on You
February 28, 2019 • 79 Comments
It’s called the “Mail Cover Program” and it’s run by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Yes, even the Post Office is spying on us, writes John Kiriakou.
By John Kiriakou

You may remember that last year some nut was arrested for mailing bombs to prominent Democrats, media outlets, and opponents of Donald Trump. Less than a week after the bombs went out, a suspect was arrested. Almost immediately, video turned up of him at a Trump rally, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and chanting for the camera. He was soon tried, convicted, and jailed. End of story.

But it wasn’t the end of the story. The investigation into the bomb incidents focused attention on an almost unknown federal surveillance program—one that poses a direct threat to the privacy and constitutional rights of every American. It’s called the “Mail Cover Program” and it’s run by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Yes, even the Post Office is spying on us.

The Mail Cover Program allows postal employees to photograph and send to federal law enforcement organizations (FBI, DHS, Secret Service, etc.) the front and back of every piece of mail the Post Office processes. It also retains the information digitally and provides it to any government agency that wants it—without a warrant.

In 2015, the USPS Inspector General issued a report saying that, “Agencies must demonstrate a reasonable basis for requesting mail covers, send hard copies of request forms to the Criminal Investigative Service Center for processing, and treat mail covers as restricted and confidential…A mail cover should not be used as a routine investigative tool. Insufficient controls over the mail cover program could hinder the Postal Inspection Service’s ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns over privacy of mail, and harm the Postal Service’s brand.”

Return to Sender

Not only were the admonitions ignored, the mail cover program actually expanded after the report’s release. Indeed, in the months after that report was issued, there were 6,000 requests for mail cover collection. Only 10 were rejected, according to the Feb. 2019 edition of Prison Legal News (P.34-35) .

I have some personal experience with the Mail Cover Program. I served 23 months in prison for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program. After having been locked up for two months, I decided to commission a card from a very artistically-inclined prisoner for my wife’s 40th birthday. I sent it about two weeks early, but she never received it. Finally, about four months later, the card was delivered back to me with a yellow “Return to Sender – Address Not Known” sticker on it. But underneath that sticker was a second yellow sticker. That one read, “Do Not Deliver. Hold For Supervisor. Cover Program.”

Why was I under Postal Service Surveillance? I have no idea. I had had my day in court. The case was over. But remember, the Postal Service doesn’t have to answer to anybody – my attorneys, my judge, even its own Inspector General. It doesn’t need a warrant to spy on me (or my family) and it doesn’t have to answer even to a member of Congress who might inquire as to why the spying was happening in the first place.

The problem is not just the sinister nature of a government agency (or quasi-government agency) spying on individuals with no probable cause or due process, although those are serious problems. It’s that the program is handled so poorly and so haphazardly that in some cases surveillance was initiated against individuals for no apparent law enforcement reason and that surveillance was initiated by Postal Service employees not even authorized to do so. Again, there is no recourse because the people under surveillance don’t even know that any of this is happening.

Perhaps an even more disturbing aspect of the program is the fact that between 2000 and 2012, the Postal Service initiated an average of 8,000 mail cover requests per year. But in 2013, that number jumped to 49,000. Why? Nobody knows and the Postal Service doesn’t have to say.

The question, though, is not how many cases are opened under the Mail Cover Program or even how many requests there are for the information. The real question is, “How is this constitutional?” Perhaps a secondary question is, “Why hasn’t anybody challenged the program in the courts?” In general, Americans don’t–or at least haven’t–objected to a gradual loss of civil liberties and constitutional rights. That has to stop. When even the Post Office is spying on you, you know the republic is in trouble.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/28/jo...-spying-on-you/

Is US Postal Service the New Big Brother?
Police can now track your mail without a court order.
By: Joe Schaeffer March 11, 2019


Cutting-edge technology has made fears of a surveillance state more palpable to civil libertarians. Yet the U.S. Postal Office at this very moment is helping police agencies engage in a simple, old-fashioned form of monitoring citizen activity, and few Americans realize it is actually happening.

Former CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou has written a column for MintPress News that sheds light on the little-known “mail covers” program. Kiriakou served 23 months in prison for his efforts to expose the CIA’s torture program for terrorism suspects. While incarcerated, he sent his wife a birthday card in the mail. It was returned to him with an “Address Not Known” sticker attached to it. However, another sticker on the card, which he was not meant to see, read, “Do Not Deliver. Hold For Supervisor. Cover Program.” This was how Kiriakou discovered that he was under law enforcement surveillance.
Massive Undertaking

Any citizen can be similarly tracked by police, who do not even need to request a court order to do so. The U.S. Post Office photographs the front and back of every piece of mail it sends out, some 150 billion items per year. A police agency can simply request mail cover tracking from the post office and wait for approval. Police cannot open the mail but can take note of all information to be gleaned from the envelope.

“It’s a treasure trove of information,” James J. Wedick, a former FBI agent told the New York Times in 2014. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.”

Wedick, a 34-year-veteran, expressed his concern over the program. “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,” he told the Times.

Television station KGW8 in Portland, Oregon reported on the mail covers program in 2016. It reports that legal challenges to the activity are usually rejected because courts have held there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for what is written on the outside of an envelope. The station noted another worrying facet. “The government does not want people knowing that they are the target of the mail cover program,” Mat dos Santos, legal director for the ACLU of Oregon, told KGW. “So there is really no effective way to find out whether you are or have been the target of the mail cover program.”

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https://www.libertynation.com/is-us-post...ew-big-brother/