Postal Service Surveilled Protest Activities Online With Little Rules, Oversight
Newly released records obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation show that the U.S. Postal Service ran a covert internet surveillance program, called iCOP, that monitored social media posts about protests across the political spectrum with little documented oversight or legal justification.
Why this matters: The post office has no obvious business monitoring political protests. That is the core problem here. USPS ran a program that tracked First Amendment activity — people organizing and discussing protests — with apparently no meaningful rules about when it could do that or why. That is government surveillance of lawful speech, operated in secret, by an agency with no clear law enforcement mandate to do it. The records only surfaced because EFF sued. Without that lawsuit, this program likely stays buried. That gap between what agencies can do and what the public ever finds out is exactly where civil liberties erode quietly.
Who should care: Lawyers · Compliance · Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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