We knew the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI spied on the American citizens who fund their budgets.
But the U.S. Postal Service?
According to U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, the answer is yes.
The Florida Republican on Tuesday wrote an op-ed for Newsmax explaining how the U.S. Postal Inspection Service monitors Americans through something called the Internet Covert Operations Program, or iCOP.
The Free Press reported on the USPS monitoring social media accounts in a covert operation back in April.
Gaezt began by noting that the USPS’s police powers date to before the founding if the country.
In 1772, then-Postmaster Benjamin Franklin founded a post called “surveyor,” who had the authority to investigate mail theft and audit postal accounts of people charged with handling the mail. The surveyors essentially were America’s first federal law enforcement officers.
But Gaetz noted that the contemporary reach is much broader, thanks to the internet.
ICOP, Gaetz wrote, is an “illegal and unconstitutional program (that) combs through social media posts of Americans looking for politically charged or ‘inflammatory’ material that it somehow may deem dangerous to its operations.” If postal inspectors find anything, then it is shared “across government agencies.”
He pointed out that a March 16 internal bulletin published by the Postal Inspection Service maintained that “right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts” were posting “inflammatory material” that “suggests potential violence may occur” on March 20.
Recall that our hyperventilating national media pumped up March 20 as a day of unrest because of a QAnon rumor.
Some may recall that this took root after some guy named “Ken” told a Washington Post reporter at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando in February that former President Donald Trump would really be inaugurated on March 20 because of some “clause in the Constitution” says presidential power doesn’t transfer until March 20.
In its bulletin, the Postal Inspection Service reported that Parler accounts were blaring about “rallies to engage in violence” in every state capital on March 20.
As we know, none of that happened.
Gaetz wrote that Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale has reported “no actionable findings under iCOP’s social media trawling,” which is evidence of its “precarious nature and misplaced scope.”
“Based on scarce public information, USPIS frames iCOP as a program to identify and reduce criminal misuse of the postal system. However, social media spying goes well beyond ‘misuse of the postal system,’” Gaetz argued.
“This covert program raises concerns, not only because it’s outside the agency’s jurisdiction and a waste of taxpayer dollars, but also because it’s evidence of the rise in more government-sanctioned spying on its own citizens. The Surveillance State is adding yet another spyglass to its collection of creeping tools and supplies. Running clandestine domestic surveillance programs on Americans’ social media activity is not aligned with the role, duty, and scope of the USPIS.”
Gaetz admitted that the Postal Inspection Service has authority to investigate cybercrime.
“However, last time I checked, serious cybercriminals do not announce their intention to commit crimes on Facebook or Parler before they act,” the congressman added.
“This operation is duplicative and misplaced, as a handful of other agencies already exist to surveil Americans, the propriety of which I will not discuss today. iCOP is outside USPIS’s jurisdiction and infringes on American citizens’ civil liberties. I disagree that taxpayers should fund yet another spying program in the federal government, much less one ran by the mailman.”
Gaetz then noted that he and nine other lawmakers have filed a bill to defund iCOP.
“National security is important, but it should not come at the expense of civil liberties; the growing Surveillance State is not synonymous with more national security,” wrote Gaetz.
“The guise of national security does not suffice as a predicate for this program and neither does the guise of ensuring safe mail delivery.”
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