Wednesday, December 03, 2014

U.S. Postal Service ‘mail imaging’ program used for law enforcement, surveillance...

The U.S. Postal Service runs a massive dragnet surveillance program of all the mail in the United States; enabling law enforcement to generate profiles of associations and contacts of every American.

Two key programs play a role in the surveillance. The first is called “Mail Imaging.” As the name suggests, the program involves taking a digital photograph of every piece of physical mail that crosses through the USPS. The images provide a permanent record of the source and destination addresses posted on all packages and letters in the country.

The scope of the program is absolutely huge. The New York Times reported that about 160 billion pieces of mail were scanned in 2012.

Ostensibly, the Mail Imaging program is used to sort mail. However, law enforcement agencies are regularly granted access to this data without even the requirement of obtaining a warrant. The massive trove of data can be used to profile individuals and gather intelligence on their private lives. For example, the government can glean who the individual corresponds with; who the individual does business with; who sends the individual birthday cards; who sends the individual monthly bills; who the individual contracts for legal services.

A second program, called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program is engaged when there is special interest in a targeted individual. Reportedly, the program allows law enforcement to “track or investigate” the contents of mail connected to specific people. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. US mail subjected to widespread government surveillance program...
  2. ‘Facebook a gift to intelligence agencies’ - Laura Poitras
  3. Edward Snowden: State surveillance in Britain beyond anything seen in the US...
  4. NSA collecting millions of faces from web images...
  5. How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool...
  6. Everyone is under surveillance now, says whistleblower Edward Snowden...

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