Is every federal agency a surveillance unit now? With a plethora of law enforcement and intelligence agencies deputized to monitor American communications, it seems insane to think that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) would also be enlisted for this task. But indeed it has been, as
Yahoo News revealed earlier this year. Now, new details have emerged about the postal service's Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), including the fact that the agency has been using facial recognition software from Clearview AI and has a specific program to monitor people posting about protests.
As part of the iCOP program, postal service employees have been monitoring Americans' social media posts and sharing things they deem suspicious with law enforcement agencies. "Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software," writes
Yahoo News' Jana Winter:
Among the tools used by the analysts is Clearview AI, a facial recognition software that scrapes images off public websites, a practice that has raised the ire of privacy advocates. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses Clearview's facial recognition database of over 3 billion images from arrest photos collected from across social media "to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals," according to materials reviewed by Yahoo News.
Other tools employed by the Inspection Service include Zignal Labs' software, which it uses to run keyword searches on social media event pages to identify potential threats from upcoming scheduled protests, according to Inspection Service documents. It also uses Nfusion, another software program, to create and maintain anonymous, untraceable email and social media accounts.
USPS has defended its practices by saying that it's simply part of keeping postal workers safe. But the agency's internal communications raise doubts:
The iCOP intelligence bulletin obtained and published by Yahoo News targeted protests planned by largely right-wing groups and discussed on Facebook, Twitter and Parler.
iCOP found no credible threats, but compiled what it described as "inflammatory" posts.
The iCOP program has also monitored protests associated with Black Lives Matter and racial justice, according to
Yahoo News.
"Why has the USPS been using anything other than intelligence from the Department of Justice for monitoring events which may pose risks to normal mail delivery? Why were these resources used to monitor First Amendment-protected protest rallies like those in the wake of George Floyd's death last year?" asks Rayne at national security and civil liberties blog
emptywheel.
Postal service surveillance reports are uploaded to a portal run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and shared with task forces, surveillance centers, law enforcement units, and government agencies across the country—including the National Security Agency—as well as stored for future access."The retention and dissemination of these reports could allow federal agencies to receive information they are not allowed by statute to collect themselves," Winter suggests.
Whether the USPS is actually authorized to undertake such surveillance and reporting is not clear, let alone whether it is doing so in ways respectful of free speech and due process rights.
Some members of Congress have been skeptical of the Postal Service's iCOP program.
"I do not doubt that @USPS has some legitimate law enforcement responsibilities (theft, fraud, etc) but shoehorning in a massive social media surveillance operation using AI facial recognition software under the guise of a loosely-defined homeland security mission is just insane," tweeted Rep. Peter Meijer (R–Mich.) yesterday.
"Like all Americans, I am skeptical when any government agency pries into our personal and private lives under the guise of rooting out 'threats.' But for such an invasion of privacy to be carried out by the Post Office, of all agencies, is a major concern," wrote Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) in an April op-ed.
On April 30, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.)
introduced a bill "to prohibit funds from being used to implement the Internet Covert Operations Program under the United States Postal Inspection Service." It has attracted nine co-sponsors so far—all Republicans.
Congressional Democrats have been largely silent about the issue.
